The Reading Room

For the past two hours since leaving your office and slipping back into the ballroom like you hadn't just comprehensively undermined eight months of careful separation, you'd had the party. The party, with its noise and its obligations and its endless, mercifully absorbing requirement that you be on. All of it demanding just enough of your attention to make thinking about anything else logistically impossible. It had been, if nothing else, somewhere to put your face. 

But now the guests are gone, the house has exhaled down to its bones, and the silence left behind is the kind that doesn't stay empty for long. You can already feel the thoughts beginning to squirm back in at the edges, insistently, like they've been waiting all evening with a numbered ticket and now it's finally their turn.

The whole room is still dressed and gleaming for an evening that was, by every external measure, a resounding success. But you are currently conducting a very focused internal audit of every decision you have made since approximately nine o'clock this evening.

The audit is not going well.

Returning to the party with your husband—ex-husband—Bucky, on your arm like you hadn't just left a significant proportion of your dignity scattered on your desk had been one thing. The way the evening had gone after was quite another. 

Bucky had been insufferable, obviously. Warm in the particular way that reads as devoted husband from twelve feet away but as I have won something and we both know it in closer proximity. His arm became a fixed and immovable constant around your waist, metal hand pressing at the small of your back with the patient, territorial certainty of a man who has decided something and seen no reason to discuss it.

Matt had gone. You'd felt his absence around ten minutes in. The particular negative space of someone who has quietly removed themselves without making it anyone's problem. The only remnant of his presence was his champagne flute left half-finished on a windowsill you'd passed on the way to the speeches. You'd stared at it for a moment longer than you should have.

Bucky had noticed your mind drifting, of course. His thumb smoothed over your back - just a small, deliberate pressure that meant I see exactly where you're looking, and I'm still here. Stay. And you had, because the alternative was making a scene at your own event. And also because—well.

Because somewhere between the dinner and the second round of speeches, something had started happening that you hadn't authorised and couldn't entirely stop. You'd caught Bucky's eye over a comment from the Belgian ambassador and he gave you that faint, private smile in return - the shared language you developed years ago. 

At one point he’d dipped his head to your ear to murmur something dry about one of the ministers, and you’d had to bite your cheek to keep from laughing. Bucky had looked down at you with those soft eyes he does when he's not thinking carefully enough about his own expression, and you'd looked away first. You were even finishing each other's sentences again without realising.

And by the time the last round of handshakes came, you'd stopped noticing the weight of his hand on your back and started noticing the absence of it when it left. If you clutched at straws, maybe you could convince yourself that this was just eight months of having nobody to lean into. That, and the fact your body had always been significantly stupider than your brain where Bucky Barnes was concerned. But truth of it was quieter and more inconvenient than any rationalisation you could construct: it had felt, humiliatingly, like home.

The audit is really not going well. 

“Madam Ambassador.”

Thomas, your chief of staff, materialises at the foot of the stairs. Silent, eternal, and entirely too perceptive. A man who has worked in diplomatic residences long enough to have seen everything and professionally forgotten most of it.

“The last of the staff will be finished within the hour,” he offers. “Will there be anything else tonight?”

You open your mouth.

“That'll be all, Thomas, thank you.”

Bucky's voice comes from somewhere behind your left shoulder, easy and warm in the way of a man who has slipped right back into the domestic machinery of your shared life.

Thomas nods, unperturbed. “Very good, Congressman Barnes. Wonderful to have you back, sir. I've had your things brought up.”

Of course he has.

Because why wouldn't he? Congressman Barnes is visiting his wife, and that is a thing that happens, and the residence's household operates on the reasonable assumptions, none of which were consulted past you.

“Great, thanks Thomas.” You reply, and your voice comes out perfectly steady, which feels like a small miracle. “Goodnight.”

Thomas retreats. And then it is just the two of you, on the landing, in this enormous, beautiful house, at the end of the most profoundly strange evening of what has already been a profoundly strange year. Neither of you speaks for just a beat too long.

“Right,” Bucky says finally.

“Right,” you agree.

You head upstairs, and he follows, and the house closes around you both like it was always going to.

── ⟢  ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹ 

The master bedroom is on the first floor, east wing, overlooking the gardens.

It's your favourite room in the house; twelve foot ceilings, original cornicing, sash windows that rattle faintly when the wind comes off the park. It even has an original, working fireplace and enough space that the four poster doesn't overwhelm it, which is saying something.

You have not, in the past eight months, shared it with anyone

The door closes behind you both with a soft, decisive click.

You set your clutch down on the dressing table. He's already shrugging off his jacket, moving through the room with the ease of a man whose muscle memory never got the memo that he left.

Like a man who has lived here. Like the months of absence were a minor administrative detail rather than anything worth adjusting for. Like a man who has decided - and this is the thing about Bucky, this has always been the thing - that simply resuming works better than discussing. That if he just continues, the awkward conversation about feelings never has to be raised.

He reaches up to loosen his tie, that automatic gesture you have watched a thousand times, and then just… stops.

The pause is small. Almost nothing. His hands still at his collar and there's the briefest flicker of something in his expression that looks almost like recalibration. Like a man who has been operating on instinct for the last several hours and has only just now checked in with his frontal lobe to ask if instinct is advisable right now.

You watch him start to process the situation in real time. The room. The two sides of the turned down bed. His coat already laid on his chair. His suitcase placed next to his left side of the bed, because your chief of staff doesn't forget anything, ever, including what side of the bed the Congressman sleeps on.

Bucky’s tongue drags briefly over his teeth. Then he looks up and meets your eyes in the mirror, and the silence that follows has the particular quality of two people clearly thinking about the same three or four things and not willing to be the first to name any of them.

“I can take the couch,” he offers carefully. Gesturing vaguely at the small sofa by the fireplace that is, objectively, six inches shorter than he is.

“Don't be ridiculous, you'll be folded in half,” you object. “I'll take it.”

“You won't fit either,” he points out.

“At least I'm smaller than you.”

“Well," Bucky sighs flatly, “I'm not letting my wife sleep on a fucking loveseat.”

There it is again. Wife. The word he keeps wielding like a claim, like it still means what it used to. And it still lands the same. You hate that it does.

You hate the warm, stupid, entirely unwelcome thing it does somewhere behind your sternum. Because he's being impossible - he's been impossible all evening - and yet here he is, immovable on the subject of your comfort even while being the singular architect of your discomfort. 

“Separated wife,” you correct, sharper than you intend, but one of you has to keep score here and it's clearly not going to be him.

He tilts his head, slow and deliberate, his eyes doing that thing where they get very still and very blue and very focused on your face.

“Didn't seem very separated a few hours ago when you were coming on my—”

“Don't.” You hold up a hand. “Do not finish that sentence in my bedroom.”

"Our bedroom,” he replies, and the audacity of it nearly makes you laugh.

“You haven't lived here in eight months,” you scoff.

“Yeah, well.” He looks around the room with something that might be fondness or might be smugness or might be both. “Doesn't seem to have changed much.”

And that's the problem, isn't it? Because he's right. You haven't changed anything. His nightstand is bare but still his; you've never put anything on it, never colonized that space. Even the closet still has the section you'd never quite gotten around to re-purposing, like some part of you had been keeping it warm. Keeping it ready.

The thought makes you feel pathetic and furious in equal measure.

“Well it's my bedroom now, and I'm telling you not to—” You stop yourself, jaw tight, because getting into this right now, at nearly one in the morning with him half-undressed, is absolutely not happening. “You know what? Fine. We're both adults. We can share a bed again without making it a thing.”

“I wasn't making it a thing.”

“You were absolutely making it a thing.”

“I was making an observation—”

“You were being an ass.”

His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “Yeah, well. You married an ass.”

“Separated from an ass,” you correct sharply, moving toward your dresser with more force than necessary.

The muscle in his jaw strains. Pops, like he's physically holding something back, biting down on whatever else he was about to say.

“Fine.” He reaches up, resuming the work on his tie, fingers pulling the silk loose with deliberate, practised movements. “We'll be adults about it.”

“Fine,” you echo.

You yank open your pyjama drawer with more violence than it deserves, pulling out the silk set you'd bought months ago in a fit of reclamation. Expensive, modest, and nothing like the worn t-shirts you used to steal from him.

“Great.” The tie slides free. He starts on the top button of his shirt, then the next, movements slow and methodical. You catch yourself watching his fingers work the buttons with that same deft precision they had a few hours ago when they were working you open instead. Christ.

“Fine.” And the second it leaves your mouth you know you've made a tactical error, because—

“You already said fine.”

There it is.

“Well I'm saying it again.” You turn toward the bathroom. “Because we're being adults about this. Mature, reasonable adults who can share a sleeping space without any complications,” you finish firmly.

“Right. No complications.” His voice is dry, but not quite enough to hide the edge underneath. Something that sounds dangerously close to hurt. “We're real good at uncomplicated, you and me.”

You don't bother with a response. Just gather your things and head for the bathroom with all the dignity of a woman who is, essentially, fleeing. There's no other word for it. You're running away from your own husband in your own bedroom, and you both know it.

“I'm taking the bathroom first before I smother you with a pillow,” you announce.

“See, that doesn't sound very adu—”

You slam the bathroom door before he can finish that sentence, and the lock clicks with a satisfaction that's entirely petty and entirely warranted. Behind the door, you hear him huff a laugh. Something that might be fondness disguised as frustration and that particular stubborn amusement he gets when you're both being impossible. 

He always claims not to get off on your verbal sparring. You know he's always lying.

Leaning back against the door, you finally let yourself breathe. Your reflection stares back from the mirror, still perfect from three hours of performance.

Except it's not really, is it? Because underneath the dress, you're still wearing the evidence of what you let him do. What you begged him to do.

You reach behind yourself for the zipper, fingers searching low on your back for the tab. The dress is one of those gorgeous, backless nightmares designed by someone who clearly never considered that women might need to undress themselves. Your fingers catch the zip and you pull, but it only moves an inch before jamming.

“Come on,” you mutter, twisting your arm lower. Your shoulder protests. The zip grudges down another half-inch before catching completely on some invisible fold of silk.

You try the other arm. Same failure, different angle.

“Fuck.”

You stare at your reflection. At the reality of your options, which is that you have exactly one and it's terrible. 

“Bucky?” You call, quieter than intended, opening the door just enough to suggest he's being granted entry, however reluctantly.

A pause, and for a moment you're not sure he heard you. “Yeah?”

“I need help with my zip. It's stuck.”

You hear him cross the bedroom before the door opens the rest of the way, but he doesn’t step in immediately. There’s a pause, like he’s giving you the chance to change your mind, and then he crosses the threshold.

“Turn around.” It’s not quite an order, but your body responds to it anyway before your brain has the chance to argue. You pivot, presenting your back to him, fingers braced lightly against the edge of the counter.

You feel him step in behind you, close enough that the heat of him registers before anything else does. Your breath stutters, traitorous, and you fix your eyes on your reflection. His hands come into view in the mirror a second later. One settles lightly at your waist, just enough to still the fabric, the other finding the zipper with careful fingers.

His breath grazes the back of your neck as the zip finally gives and slides down, and every nerve ending along your spine lights up. His hands still for just a moment, a beat that lasts slightly longer than it should, and the bathroom is very quiet. For a second, it feels dangerously like the easiest thing in the world to lean back that last inch. To close the distance without naming it. To let instinct run the show again, just for a moment.

But then his fingers flex, and he lets go. He steps back, and the air between you is breathable again.

“Got it.” He clears his throat.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course.” he replies, slightly unsteady, and then he's gone.

You stare at the closed bathroom door for a moment longer before finally forcing yourself to move.

The shower is too cold once you turn it on and step beneath it. But you linger under the spray anyway, letting it work down your shoulders, washing the evidence of the evening - of him - away until the water runs clear. At least your IUD means this is the extent of the cleanup. But sooner than you'd like the heat fades, the old pipes protesting. Damn old house.

You towel off. Perform your entire nighttime routine with robotic habit, because anything else means thinking, and thinking is dangerous right now. Toner. Serum. Moisturiser. You find a loose thread on your sleeve and fiddle with it. You reorganise nothing on the counter and call it tidying.

Eventually, you run out of tasks.

The bedroom is waiting on the other side of the door.

Bucky's sitting on his side of the bed - when did you start thinking of it as his side again? - in nothing but his boxer briefs, scrolling through his phone with the blank expression of a man who is absolutely not reading anything.

He's kept himself in shape. Of course he has. Super soldier serum aside, Bucky's always been disciplined about training.But there’s more weight on him than last time you saw him - broader through the shoulders, softer in some areas. It suits him unfairly well. Fills him out in a way that makes him look less like a weapon and more like a man who’s taking care of himself. 

The thought makes something warm bloom in your chest, and your gaze lingers long enough to catch on the scars at his left shoulder, where metal meets flesh. The scars there are unchanged, a familiar map you’d once known by touch rather than sight.

He looks up when you emerge, and his gaze tracks over you with an intensity that makes your skin prickle.

“Bathroom's yours,” you manage.

He slips into the bathroom without another word. You climb into bed, trying to stay as far to your side as physically possible. You shift. Adjust the pillow. Shift again. Can't find the position you normally sleep in, and you’re still awake when Bucky reemerges.

The mattress dips under his weight. You do your best impression of a woman who is already asleep, which would be more convincing if he hadn’t spent the better part of three years sleeping next to you. If he didn't know exactly how your breathing changes when sleep actually takes you. He doesn't call you on it. Just settles back against the pillows with a soft exhale that says he knows exactly what you're doing.

The residence settles around you both. The old Georgian silence, where the radiators tick, the pipes groan, and the old timber relaxes. 

You can hear him breathing. Feel the heat radiating off his body across the sheets, your whole right side hyper-aware of it. The bed that felt cavernously large when you slept alone suddenly feels impossibly small. Every nerve insisting on registering his presence with an enthusiasm you find deeply unhelpful.

“We should probably talk,” he states, though there’s not real conviction behind it.

“I'm tired, Bucky.”

A pause. You can practically hear him deciding whether to push.

“Yeah,” he concedes, something resigned in his voice. “Me too.”

He reaches over and turns off his bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. The bed shifts as he settles onto his side, facing away from you. And then it's just the sound of his breathing, evening out into an easy slumber.

Which is something. Because for a long time, sleep was a thing Bucky Barnes did badly. You’d learnt that slowly, through observation, the way you did most things about him in the early months. Through the careful cataloguing of details he wouldn't offer freely. The nightmares. The insomnia. The tense stillness that only came from someone forcing themselves to lie motionless, hoping you wouldn’t notice. Which you always did, and pretended you hadn’t. 

Because pressing would've sent him retreating behind walls you were only just beginning to see past. So you'd just held him tighter and let him figure out you weren't going anywhere.

Over time his body learnt yours. Your warmth. Your weight beside him. The rhythm of your heartbeat. Something in him that had been braced for decades finally started to let go. He'd started reaching for you in his sleep without waking. Started sleeping past five a.m., then six. Once, memorably, past nine, and he'd surfaced so bewildered by his own rested state that he’d just stared at you like you’d performed some kind of miracle. 

It's particularly memorable, your heart unhelpfully supplies, because it’s the exact moment you knew you were in love with him.

He used to say you were the only place he didn't have to be on guard.

Used to.

You'd worried about that, those first few months after you separated. Whether he was sleeping at all in that sterile DC apartment. Whether the nightmares had crept back in without you there. Whether he lay awake at three a.m, every muscle held just a little too tight, waiting for something that never quite came. You'd tried not to feel guilty about it. Failed, mostly.

Beside you, Bucky makes a small sound and shifts.

It's drowsy, unconscious, seeking you out in a way his waking self wouldn’t authorize. His body curves toward yours, closing the distance between you with the same inevitability as a plant tipping toward sunlight. It’s like his nervous system runs through a quick inventory - familiar warmth, familiar scent, familiar body - and just defaults back to you like coming home. 

Which is deeply inconvenient knowledge to possess while you're actively trying to remember all the very good reasons you separated in the first place.

His face has even softened in that devastating way where it sheds the mask and just looks like Bucky. The real one. The version that doesn’t belong to the Congressman, or the ex-assassin. The one that you’ve probably spent more time with than anyone else alive.

You are absolutely not thinking about how much you've missed that face. You are not.

Instead, you think about Matt.

The thing is, you don't know exactly what you owe Matt, which is in itself a fairly damning summary of where you'd arrived. Two months. Easy, fun, uncomplicated in the way that things are when neither person is asking too much or offering too much and the arrangement suits them both. You'd liked him. You do like him. He's brilliant and funny and present, in the straightforward way that had felt so startling after months of press releases and assistant-mediated contact.

But he hadn't committed. Neither had you. That had been the point, or at least the operating premise.

So, the question of guilt.

Do you owe Matt anything that would make tonight a transgression? You'd not made promises. The terms, such as they were, had been deliberately unspecified, which had felt like freedom at the time and feels significantly more complicated now.

And, of course, there’s no way he hadn’t heard everything.

That is the part you keep arriving at and then shying away from like a horse refusing a jump, because there is no version of that in which you come off well. Matt Murdock, who can hear a heartbeat from across a room, absolutely heard every single thing that happened in your office tonight. Every word. Every sound. Every moment of two people who were supposed to be separated doing a fairly comprehensive impression of the opposite.

He'd left without saying anything. You don't know whether that makes it better or worse. You suspect worse.

You're going to have to talk to him. You're going to have to talk to him, and you're going to have to figure out what tonight was, and what the past eight months of separation actually mean in practice versus on paper. 

You're going to have to stand in front of Matt and have some version of a conversation you cannot currently outline because every time you try to construct the opening sentence your brain just goes quiet and offers you nothing except a replay of Bucky's mouth hot against your throat, and the rough edge of his voice when he called you his pretty wife.

Next to you, Bucky’s forehead comes to rest against your shoulder - tucked against you like something that simply found its way back to where it was always going to end up. Your chest does something you'd really rather it didn't.

You look at the ceiling for a long time, listening to your husband breathe, and try not to think about how natural this feels.

How terrifying that is. How much you've missed it. How angry you are that you've missed it. 

Eventually, because the ceiling has offered no solutions and your body has been quietly conspiring with Bucky's for the past twenty minutes, you drift off next to him.

── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹

You reach for him before you're properly awake.

Your hand finds cold sheets, and the humiliation of that is enough to finish the job of waking you up completely.

For a moment you just lie there, staring at the indent in his pillow, at the covers thrown back on his side. Processing the faint sense of abandonment that has absolutely no right to exist given that you spent half the night wishing he'd spontaneously relocate to a different continent.

The shower in the en-suite isn't running. The dressing room is quiet. He's not here. You lie there for a moment, taking stock of the specific variety of idiot you are. Then you get up.

Twenty minutes later you're dressed and heading downstairs with the grim determination of a woman about to reclaim her life and her sanity. The sound of voices reach you before you make it to the breakfast room. Two of them - your aide's quick, efficient register, and underneath it, lower, Bucky's. 

You stop in the doorway.

Bucky's sitting at the table looking unfairly well-rested, already dressed in one of his perfectly tailored suits. Your aide - Caroline - sits across from him, laptop open, notepad beside it, wearing the expression of someone who has been efficiently charmed into full co-operation and hasn't quite noticed yet. Papers are open between them. His handwriting is on some of them.

When you walk into the room, they both look up. Caroline smiles, bright and professional. Bucky's smile is slower, warmer, with an edge of something that makes your spine stiffen on instinct.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he greets, and you immediately don’t trust his tone. “Sleep well?”

You manage a smile that doesn't reach your eyes. “Fine, thank you.”

“Morning,” your aide adds brightly, already turning the laptop toward you. “Perfect timing actuall—”

“What is all this?” you interject, a little sharper than you intend, crossing to the coffee pot because you need something to do with your hands.

“Just some press co-ordination,” Bucky shrugs, like it’s obvious. Like obviously your time belongs to him whenever he's in town. “We thought it made sense, while I'm here. The Times have been wanting a piece for a while, and with the summit coverage still running there's a window to get some good visibility.”

Your aide nods with the enthusiasm of someone utterly oblivious to the tension crystallizing in the air. “It's perfect actually, I've already reached out to a few contacts. We've got the charity reception Friday, a lunch Thursday that Lord Johnson’s been requesting for months, then the Atlantic Council meeting on Wednesday - that'll be good for photos if you both attend together - then tomorrow—.”

“Wait.” You set your cup down carefully. “Wednesdays I meet with our legal counsel.”

There's a small pause. Your aide's fingers hover over the keyboard. 

“Mr. Murdock?” Caroline glances at her notes. “That’s been pushed back,” she says, slightly carefully. 

You look at her. “To when?”

“These press things have tight windows,” Bucky interjects smoothly, with an expression of such reasonable, considered sympathy that you could scream. “Visibility with the right people, good for both our offices. You know how it is.” The faintest tilt of his head. “I'm sure Murdock will understand that these things take priority.”

There is a very specific register that Bucky uses when he has already made a decision and is presenting it as a collaborative discussion, and this is unmistakably it.

“Especially,” he continues, and you have to bite your cheek so you don’t say something you’ll regret, “given the transatlantic tensions recently. It's important we present a unified front. As husband and wife.”

The words land exactly how he means them to. A reminder. A claim. You know exactly what he’s doing because he’s not even trying to be subtle. 

He's monopolised your entire week, filled every available slot with joint appearances. Between your existing obligations and everything he's just loaded into your schedule, there isn't a single free hour left for the meeting with Matt that you both know isn't really about legal counsel.

“And tomorrow,” Caroline ploughs on, bless her completely oblivious soul, “you'd originally blocked out for paperwork, but the round-table is invitation-only and they specifically requested both of you, so—”

“So you've just... rewritten my entire week.” You hear yourself say. Your smile is so tight it might shatter.

“Optimized.” Bucky corrects gently. 

His eyes meet yours across the table, and the look in them is pure, undiluted victory. And the worst part? He's not even wrong. These are important events. You should attend them together. From any objective standpoint, his logic is flawless. Any attempt at protesting would make you look like you're prioritizing the wrong things.

Which is exactly what makes it so infuriating.

“Will there be anything else?” you ask, voice perfectly professional. “I have a meeting I’m already running late for.”

“I think that covers it,” Caroline says brightly. “Oh, the German Ambassador's office called about scheduling a—”

“Send me the details,” you interrupt. “I'll review them later.”

You pick up a croissant from the breakfast spread. Turn to leave.

“Sweetheart?”

You stop. Take deep breath. Don't turn around. “Yes?”

“I was thinking we could have lunch later. Just the two of us. Prep ourselves for the busy week ahead.”

The audacity. The sheer, breathtaking audacity.

You turn back, smile still in place. “Sounds perfect, why don’t you come by my office later?”

“Absolutely.” His smile widens. “It's a date.”

You leave the residence before you turn your private separation into a very public spectacle involving thrown pastries, taking your fury with you to the embassy where it promptly gets buried under the weight of your actual job.

The morning is a blur of meetings that run long and emails that multiply faster than you can answer them. Trade briefings that should take thirty minutes stretch to fifty. Security updates that require your signature on six different documents. A conference call with State that goes in circles for forty minutes before anyone agrees on anything. Your assistant has brought you coffee twice, and both cups have gone cold on your desk untouched.

You're mid-sentence in a response to the German Ambassador's office when there's a knock at your door.

“Come in,” you call, not looking up, assuming it's another briefing packet or someone from the communications team.

The door opens. You register the footsteps, the soft tap of a cane, before the voice.

“Busy morning?”

Your head snaps up so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash.

Matt's standing in the doorway, one hand on his cane, the other tucked into his pocket. His expression is pleasant and unreadable in that way he does when he's being very deliberate about not showing what he's actually thinking.

Fuck.

This would've been significantly easier with some advance notice. A text, or an email, or a calendar invite titled “Discuss Why You Disappeared Into Your Office With Your Supposed Ex-Husband”. Anything that would've given you more than zero seconds to figure out what the hell you're supposed to say right now. 

You've walked into treaty negotiations with less anxiety. Those at least came with agendas. Preparation time. The basic courtesy of knowing they were happening before you were actively in them.

“Matt.” Your brain scrambles for words, or literally anything useful. “Hi. I didn't—I wasn't expecting—”

“Noticed your calendar got significantly fuller since yesterday,” he observes mildly, tilting his head. There's no accusation in his tone, but you hear the question underneath it anyway. “Lot of joint appearances suddenly.”

Heat crawls up your neck. You're aware, abruptly, of how you must look - harried, distracted, still half-focused on the email you were writing. “Yes,” you manage. “I'm sorry. I wanted to—I meant to call, I just haven't had a second to—”

“It's fine.” He steps into the office properly, and your heart kicks harder in your chest, whether it’s dread or want, you’re not entirely sure. “It's your lunch break now though, isn't it? We could grab something. Talk about last night.”

Oh god. Suddenly the conference call that went in circles for forty minutes seems appealing by comparison.

“Matt,” you start, but you don't even know where that sentence is going. Because what can you even say? My husband is systematically cutting you out of my life and I'm clearly too much of a coward to stop him?

“I'm not—” He stops, and there's a light sigh before his lips press together in that particular way he does when he's choosing his words carefully. “I'm not trying to make this difficult. I just think we should probably talk about where things stand. Clear the air.”

You scramble find words that don't make this exponentially worse. “It's complicated.”

“Is it?” There's an edge to his voice now, however faint. “Or is it actually pretty straightforward and we're both just avoiding saying it out loud?”

You're trying to formulate something that resembles an answer when you hear the distinct cadence of footsteps you’d recognise anywhere, coming down the hall towards your office.

“There you are, sweetheart.”

Your stomach drops straight through the floor and keeps going.

Bucky appears in the doorway, looking between you and Matt with an expression of polite surprise that would be convincing if you didn't know him well enough to see the calculation behind it.

“Oh, Murdock,” he greets, as though he's only just noticed Matt standing there. “Didn't realise you were stopping by.”

“Congressman Barnes,” Matt turns slightly, angling toward Bucky's voice. “Just thought I'd see if the Ambassador was free for lunch, because it seems like her schedule's quite full.”

“Yeah, it's a busy week,” Bucky agrees easily, stepping into the office properly now. Not quite crowding, but definitely occupying space between you both. “We've got lunch plans actually. Lots to catch up on - isn't that right, doll?”

You're still sitting at your desk, frozen, watching this happen like you're observing it from outside your own body. The air in the office has gone thick and uncomfortable, the silence stretching just a beat too long.

Matt's expression hasn't changed, but you can see the slight tension in his jaw. The way his hand tightens fractionally on his cane; he knows exactly what's happening here

“Right,” you manage finally. “Yes. We're—it’s a working lunch. Coordinating the rest of the week.”

“A working lunch,” Matt repeats, and you can't tell if there's an edge to it or if your guilt is adding subtext that isn’t there.

“You know how it is,” Bucky adds. “Just making sure we're aligned before all the joint appearances. Tedious stuff, really.”

Bucky’s still smiling. Matt's still standing there. You're still trying to remember how to breathe normally.

“Of course,” Matt says after a moment. “I should let you both get to it then.”

“We could reschedule,” you start, but the words feel hollow even as you're saying them. “Later this week, maybe—”

“Your calendar looked pretty full,” Matt interrupts. “But sure. Have your people call my people.”

The formality of it stings more than it should. Like he's already pulling back, already creating space between you that wasn't there before.

“Matt—”

“It's fine.” he assures, though it doesn’t sound fine. It sounds like a door closing. Or maybe you're imagining that too - there's nothing in his voice you can parse clearly. “Really, enjoy your lunch.”

You want to say something else. Want to explain, or apologise, or do literally anything to make this less excruciating. But the words stick in your throat, and Matt's already shifting toward the door into the hallway, and Bucky's just standing there, absolutely not trying to hide his satisfaction.

“Ready to go?” Bucky asks.

“I just need to freshen up,” you reply. “Give me two minutes. I'll meet you downstairs.”

It's a transparent excuse and you both know it. But you need air. You need thirty seconds where you're not feeling like you’re being pulled apart at the seams. You grab your bag and slip out after Matt, turning the opposite direction toward the bathrooms, leaving Bucky alone in your office. Which is possibly the worst decision you could have made, you realise, but you can't exactly turn around now.

Behind you, Bucky watches you disappear around the corner. Waits patiently until your heels clicking fades down the corridor. Then he moves. 

Matt's halfway down the corridor when Bucky catches up.

“Murdock.”

Matt stops mid-stride. There's a fractional hesitation where his shoulders stiffen before he turns. His expression has shed whatever careful pleasantness he'd been wearing in your office. What's left is cooler. Bucky stops a respectful distance away, hands loose at his sides. Everything about his posture says this is just two professionals having a friendly discussion.

“I think we should talk,” he begins. “Briefly.”

Matt's expression doesn't change. “About?”

“About boundaries.” Bucky asserts, though his tone is reasonable - almost apologetic, even. Like this is an awkward position he’s been forced into rather than something he’s orchestrating. “Look, I'm going to be direct here. My wife and I are working through things. Trying to figure out what we want going forward. And I think—Well, I think it would be easier if we had some space to do that without other complications.”

Matt tilts his head slightly, and there's something almost amused in the gesture. “And by complications you mean me.”

“I’m not trying to be a dick about this, I'm just asking you to back off for a while. Let us have the space we need as we get back to where we were.” It comes out steady, but Bucky’s heart rate betrays him. That telltale spike that means he’s not being entirely truthful. Matt catalogues the lie for what it is. “It's been a difficult few months, but we're in a good place now.”

“And she's aware of this? The working things out?”

Bucky's jaw tightens. “We're on the same page about what matters.”

“Wow,” Matt scoffs softly, a disbelieving smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “That’s what you’re telling yourself?”

Bucky goes still, but Matt hears the minute hitch in his breathing anyway. The slight shift in his heartbeat as he re-calibrates, trying to decide whether Matt actually knows something or if he’s bluffing.

When Bucky speaks again, there’s bite to his tone, the pleasantness veneer starting to crack around the edges.

“My relationship with my wife isn't really your concern.” 

“It is when I’ve been sleeping with her the past two months.”

Bucky’s mouth pulls into something mean immediately, his expression hardening as the last scraps of diplomacy finally burn off. Any pretence of this being a civil conversation is entirely gone.

“And yet those two months didn’t seem to mean much last night, did they? I hadn’t even been back three hours, that must sting a little.”

The barb lands. Matt's jaw tightens, but he doesn't take the bait.

“You know, if push her into something she doesn't actually want—”

“I know my wife.”

“Do you?” Matt asks, and there's just enough lift in it to make it a real question but not quite enough warmth to make it a polite one. “Because despite what you think, two months ago she didn't seem like someone who was waiting around for you to come back.”

Bucky's hands flex. “Meaning?”

“Meaning she built a life here without you in it,” Matt states, matter of fact. “And sleeping with her and monopolising her calendar doesn’t undo that, no matter how much you want it to.”

That lands differently. Bucky's mouth presses into a thin line as he tries to find his footing again. Tries to figure out how to wrestle the conversation back under his control. But Matt's already turning away, done with whatever this was.

“Next time you want to have a conversation about boundaries, Congressman,” he tosses back over his shoulder, “maybe try having it with her first.”

Then he's gone, footsteps receding down the hallway, leaving Bucky standing alone with the distinct feeling that he didn't win that exchange nearly as cleanly as he'd intended. 

He stands there for a moment, trying to sort through what just happened. Matt's parting shot sits uncomfortably in his chest, because that’s what he’s trying to fix, isn’t it? Except maybe Murdock has a point about the method.

He straightens his jacket. Rolls his shoulders back. Whatever. He has lunch with his wife, and Matt Murdock can go back to whatever law firm he crawled out of. 

Bucky makes it down to the entrance hall,checking his phone more out of habit than any real interest in the messages accumulating there. When he hears your footsteps on the stairs, he looks up, and something in his chest loosens slightly. At least he has this. This week. That has to count for something.

He straightens as you approach, and there's something careful in the way his eyes track over your face, like he's bracing for whatever mood you're bringing down those stairs with you.

“Ready?” He asks, aiming for casual but it doesn't quite land.

“Do I have a choice?” The question comes with a raised brow. You don’t slow down as you reach him, just brush past toward the door.

“You always have a choice.” He falls into step beside you, hands sliding into his pockets.

“Funny,” you return, pushing through the door without waiting for him to open it. “Doesn't feel like it this week.”

Wisely, he chooses not to argue. Instead, he follows you out into the grey London afternoon, the kind of day where the sky can't decide if it wants to commit to rain or just make everyone miserable with the threat of it. 

The walk is silent - not the comfortable kind. Bucky keeps his hands in his pockets because if he doesn't, they'll instinctively search for your waist or the small of your back or some other familiar place they've been gravitating toward for years. And that Velcro instinct to maintain contact feels entirely unhelpful given the current temperature between you.

The restaurant Bucky chose is one of those discreet places where ministers go to have conversations they'd rather not have overheard. The kind with enough distance from other diners that you could have an argument without making it everyone's business. Not that you're planning to argue. You're planning to get through this lunch, get through this week, and then figure out what the hell your life is supposed to look like when your ex-husband stops playing whatever game this is.

You both settle into your seats. Pick up menus you don't really look at. You order a salad you won't finish, and he gets something with chicken. The waiter retreats, and you're left with the silence again, which is starting to feel like a third presence in your relationship. Bucky's doing that thing where he looks like he's about to say something, then doesn't, his jaw working slightly like he's testing out sentences in his head before committing to them out loud.

“Just say it,” you offer eventually, unfolding your napkin with more attention than the action requires.

His eyes snap up, sheepish. “Say what?”

“Whatever it is you've been composing since we sat down.”

He huffs a breath that might be amusement. Looks down at his water glass, turning it slightly on the table, before looking back up at you through his lashes with that rare, almost boyish uncertainty. When he speaks, his voice is quieter than you're expecting.

“I know you're pissed about the calendar.”

“Observant.” The word comes out flat, edged with sarcasm. “What gave it away? The part where I barely spoke to you on the walk over, or the part where I'm sitting here looking like I'd rather be anywhere else?”

His mouth twitches, but he doesn't smile. “I should've asked first.”

“Yes. You should’ve.”

“I didn't think you'd say yes if I asked.”

The honesty of it catches you off guard. You look up, and he's watching you with an expression you can't quite parse. Like he's trying to gauge how much damage control he needs to do, but it's coming off more hesitant than calculated.

“Would you have?” he presses.

“We'll never know now, will we?”

The waiter arrives with water. You both fall silent until he leaves. Bucky exhales through his nose. His fingers drum once against the table before going still, like he's physically stopping himself from fidgeting.

“Look, I know I've been—” He stops. Starts again. “The past year has been shit. And I know that's on me.”

You weren't expecting that. You were expecting deflection, or charm, or strategic redirection. Not this. 

“I let the distance grow,” he continues, not quite meeting your eyes. “Got buried in DC and the constant fucking politics of it all. And somewhere in there I stopped picking up the phone. Stopped making time. Started letting my assistant filter everything because it was easier than dealing with how far apart we'd gotten.”

“You suggested the separation,” you point out, voice flat. “You're the one who said no strings, no hard feelings.”

“I know.”

“You made it impossible for me to reach you and then acted like the distance was mutual.”

“I know,” he repeats, and there's something tighter in his voice now. “And I'm not saying that was fair. It wasn't. It was cowardly. But I'm here now.”

“For a week.” You lean back in your chair, arms crossing. “And you got here by hijacking my calendar instead of just asking me to talk.”

“We're talking now.”

You sigh, or maybe it's closer to an exhale of pure exasperation. Your gaze lifts to the ceiling for a brief moment like you're asking for divine patience.

“Bucky—”

“Okay,” he concedes, hands lifting briefly in surrender before he shifts forward, elbows coming to rest on the table. “I know monopolizing your schedule was a shit way to go about it, but I miss you.” He looks down at his hands, then back up at you. “I miss us. I miss you being the first person I want to tell things to. And I want to prove that we can still do this. That I can be here, when it matters.”

The words settle in the space between you, complicated and messy and not nearly enough to fix everything that's broken. It's nowhere near enough.

You want to stay angry. Want to hold onto the fury that's been building since this morning, or since last night, or over the past year, really. But there's something in his voice that sounds like actual regret, and you're so tired of being angry all the time. It's more than he's said in months, and that matters more than it should.

“So this is what, exactly?” you ask, trying to stay firm. “An audition? A demonstration?”

“It's me trying.” It’s a simple confession, like he’s run out of polished answers, and this is all he has left.

The food arrives. You both go quiet while the waiter sets down plates and refills water and does all the small choreographed movements of service. Once he's gone, you pick up your fork without any real intention of eating.

“You hijacked my week, Bucky. You coordinated with my staff behind my back and filled my schedule so I couldn't—” You stop yourself before you finish that sentence, but he finishes it anyway.

“So you couldn't see Murdock.”

“So I couldn't make my own choices,” you correct sharply.

He has the grace to look slightly abashed. Slightly. “Fair enough.”

“Is it? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like the same pattern. You can't just show up and expect—”

“It’s not—“ He stops, looking for the right words. “Okay. Maybe. But just let me show you I can be present. That we still work as a team.” His voice is steady now, certain. “The rest of it, we can figure that out. Just give me this week, please.”

You should say no. You should tell him that orchestrating your life without your consent isn't how you rebuild trust. That half-apologies that don’t actually contain an apology don't undo eight months of distance. That you can't just paper over everything with joint appearances and pretty words.

But he's looking at you so earnestly that it makes you hesitate. And the treacherous truth is that you're tired. Tired of being angry, tired of navigating this alone, tired of lying in that too-big bed and pretending you don't notice the empty space beside you.

And it would be so much easier to just... let this be easy.

“One week,” you hear yourself say.

Something in his face softens. His posture shifts, only slightly, but you catch it. Relief, maybe. Or victory. Hard to tell which. “Yeah?”

“One week of actually showing up. And then we talk. Really talk. About all of it.” You hold his gaze. “And I mean everything, Bucky. The separation, the distance, why we're even doing this. No more avoiding the hard conversations.”

“Deal.”

The silence that follows is different. Still weighted, but less hostile. More like you're both feeling your way toward something that used to be natural and isn't anymore.

“So,” Bucky says, moving food around his plate. “How bad is Lord Johnson actually going to be on Thursday?”

Despite yourself, you almost laugh. “Unbearable. He's going to lecture you about trade policy superiority while asking for concessions.”

“So exactly like last time.”

“Mhm,” you agree, finally taking a bite of your salad. “Except now he's also upset about the tariffs, so add that to his list of grievances. Plus he's developed this tendency to touch people when he talks. Very hands-on.”

Bucky's eyebrow raises, fork pausing halfway to his mouth. “Should I be worried?”

“About Lord Johnson making a move?” You can't quite keep the smirk off your face. “I think your virtue's safe.”

“I meant about him pawing at you for two hours.”

There's an edge of possession in his tone that should irritate you. Instead it does something warm and stupid in your chest. You take another bite, buying yourself a moment. “I can handle Lord Johnson.”

“I know you can.” He pauses. “Doesn't mean you should have to.”

You shrug. “If he tries it with me, I'm elbowing him in the ribs.”

“I'll back you up. You sneezed, he was unfortunately in the blast radius, these things happen.”

You take a sip of water to cover the fact that you're almost smiling. This is the problem. This is exactly the problem. Two minutes of actual honesty and you're already slipping back into familiar patterns, already falling back into the easy rhythm of banter and knowing looks.

“Morrison might be at the Atlantic Council thing tomorrow,” you mention, trying to redirect to safer ground.

Bucky groans. “He's going to corner me about the infrastructure bill again.”

“Probably. He's been insufferable about it since the committee hearing.”

“Well, I've gotten very good at the diplomatic non-answer.” His mouth curves slightly. “Take it under advisement, appreciate the input, look forward to continued dialogue—”

“You learnt that from me.” You point your fork at him accusingly, though there's no real heat in it.

“I learnt most of the useful stuff from you.” He says it like it's simple fact, but something in his expression has gone softer.

The admission sits there between you, heavier than it should be. You look down at your plate, suddenly very focused on rearranging lettuce.

“You really think this will work?” you ask quietly, not looking up. “This week?”

“I think when we're together, we're still good at this. The partnership part. That has to count for something.”

It's not an answer to the bigger question. But maybe it's the only answer either of you has right now.

You eat in silence for a moment, but it's different now. Less hostile. Almost comfortable. Your phone buzzes. You glance down, it’s another email from Caroline about tomorrow's schedule. When you look back up, Bucky's watching you with an expression you can't quite read.

You eye him suspiciously. “What?” 

“Nothing. Just...” He shakes his head slightly, but he's almost smiling. “I missed this.”

“Yeah,” you admit, quieter than you mean to. “Me too.”

And you have, you realise. Not just him - though that's there too, complicated and inconvenient as it is - but this. The ease of being with someone who knows you well enough that you don't have to explain every reference or thought. Who can read your expressions without words. Who makes you laugh even when you're furious with them.

It doesn't fix anything. Doesn't undo the eight months or the separation or the fact that you still haven't actually addressed any of the reasons you split in the first place. But for right now, sitting across from your husband in a quiet corner of a restaurant where nobody's watching, it feels like maybe, just maybe, you can remember why you married him in the first place.

Even if that's exactly the problem.

── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹

The week unfolds with a momentum you can't quite control, each day bleeding into the next in a blur of meetings that run too smoothly, dinners where the conversations flow too easily, and nights where he sleeps in your bed like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

By Wednesday you're laughing at his jokes again without the bitter edge. By Thursday his hand at your waist feels less like a claim and more like an anchor. The Times runs their profile on your relationship - ‘A Political Partnership That Works’ - pulling photos from the week's events. You're flipping through them absently when the pattern registers. Different events, different rooms, different contexts. But in every frame, Bucky’s eyes are always fixed on you.

Oh.

You save the photos to your phone, which is its own kind of problem.

Matt's name sits in your contacts with no new messages. Of course, you're not keeping score of his silence against Bucky's constant presence. That would imply there’s a competition between them. Which there definitely isn’t.

To be fair, Caroline did mention his office called about rescheduling. You said you'd handle it. You didn’t.

Matt hadn’t chased the issue after that. Which is, objectively, the respectful thing to do. Matt never demands more than you freely offer him, which had once felt refreshingly uncomplicated. Lately, though, you’re starting to wonder if there’s a difference between being understanding and simply never fighting for a place in someone’s life.

Maybe Matt only knows how to want you in situations where wanting you remains easy.

By Friday morning you're walking back from the Canadian delegation breakfast, Bucky's telling some story that has you laughing hard enough that your sides hurt, and for a dangerous moment you forget about the separation. About the ocean's width of distance - literal and otherwise - that usually sits between you. That Sunday he leaves and you have to figure out what any of this actually meant.

But that's fine. You're exceptional at compartmentalizing. You've had years of practice at keeping different parts of your life in separate boxes that never touch. The fact that the boxes are getting harder to keep closed is something you'll worry about later.

Or at least, it should be, because right now you have a meeting that got squeezed into your calendar this morning that you need to prep for. But you can't seem to focus on the sparse notes that Caroline left you because your brain keeps drifting back to the way Bucky’s hand found yours under the table this morning and you let it stay there.

A knock at the door pulls you from the spiral.

“Come in,” you call, straightening slightly in your chair, trying to look like you've been doing something productive instead of staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes.

The door opens, and the distinctive tap of a cane against tile makes your stomach twist before you even look up.

Matt's standing in your doorway. Again. Appearing when you’re utterly unprepared to see him. Again. And you’re going to have to push him away. Again.

If the universe is trying to teach you something by replaying this week until you stop making catastrophically bad decisions, the lesson is lost on you.

“Matt.” You're already half-standing, the words tumbling out before you can stop them. “I'm so sorry, I have a meeting in—” you glance at your screen, at the calendar slot that's starting right now, “—I can't, I have to—”

“I know,” he interrupts, and there's something almost amused in his expression as he steps into the office properly. “I'm your meeting.”

Your eyebrow raises slowly. “You faked a meeting to see me?”

“Well, since your husband's been so thorough about cutting me out of your calendar all week,” he returns smoothly, closing the door behind him with a quiet click, “it seemed like the only way in.”

There's a joke there, light and easy, but underneath it there's definitely an edge. A deserved one, maybe. The guilt that's been sitting low in your stomach all week flares hot and immediate. “Matt, I should have called. I meant to, I just—the week got away from me, and I didn’t mean to disappear—”

“You didn't disappear,” Matt corrects mildly. “You've been very visible, actually. Hard to miss when you're in three different political newsletters looking very much like the devoted political wife.”

The observation lands with enough weight that you have to look away. Matt moves closer, leaning against the edge of your desk with his arms crossed loosely, head tilted in that particular way that means he's cataloguing everything you’re not saying. Your elevated heart rate. The shallow breathing you can't quite control. The tension wound so tight in your shoulders you might snap.

“I know I should've—”

“Should've what?” He interrupts again, but his voices stays gentle. “Called the man you've been sleeping with while your husband's in town making sure everyone knows you're still married?” His mouth quirks slightly. “Can't imagine why that would feel awkward.”

The last part comes with just enough wry humour to take some of the sting out of it. An acknowledgement that yes, this situation is absurd, and yes, you're both aware of it.

“You didn't call either,” you point out, and it comes out more wounded than you intend.

“No, I didn't,” he admits easily. “Didn't want to crowd you when Bucky's been taking up so much real estate in your schedule. Thought maybe you needed space to figure things out.” His mouth curves, voice going warmer. “Besides, seemed only fair to give him a shot, sweetheart. I had you to myself for two months.”

It should feel mature, the way he keeps placing the choice back in your hands. But standing here now, watching him deliberately leave the distance between you intact, you can’t quite ignore the small, ugly part of yourself that wants someone to fight a little harder for you than that.

So you close the distance yourself, drawn by the same gravitational pull that's been there since the first time he walked into your office three months ago. Once again doing the reaching. The pattern recognition occurring here is frankly humiliating.

Your hands find his chest, feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat under his shirt.

“I haven't figured anything out,” you admit quietly, because you suppose he deserves the honesty. “About what this week means, or what I want, or any of it.”

“No?” There's something almost teasing in the question. “The Times seemed pretty convinced you and Barnes are a political power couple for the ages.”

“The Times doesn't know we're separated.”

“Clearly.” His hand comes up, fingers finding your jaw with unerring accuracy, thumb brushing along your cheekbone in a touch that's devastatingly familiar. “Though after this week, I'm starting to wonder if you remember that either.”

The words should sting. Maybe they do. But mostly what you're aware of is his proximity, the heat of his palm against your face, the way your body has started leaning into him without conscious permission.

“Matt—”

“Sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty.” His thumb traces lower, following the line of your jaw. “That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is this?”

“This,” he murmurs, leaning in until his forehead nearly touches yours, "is me reminding you that you have options.”

“I've missed you,” you whisper against his lips.

His free hand comes up to your waist, thumb brushing the curve of your hip through your dress. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You should stop this. Should step back and have the actual conversation about this week and where you stand and all the things you've been avoiding. Should deal with the compartments that are failing to stay separate instead of making everything more complicated.

But his mouth is right there.

You kiss him before you can think better of it, before the guilt can claw its way up your throat and ruin the moment. He makes a soft sound against your mouth, surprise giving way to hunger as he kisses you back.

It's different than kissing Bucky. Where Bucky takes, Matt asks - the tilt of his head a question, the press of his tongue a request. You grant it. Grant all of it. Pour five days of frustration and confusion into the kiss until you're both breathing hard.

“Missed this too,” you gasp between kisses, and he laughs against your mouth.

“Just this?”

“Missed you being a smartass,” you correct, tugging him closer by his tie. “Missed your hands on me—god, I just missed—”

He lifts you then, strong hands gripping your thighs as he spins you both and sets you on the edge of your desk. Papers scatter. You don't care. Your legs open, allowing him to step into the space between your thighs.

“Missed having a conversation that didn't involve diplomatic immunity,” you continue, breathless, as his mouth trails down your neck. “Missed not being scheduled within an inch of my life.”

His teeth graze your pulse point. “Sounds exhausting.”

“It is.” Your head tips back, fingers threading through his hair. “It's—fuck, Matt—”

His hands slide up your thighs, pushing the hem of your skirt higher. The drag of his palms against your stockings makes you shiver.

Your hands find his lapels, pulling him desperately closer. The kiss deepens, his tongue sliding against yours, and for a moment you forget about Bucky and the separation and every complicated thing you've been avoiding.

“You should've booked a longer meeting,” you manage, and it comes out almost playful despite the heat pooling low in your belly.

Matt's smile is absolutely wicked. “Please,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I don't need long to make you come, sweetheart. Just need your legs open and the door locked.”

Heat floods through you at the promise in his voice, your thighs clenching involuntarily. Before you can even respond, his hands are sliding under your ass, lifting you in one smooth motion. Your legs wrap around his waist automatically, gasping into his mouth as he turns and walks you backward.

You don't break the kiss. Can't. Your fingers are in his hair, tugging probably too hard, and he makes this gorgeous rough sound against your mouth that vibrates straight through you. His mouth is hot and demanding against yours, tongue sliding past your lips to taste you properly, and you make a sound into his mouth that's embarrassingly needy.

Your back hits the door hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs, the solid wood catching you with enough force that you gasp into his mouth. Matt pins you there immediately, hips rolling forward, and you can feel how hard he is already, the thick length of him pressing right where you're aching. Your hand scrabbles blindly behind you for the lock, fingers clumsy with want, and when it finally clicks he groans like the sound itself did something to him.

“Fuck yes,” he breathes against your mouth, and his hand slides up your thigh, pushing your skirt higher. When his fingers brush the inside of your thigh you shudder, hips canting forward, seeking more contact. “Been thinking about this all week. Thinking about getting you alone, getting my hands on you—”

His fingers find the edge of your underwear, slipping just beneath the lace to trace along the seam where it meets your thigh. The touch is light, almost lazy, like he has all the time in the world and knows it's driving you insane. You gasp, hips grinding forward, trying to direct his hand where you actually need it, and your head drops back against the door. He laughs softly against your throat.

“God, you're impatient,” he teases, teeth grazing your pulse point. “Already trying to fuck yourself on my hand.”

“Shut up,” you whine, but there's no heat in it, just desperate need.

“Why?” His mouth trails to your jaw, leave wet kisses behind. “I like knowing you want me. Like hearing your pulse race when I touch you here—” His finger traces up the centre of your underwear, dragging slowly through the damp fabric from your entrance all the way up to your clit. The pressure is perfect and not nearly enough, and you can feel how wet you are, how the lace clings to you. “—and feeling you stop breathing when I—”

His fingers finally slip beneath the lace, and the second he actually touches you, feels how wet and slick you are, he makes this broken sound against your mouth that's half-groan, half-curse. Then he's kissing you again, mouth crashing back to yours. Tongue pushing past your lips deeper, harder, needier. Losing that earlier control. His fingers slide through the mess you've made and your hips jerk forward into his hand.

“Fuck,” he breathes against your lips, fingers parting your folds and sliding through the wetness, spreading it deliberately before finding your clit. He circles it with your own slick, and you can feel how soaked you are, how easily his fingers move, and the wet sound of it makes your face flush hot. “You're fucking soaked for me.”

He's not wrong. You are soaked, aching, need clawing under your skin with an urgency that borders on painful. Whether it's because of him or because you've spent five days with Bucky's hand at your waist and his body in your bed, that constant simmering tension winding you tighter and tighter with nowhere for it to go, you genuinely don't know.

Don't want to know.

Your hips roll forward, trying to get more pressure, more friction, more anything. “Then stop teasing and do something about it.”

He laughs, the sound rough and a little desperate. “Yes ma'am.”

His fingers slide lower, one pressing inside you with a slow, deliberate stretch that makes your head thunk back against the door. You bite down on your lip hard, trying to keep quiet, hyper-aware that you're in your office in the middle of the day with your staff just outside.

“Matt—” His name escapes your lips anyway, louder than you intend.

"Shh," he breathes against your lips, but he's smiling, adding another finger and curling them just right. "Sweetheart, you're gonna get us caught."

“Your fault,” you gasp, barely above a whisper, hips rocking to meet the thrust of his fingers.

“Fair point.” His forehead presses to yours, breathing ragged. “But you still need to be quiet for me. Can you do that?”

Nodding, you try to stop the moan building in your throat as his fingers work deeper, finding that spot that makes your thighs shake. Your nails dig into his shoulders through his shirt, breath coming in shallow, restrained gasps. But then he curls them again, harder, and the sound that escapes you is too loud, too obvious. His mouth is on yours immediately, swallowing the moan before it can carry.

He kisses you deep and filthy, tongue sliding against yours as his fingers work faster, his thumb finding your clit. The dual sensation is overwhelming, pleasure building fast and sharp. You're making these small, desperate noises into his mouth that you can't control, and he seems determined to catch every single one, kissing you harder each time his fingers make you gasp.

“Matt—please—I need—” you whisper between kisses, the words breaking apart.

“I know,” he murmurs back, and there's something soft in it even as his fingers work you closer to the edge. “Need to come. Need to stop thinking for five minutes.” His thumb circles your clit with perfect pressure and you gasp into his mouth. “Need it to be easy for once, yeah? Just this. Just us. Nothing complicated.”

Yes. God, yes. That's exactly what you need. To not think. To just feel something that isn't guilt or confusion or the weight of every choice you've made this week.

“More,” you gasp.

“So greedy sweetheart.” His thumb finds your clit, circling in rhythm with the thrust of his fingers. “What am I gonna do with you?”

“Fuck me would be a good start.”

He groans, forehead dropping to your shoulder. “Love when you get bossy.”

His fingers slide out of you and the whimper that escapes you is pathetic, your hips moving forward involuntarily, trying to chase what you just lost.But your hands are already moving, shaking as they reach for his belt. You yank at it, fingers fumbling with the buckle in your desperation to get him undone.

You need him inside you, need it with an urgency that's making your hands clumsy and your breathing erratic.

“Condom?” you gasp out, finally getting his belt undone and working on the button of his slacks.

“Wallet, back pocket.” 

A breath of relief punches out of you. “Fuck—good boy,” you tease, pulling him into a kiss.

Matt makes this wrecked sound into your mouth, somewhere between a moan and a growl, and his hand cracks down on your ass hard enough to make you gasp against his lips.

“Careful,” he warns, but there's no heat in it, just desperate want. “Keep talking like that and this is gonna be over way too fast.”

You reach around, palm sliding over his ass as you fish out his wallet. The leather is warm from his body heat, and your fingers are still trembling as you flip it open and grab the condom. You tear the foil packet open with your teeth, spitting the scrap of wrapper aside, and then your hand is wrapping around his cock. He's thick and hard in your palm, already leaking, and the groan that tears out of him is absolutely obscene.

“Can't have that,” you murmur, rolling the latex down his length slowly despite how badly you're shaking. You stroke him once, twice, feeling every thick inch, and your thumb swipes over the head. He shudders, fingers digging into your thighs hard enough to bruise.

“Sweetheart,” he grits out, and it sounds like a plea. His hips buck forward into your grip. “Please.”

“Please what?” You're being mean now, hand still working him while he's trying to hold himself together.

“Please let me fuck you before I lose my fucking mind.”

You guide the swollen head of his cock to your entrance and you both go still for half a second, just breathing against each other's mouths. Then he's pushing inside you in one long, smooth slide and the stretch steals every thought from your head. It's almost too much, the thick press of him, and you're making these small desperate sounds you can't control.

“Fuck,” Matt breathes, the words vibrating against your throat where his mouth has landed. You can feel him shaking with the effort of holding still as he lets you adjust to the stretch of him. “You feel—god, you're so wet I can feel it dripping down my—”

You cut him off with a kiss, messy and graceless, and start rolling your hips experimentally. His cock drags against that spot inside you that makes your vision blur. The angle is perfect like this, him pinning you to the door, and each roll of your hips takes him deeper. He meets your rhythm, hands gripping your ass to hold you steady as he thrusts up into you, and you have to bite down on his shoulder to muffle the moan that tears out of you.

Your legs tighten around his waist, heels digging into his ass, trying to pull him impossibly closer.

“That's it,” he groans, setting a rhythm that's slow but deep, each thrust deliberate and devastating. “Take what you need, sweetheart.”

You can barely form words, too focused on the stretch of him filling you, the way your needy cunt is already clenching around him, desperate to pull him deeper. The wet, obscene sounds of him fucking you fill your quiet office as you both pant into each other's mouths, drowning in the sensation of each other. The thick drag of his cock inside you, the press of his body against yours, the heat of your skin under his hands. 

Your hand slides between your bodies, seeking more. When your fingers find your clit, it's swollen and sensitive, and just that first brush of contact makes you mewl into his mouth. You're so worked up, so desperate, that even your own touch feels like too much and not enough at the same time. You circle it carefully at first, testing, but the spike of pleasure that shoots through you makes your hips jerk and your walls clench around his cock.

“You sound so pretty like this,” Matt pants against your neck, hips snapping forward. “So fucking pretty when you stop overthinking and just let go.”

Your response is incoherent, something between a moan and his name. The pleasure is building fast, coiling tighter with each thrust, each drag of his cock inside you. Your cunt clenches around him, greedy, desperate, chasing the release that's right there.

“That's it, sweetheart,” he encourages, rhythm getting rougher. “Can feel you getting close. Feel you squeezing my cock. You gonna come for me? Gonna let me feel it?”

You're circling your clit in time with his thrusts and it's almost too much sensation, pleasure coiling tighter in your belly. He shifts slightly and the new angle makes you see stars, a whimper escaping before you can bite it back.

“Yes—fuck—Matt—”

“There?” he asks breathlessly, doing it again, and when you nod frantically he keeps hitting that exact spot. Every thrust drives him deeper and pushes your hand harder against yourself, and you're whimpering with each roll of your hips.

“I can hear it,” Matt groans into your mouth. “Can hear how close you are—your heart's racing, your breathing, you're right there—please, sweetheart, need to feel you—”

It crashes over you sudden and overwhelming, pleasure ripping through you in waves. You come with a broken cry that Matt catches with his mouth, your cunt clamping down on his cock so hard you're practically strangling it. Your whole body locks up, thighs shaking as the pleasure tears through you in brutal waves. Your fingers are still on your clit, working yourself through it, and you're making these high desperate sounds into his mouth that you can't control.

“Fuck—oh fuck—” Matt groans, fucking you through it, prolonging it until you're gasping and oversensitive. “So fucking perfect—”

He buries himself deep with a final hard thrust and comes with a groan of your name, cock pulsing as he spills into the condom. You can feel every throb, every twitch as he empties himself, and it sends another aftershock through you that makes you clench around him all over again.

For a moment you just breathe together, foreheads pressed close, hearts racing in tandem. Your legs are trembling so badly around his waist that you're not sure they'll hold you when he pulls out. When he does, you both make these raw sounds at the loss of contact.

Slowly, carefully, he lowers you to the floor. Your knees wobble slightly as your feet hit the ground, and Matt immediately steadies you.

“Okay?” he asks softly, thumb stroking your hip.

“Yeah,” you manage, because that's about all your brain can produce right now.

He kisses you again, but when he pulls back there's something careful in it. Almost like he’s making sure it stays just the right side of casual. His hand cups your face briefly - thumb brushing rogue strands of hair from your face.

“Told you I didn't need long,” he murmurs, and you can hear the smile in his voice.

“Smug bastard.”

But even as you say it your brain is already pulling away, cataloguing everything that needs to happen in the next ten minutes. Fix your hair. Cover that mark on your neck. Make yourself look like a composed diplomat instead of a woman who just fucked her boyfriend—situationship? god, you refuse to be a grown woman with a situationship—against her office door while her husband is probably working back home.

What the fuck are you doing?

Your heart kicks up, anxiety spiking sharp and sudden. Matt's thumb stills against your cheek, and you realise he can probably hear it. The way your body betrays every thought before you can even process it yourself.

“Hey,” he says, and there's a question in it. “Where'd you go?”

You open your mouth. Then immediately close it. You don't actually have an answer that won't make this worse. 

His head tilts slightly, that listening posture you know so well, and his mouth curves into something small and resigned. Like he's already heard the answer in your pulse, in the shift of your breathing, in all the things your body is telling him that you won't say out loud.

So he steps back, creating space between you, and starts dealing with the condom without another word. He ties it off, wraps it in tissue from your desk, buries it under the papers in your trash bin so it's not the first thing anyone sees. The movements are quick and practised, and somehow that makes it worse.

“I should probably let you get back to it,” he offers, straightening out his clothes. “I'm sure you've got seventeen meetings stacked up this afternoon.”

You stare dumbly, watching him button his shirt, tuck it back in, re-buckle his belt. Everything going back into place like this was just a pleasant interlude in the workday and now it's back to business. He runs a hand through his hair to fix what your fingers messed up, and within two minutes he looks perfectly put together, as though nothing happened.

You catch sight of your reflection in the dark window and you definitely don't look like nothing happened. Your hair is a mess, your lips are swollen, and there's a faint mark on your neck that you're going to have to cover with makeup before your next meeting.

Matt turns away, adjusts his jacket, and something about the ease of it all makes your stomach twist. He's leaving. Of course he's leaving.

He picks up his cane, testing his weight on it, and the gesture is so familiar it hurts. How many times have you watched him do exactly that? Watched him prepare to leave after a late night working at your dining table, after drinks that turned into dinner that turned into more. Always the same smooth transition from intimacy back to separate lives.

He leans in, presses a kiss to your temple that lands somewhere between affectionate and perfunctory. “Don't let Bucky monopolize your entire weekend.”

It's said warmly. Casually, even. Like he's not bothered. Like this is all very uncomplicated and he's very okay with however this plays out.

“Matt—”

“I'll see you later,” he says easily, hand already on the door.

The casualness of it catches you wrong. Hooks into something raw that’s been building this whole week. And that’s what snaps you out of your own head and back into the moment.

“That's it?” The words come out sharper than you intend. “You'll see me later?”

He pauses, hand on the doorknob, shoulders stiffing as he tries to read the edge in your voice. “Are you—is something wrong?”

It’s remarkable, really. The man can hear your pulse spike from three rooms away, can detect the slightest shift in your body chemistry, can read more from your heartbeat than most people get from a full conversation. And yet here he is, still remarkably incapable of reading the room. Superhuman senses, same oblivious male brain.

“You know what, no, nothing's wrong.” You scoff, yanking your skirt down with more force than necessary, already moving towards your desk, trying to put yourself back together. “You're right, I do have a busy afternoon. Thanks for stopping by.”

“Okay, what's actually going on right now?” He asks slowly, like he's genuinely trying to figure this out. “You’re clearly upset.”

“I'm not upset.”

“Your heart rate says differently.”

God, you hate that he can do that. Hate that your body betrays you before your mouth can even form the lie. And if he's going to use those stupidly accurate senses to call you out, fine. You might as well just say it.

“When am I going to see you again?”

The question hangs in the air. Matt's quiet for a moment, and you can see him processing, trying to read the subtext.

“I don't know.” The answer comes after a beat, careful. “When do you want to see me again?”

It's a reasonable question. A fair question. So why does it make you want to scream?

“That's really how you're going to leave this?” You turn to face him, and you know you're being unfair but you can't seem to stop yourself. “I don't know, you tell me, we'll figure it out later?”

His expression shifts, the muscles tightening around his lips even as his posture stays relaxed. “I was trying to make it easy for you.”

“Easy for me or easy for yourself?”

“Both, probably,” he admits, and the ease of his honesty genuinely makes you pause. “You've got a lot going on. Your husband's here, clearly trying to…” The sentence trails off, unfinished, like he doesn’t want to say something he shouldn’t. “I'm trying not to put more pressure on you when Bucky's already doing that.”

“So you're just backing off? Not even going to—” You stop, because fight for me sounds insane and desperate and you're not sure you even want him to fight for you, but the fact that he won't makes you furious anyway.

“What do you want from me here?” Matt asks, and there's the first edge of frustration creeping into his voice. “You want me to demand your time? Tell you to pick me over him? Make this harder for you?”

You open your mouth but nothing comes out, because you don't know. You don't know what you want from him. You don't know what you want from Bucky. You don't know what you want from any of this mess you've created.

“Maybe I just want you to care! ”The words burst out louder than you meant them, and you have to forcibly lower your voice, aware again of where you are, who might hear. “I want you to act like this actually matters instead of just being whatever's convenient when I have a free hour.”

The silence that follows is sharp enough to cut.

“That's not fair,” he says quietly.

“Isn't it? You won't make plans more than a day out. You've never even asked me to stay over.”

“Because I don't know what we are!” His voice spikes, exasperated, and you both freeze for a second, listening for footsteps in the hall. When none come, he continues, quieter but no less intense. “You're still married. He's clearly trying to get you back. You're asking me to push when you've made it pretty clear you don't know what you want, and I'm not going to compete with your husband.”

“There's a difference between not being pushy and not fighting for anything at all!”Your voice cracks slightly on the last word and you hate yourself for it, the vulnerability bleeding through when you're trying to stay angry. You swallow hard, trying to pull it back together. “There's a difference between giving someone space and just letting go without even trying.”

“I'm trying,” he begins, and there's something rawer in his voice now, “to give you space to figure your shit out without making you feel like you owe me something.”

“Maybe I want to owe you something!” You're pacing now, heels clicking sharp against the floor. “Maybe I want you to act like you actually give a damn whether I pick him or not!”

“Of course I give a damn!” It's the closest he's come to raising his voice. “But I'm not going to manipulate you or monopolize your calendar or show up and—” He stops himself. “I'm not him. I'm not going to do what he does.”

“At least he's doing something!”

The words land like a slap. You see it in the way his expression shutters, in the way his hand tightens on his cane.

“Right.” His voice is flat. “Well. At least we know where we stand, then.” He's already turning toward the door. “Clearly I’m not what you need.”

“Matt, I didn’t mean—” You press your palms against your eyes because you can feel the sting of tears starting and you really don’t want to cry right now. “You’re right, I don't know what I need.” Your voice cracks again and you hate it, hate the tears that are threatening, hate how small you sound. “But why does it have to be all or nothing with both of you? He smothers me and you won't even—”

You stop, pressing your hand to your mouth, trying to hold it together. But the tears are coming anyway, hot and frustrated and exhausted, because you've been holding everything in all week and it's too much. It's all too much.

The tap of his cane stops.

For a moment there's just silence, broken only by the humiliating wet sound of you trying not to sob.

“Shit.” Matt's voice softens immediately. “Hey, no—come here.”

“I'm fine.” But your voice does that horrible shaky thing that makes it very clear you are the opposite of fine.

“You're not fine.” He's already moving toward you, and then his hands are on your arms. Warm and solid and gentle in a way that makes your chest hurt worse. “You're crying in your office.”

“Don't—” You try to turn away, humiliation burning hot in your chest because this is mortifying. “I just need a minute. I'm fine, really,” you try again, but it comes out as barely more than a whisper.

“Stop saying that.” His voice has gone impossibly soft, thumb stroking along your forearm. “Come here, please."

You let him pull you in, let yourself press your face against his chest while the tears come properly now. His arms come around you, solid and sure, one hand coming up to cup the back of your head. He doesn't say anything. Just holds you while you shake apart against him, while you soak the front of his shirt with tears that won't stop coming.

“I'm sorry,” you gasp out between sobs. “I'm sorry, I don't—I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I want. This whole week has been so fucked up and I can't think straight and I don't—“ Another sob cuts you off.

“Shh. I know.” His hand moves in slow circles on your back, the pressure steady and grounding. “It's okay, just breathe”

“It's not okay.” The words come out muffled against his chest. “This whole week has been—” Your breath hitches. “He's everywhere and you're—and I can't think straight and I keep making everything worse—”

His hand stills on your back for just a moment. “What do you need?”

You pull back slightly, just enough to breathe, and his hands shift to your arms. Steadying but not restraining. His face is tilted toward you with that particular focus he gets when he's listening to everything - your heartbeat, your breathing, the catch in your voice.

“I don't know.” You pull back slightly, wiping at your face with shaking hands. “Maybe I just need a break. From this. From both of you.”

You try to read his reaction, but he doesn’t give anything away. Just keeps stroking your back in those same soothing motions.

“Bucky's going back to DC on Sunday anyway,” you continue, and your voice sounds raw even to your own ears. “Maybe I just need some time. To figure myself out. Figure out what I actually want instead of just—” You gesture helplessly at the general disaster that is currently your life. “This.”

You expect him to argue. To push back. To do something other than what he does, which is nod slowly.

“Okay,” he says quietly, and his thumb comes up to brush away a tear from your cheek. “Yeah. We can do that. You need time, I'll give you time.”

The agreement should feel like relief but instead it just makes you want to cry harder. Because of course he's not fighting this either. Of course he's just agreeing, just stepping back, just giving you exactly what you asked for in a way that somehow feels like losing anyway.

“But—” He hesitates, and something in his tone shifts. Gets more careful. “You might need to explain this all to Bucky too. Since, you know. He thinks you're working things out.”

Your head snaps up, tears still wet on your cheeks. “What?”

Matt's lips purse slightly, like he’s trying to figure out how to phrase it. “He asked me to back off. Said you two were working through things. That you needed space to figure out your marriage without complications.” His mouth twists slightly on the last word. “Meaning me.”

The humiliation of thirty seconds ago transmutes instantly into something else. The tears stop. Everything stops. For a moment you just stare at Matt, trying to process what he's telling you, and then the rage hits like a freight train. “He told you we were getting back together?”

“Not in those exact words, but yes,” he confirms quietly. “He tried to make it seem like he knew where things stood between you. Made it pretty clear he considered me a temporary blip in your relationship.”

“That fucking—” You can't even finish the sentence, fury choking the words in your throat. Your hands are shaking again, but this time with anger.

“We had one lunch,” you say, and your voice has gone cold. “One. Where he apologised for being absent and I agreed to give him one week to prove he could actually show up. That's it. We never—I never said we were working things out.”

Matt's very quiet.

“He told you we were reconciling.” You're not asking. You're clarifying. Making sure you understand the full scope of what Bucky's done. “He told you to back off because we were fixing our marriage.”

“Yeah.”

“And then he filled my entire calendar. And slept in my bed. And touched me like I belonged to him in front of half of diplomatic London.” The pieces are clicking together with horrible clarity. “He decided. Again. He just fucking decided without me that we're working things out and told my—told you to back off like he gets to make those calls for me.”

You're already moving, grabbing your bag, your phone, not even sure what you're doing but you need to move, need to do something with this rage before it burns you alive from the inside.

“Where are you going?” Matt asks carefully.

“Home.” The word comes out sharp and final. “I'm going home and I'm ending this shit right now.”

── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹

The click of your heels echoes through the residence, each step a punctuation mark to the fury coiling tighter in your chest. You stride through the hallway, past Thomas who takes one look at your face and wisely says nothing, and straight to the study where you know Bucky's working.

He's at the desk - your desk, because apparently he's just moved back into every corner of your life without asking - looking at some papers with a confused scrunch of his nose that would be endearing if you weren't currently fantasizing about throwing something heavy at his head.

The papers hit the mahogany with a slap that makes him jolt upright. For half a second there's just confusion - eyebrows raised, mouth slightly parted on a question that hasn’t formed yet - and then his eyes drop to what you’ve thrown down. ‘Petition for Dissolution of Marriage’ printed across the top in black and white. You watch his face change as he reads the header. Watch the colour drain slightly. Watch his throat work as he swallows.

“What—” He starts to speak, stops to compose himself, and when the words finally come they’re careful, like he already knows the answer and is hoping he's wrong “What’s this?”

“Take a wild fucking guess, Congressman.”

His hand moves slowly toward the papers like they might burn him, fingers hovering before he finally touches them. He flips through, and you know the exact moment he finds the signature page because his whole body goes rigid.

Your finger jabs down at the signature line. “Sign them.”

“What?” He's standing now, the chair scraping back, and there's something raw starting to crack through the careful composure on his face. Something that looks like panic and grief all at once. “Baby—”

“Don't.” You hold up a hand and he actually freezes mid-step. “Don't 'baby' me. Don't use that voice. Don't act like you can smooth this over if you just find the right words.”

“That's not—I'm not—” His hands spread wide in a helpless gesture. “Please, just talk to me. What happened? This morning we were fine, we were—”

“We were what, exactly?” You cut him off, arms crossing over your chest. “Working things out? Getting back together? Reconciling our marriage?”

Bucky's quiet for a moment, and you can practically see him running through possibilities, trying to figure out which particular mine he's stepped on. And then the guilt stats to flicker across his face.

“Oh good,” you say flatly. “You know exactly what I'm talking about.”

His whole posture changes, that familiar stubborn set coming into his jaw that tells you he's not going to back down easy. “If this is about Matt—”

“If this is about Matt?” You actually laugh, and it sounds wrong even to your own ears. “This is about you, Bucky! The fact that you lied and said we were working things out. That you said to back off because apparently we needed space to fix our marriage.”

He's quiet. Won't meet your eyes.

“When exactly were you planning to mention that to me?” Fury makes your voice shake despite your best efforts to keep it steady. “Before or after you finished orchestrating my entire fucking life?”

“I was trying to—”

“I don't care what you were trying to do!” It comes out too loud, echoing off the study walls. “You know, I've had these papers for two months. Two months of looking at them in my drawer, too much of a coward to sign them, because some pathetic part of me still hoped we could fix this.” 

Your voice cracks and you have to stop, have to breathe through the anger and hurt tangling in your throat.

“But we can't. Because you don't know how to be in a partnership. You only know how to run operations and make strategic decisions and manipulate variables, and I'm so fucking tired of being a variable in your life instead of your fucking wife.”

“That's not what you are to me! I swear, please—” He runs a hand through his hair, and he’s scrambling, trying to find the words that will fix this. His gaze drifts back to the papers like they might rearrange themselves into something different if he looks hard enough. “Wait, you drew these up two months ago?”

You watch him do the maths. Watch the realization settle across his features, his jaw going tight.

“When you started seeing him.” It's not a question. 

“Stop making this about Matt! Stop deflecting. Stop trying to make this about jealousy when this is about you making decisions about my life without me!” 

You're pacing before you realise it, unable to stand still. Three steps to the window and back.

“It seems very much to be about him though, doesn't it?” Bucky's voice has gone rough at the edges. He pushes off the desk, takes a step toward you. “You draw up divorce papers the second you start sleeping with him, this whole week goes perfectly fine until you see him again, and now you're in here ready to end our marriage—”

“This week was a lie!” You shout, beyond caring who might hear. “This week was you orchestrating my entire life, filling my calendar, telling people we were reconciling without ever actually asking me if that's what I wanted! Don't you dare act like things were fine when the whole thing was built on you manipulating—”

“—I wasn’t manipulating—”

“—our marriage, making a decision about my relationships without saying word to me!” Your voice rises to stay above his. “I actually had those papers drawn up two months ago because I’d spent the previous six months unable to have a single fucking conversation with my own husband!”

The words are coming faster now, angrier, everything you've been holding in for 8 months spilling out. “Every time I called I got 'he's in a meeting' or 'he'll call you back' and he never, ever did. Because somewhere along the line I stopped being your wife and became an item on your assistant's to-do list that never made it to the top of the pile!”

His head comes up. His eyes are wet with unshed tears when they find yours, jaw locked so tight you can see the muscle jumping. He's trying desperately to hold it together but you watch him start to lose the fight in the way his face crumples, in the painful swallow working down his throat. His hand lifts toward you before he seems to remember himself and lets it drop uselessly back to his side. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I know I fucked up, I know I wasn't there, and I'm trying to fix it now—”

“By doing the same thing! By making decisions without me!” Your nails dig into your palms hard enough to hurt, arms rigid at your sides. “Do you not see that? You’re still doing it, Bucky, you're still shutting me out and deciding what's best for us without ever asking me what I want!”

“So what do you want from me?” His desperation bleeds through every word, but it’s far too little, and far too late. “Tell me what you want and I'll do it.”

For a moment you just stand there, looking at him across the desk that's covered in his work, in this life he built without consulting you. You should feel something. Guilt, maybe. Regret. Some echo of the love that used to live in your chest when you looked at him like this. But you just feel exhausted. 

When you finally speak, the answer comes out quieter than anything else you've said tonight.

“I want you to sign the papers.”

Your words seem to suck the air out of the room, leaving nothing but the thundering of your own heartbeat in your ears.

“No.” He's shaking his head slowly at first, then faster, like he can physically deny what's happening if he just refuses hard enough. “No, I'm not—I can't—”

“You don't get to say no.”

“Just talk to me!” He begs. “Just talk to me instead of throwing divorce papers on my desk and expecting me to—”

“Talk to you?” You can hear the bitter edge bleeding through your voice, feel it scraping against your throat. “Wow, okay. Like you talked to me before telling Matt to back off? Like you talked to me before orchestrating my entire week? Like you talked to me every time I called and got your pretty little assistant instead?”

“I told you I didn’t sleep with her.”

“Oh my fucking god, congratulations!” Your arms fly up in exasperation. “You want a medal for not fucking your assistant? You want me to applaud your restraint? Let’s not act like you were alone, pining away for me this whole time.”

“At least I didn't parade it in front of you!” The accusation explodes out of him like it's been festering, his face flushing with pain and frustration mixing together.

“We were separated! That was the whole fucking point of the agreement!” Even though your throat is becoming raw from shouting, you can’t seem to stop, months of resentment pouring out of you. “Married in public, free to see other people privately - that’s what we agreed to. Except clearly, neither of us can act normally about it!”

Your voice cracks.

“We're just destroying each other. And I can't do it anymore.”

Your words hang in the air between you. You're both breathing hard, and the study feels simultaneously too small and too vast, like the space can't quite contain what's happening. Then something shifts in his expression as he seems to finally hear what he’s been saying, how he sounds. His shoulders sag inward. The voice that comes out next is barely recognisable.

“I'm sorry.” He drags a hand over his face. “You're right. I'm making this worse. I'm making everything worse. But please, don’t do this, just give me a chance too—”

“I've been giving you chances for eight months. I gave you a chance when you became Congressman without talking to me about it. I gave you a chance this week when you showed up and I let you back in even though you were already making decisions for me. And every time you fucked it up!”

Bucky just stands there, breathing hard, staring at you like you’ve gutted him. His eyes are still wet, tears clinging to his lashes but refusing to fall.

“I love you,” he whispers. “And I know you might not have felt it, and i know it’s not enough, but I have loved you through every stupid mistake I've made, including running for Congress.”

He lets out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in his chest for months.

“I thought… I thought if I could be someone important, someone legitimate, maybe I'd finally be worthy of you. You've spent your whole career saving lives, negotiating peace, actually helping people. And I'm just—” His voice cracks. “I'm still just the Winter Soldier trying to prove I'm more than that. So I ran for Congress because I thought it might fix me, might fill the hole where my humanity used to be. But instead I just broke us and I’m still as damaged as before. And now I can't—”

His voice fractures completely.

“I can't lose you.”

The confession lands entirely wrong, because this is what you've wanted to hear for months - years, maybe. This vulnerability, this honesty, this real version of Bucky you’ve only ever glimpsed in stolen moments. And it’s too late. Your throat tightens. You have to look away from him because seeing him like this, broken open and bleeding out in front of you, makes something in you want to take it all back. Want to cross the room and hold him and tell him he's not damaged, that he's never been unworthy, that you've loved him through every version of himself he hasn’t.

But loving him has never been the problem.

“You already did, Bucky.” The words hurt coming out. “You can't put that on me - your sense of self-worth, your identity, fixing yourself. That was never my job. I loved you. I loved you exactly as you were, and you never believed me. And now you're telling me you destroyed our marriage trying to become someone you thought I wanted, when all I ever wanted was you.”

Somehow his face crumples further. You have to look away again. When you speak next, your voice is barely above a whisper. Tired and sad and so heavy you can barely get the words out.

“So yes, you're right. You did break us. But not because you weren't good enough, Bucky. Because you never let me love the person you actually are.”

For a moment he just stands there, and you watch all the fight drain out of him like someone pulled a plug. His eyes go distant, almost glassy, and his breathing deepens, like he's shutting something down inside himself. The desperation from moments ago has been replaced by something far more terrifying: quiet resignation. He's finally stopped trying to hold on.

He picks up the pen. His hand trembles badly enough that you wonder if he'll even be able to write, but he manages to grip it, staring down at the signature line for what feels like an eternity. When the pen finally touches paper, the scratch of it against the silence is deafening.

He signs his name. Dates it. Slides the papers across the desk toward you without meeting your eyes.

“There.” His voice is completely destroyed. “If that's what you need.”

You pick up the papers with numb fingers. Stare at his signature like you can't quite believe it's real.

“I'm sorry.” He hasn't moved. Just stands there with wet cheeks and empty hands. “I'm so sorry. For every way I failed you. For not being what you needed.”

“Thank you.” It comes out barely audible. “For the apology. For signing.”

You fold the papers slowly, creasing each edge with deliberate precision because if you think about the mechanics of folding paper you don't have to think about what you're holding.

“I want you to catch the next flight back to DC. Tonight, if you can. I'll have Thomas help you pack.”

“Okay.” He looks lost standing there, like he doesn't know what to do with his hands, with his body, with any of this. “Okay, yeah.”

“And Bucky—” Your voice is steadier now, or at least you're doing a better job of faking it. “Don't call. Don't text. Don't send flowers or letters or try to fix anything. We're done. Let it be done.”

He nods, even though it looks like it's killing him. “Okay.”

There should be something else to say. Some final words that would make this less awful, less final. But you can't think of anything that won't make it worse. So you just turn and walk toward the door, papers pressed against your chest like you need the reminder of why you’re doing this.

“For what it's worth,” His voice stops you at the threshold, and it comes out quiet and defeated. “You're the best thing that ever happened to me. The best thing I've ever had and the worst thing I've ever lost, and I know that's my fault. I know I did that.” The silence hangs for a moment. “I'm sorry. For all of it.”

You don't turn around, can't let him see your face right now.

“Goodbye, Bucky.”

Then you walk out, leaving your husband standing alone in the study, and you don't look back.

── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹

The wind off the Potomac is sharp enough to sting, cutting through your coat. March in Washington hasn't gotten any more pleasant since you left - still grey, still biting, still full of men in expensive suits having conversations that matter to nobody outside this ten-block radius.

You've been back for two days. Meetings, briefings, a reception last night where you smiled until your face hurt and deflected questions about London with the practised ease of someone who's done this too many times to count. It's fine. Exhausting, but fine. You can do this job in your sleep at this point.

What you can't do, apparently, is stop yourself from scanning every room you enter for a familiar face. Your heart has been doing this annoying thing ever since you landed at Dulles where it kicks up at unexpected moments - half anticipation, half dread. Walking past a coffee shop that he used to go to. Hearing someone laugh in a way that's almost but not quite his register. Seeing a tall, dark-haired man in a suit who makes your stupid heart stutter before you realise it's not him.

You're not looking for him. You're absolutely not looking for him. You're just aware. Hyper-aware, maybe. Of the absence. Of the space where he should be and isn't. 

Bucky's on Foreign Relations. He should have been at yesterday's hearing. Definitely should have been at the NATO briefing this morning where you spent two hours making small talk with people who absolutely knew you were divorced and were definitely trying not to bring it up.

But he's not here. And the unease that started yesterday has metastasized into something closer to worry, which is absurd because you're divorced and it's none of your business anymore where he is or what he's doing or why he's apparently missing every major political event this week.

Except now it's your last day in DC and you're walking out of your final meeting, and you still haven't seen him. Which is good. That's good. That's what you wanted - to get through this trip without the inevitable awkward encounter, without having to figure out what you're supposed to say to your ex-husband in a professional setting.

He's probably just busy. He's always busy. That's the whole problem, isn't it? Was. Was the whole problem.

You tell yourself it's none of your business. You tell yourself he’s probably had scheduling conflicts, or dozen other reasonable explanations that have nothing to do with you. You tell yourself to get in the car waiting to take you to the hotel and get a good nights sleep before your flight tomorrow morning.

Instead, you hear yourself giving the driver a different address.

You watch DC slide past the window. Familiar streets, familiar monuments, a city you used to know as well as London but feels foreign now. It's been three months since you signed those papers. Six weeks since the divorce was finalised. And he gave you the silence that you asked for, that you needed, that was supposed to make this easier. 

It did make some things easier, in a way. You can think about him now without that sharp twist of anger in your chest. Can acknowledge the good parts of your marriage without immediately cataloguing all the ways it fell apart. You've stopped checking your phone obsessively, stopped writing texts you never sent, stopped having imaginary arguments with him at two in the morning.

You've started sleeping through the night again. Started saying “my ex-husband” without your voice catching. Started believing that maybe you could actually do this - be divorced, be separate, be okay.

But you still can't be in this city without needing to know he's alright. Because Bucky Barnes gets under your skin and doesn’t leave. Not really. Not even after divorce papers and three months of silence and all the ways you've tried to extract him from your chest. He's just there, permanent as a scar, and you've apparently made peace with the fact that he always will be.

His apartment is close enough to the Capitol that he could walk if he wanted to, far enough that it didn't feel like living at the office. You'd picked it out together four years ago, back when you thought his Congressional run was temporary and you'd be back in New York within a term. The doorman doesn't recognise you, but he calls up anyway when you give him your name.

The elevator ride to the eighth floor feels longer than the entire flight from London. Your heart is doing that kicking thing again but worse now, harder, because this is stupid and inappropriate and you have no right to be here. But what if something's wrong? Or maybe nothing's wrong and you're being ridiculous. Both options feel equally terrible.

You walk down the hallway on muscle memory, and before you can overthink it anymore, you’re standing in from of 8F. The door opens before your knuckles even make contact with the wood.

Bucky's standing there in jeans and a Henley that's seen better days, hair slightly too long and falling into his eyes. The permanent tension he used to carry in his shoulders has eased, and there's no tie strangling him, no suit jacket making him look like a politician action figure. He looks comfortable in a way you've never seen him look in DC.

He also looks completely shocked to see you.

His eyes go wide, lips parting on what might be your name but doesn't quite make it out. 

“Hi,” you manage.

For a second he just stares at you like you might be a hallucination, hand still on the doorframe, body frozen mid-breath. “Hi.”

And then silence. Awful, stretching silence where you're both just looking at each other and you're realizing with creeping horror that you came all the way here without any plan for what you were actually going to say. Now you're just standing here like an idiot while he stares at you and oh god you need to say something, anything—

“I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't just show up, I was in town for meetings and I wasn't going to bother you—” And suddenly you're talking too fast, words tumbling over each other in a way that would be mortifying if you could stop long enough to be mortified. “But you weren't at the Foreign Relations hearing yesterday—which isn't my business, obviously, you don't owe me your schedule…” 

Your hand comes up to your neck, fingers pressing against the tension there like that might somehow stop the word vomit. “But then you also weren't at the NATO briefing this morning and I know you're always at those because it's your thing, and I know I have no right to just show up here, and this is probably completely inappropriate—”

Shit, you're babbling. You're fully babbling at your ex-husband who you haven't spoken to in three months while he stands there looking increasingly bewildered. Stop talking. Stop talking right now.

“—but I was getting in the car to go to my hotel and I just kept thinking about how you weren't there and what if something was wrong, and I know I asked for space and this is definitely not space, this is the opposite of space, this is me showing up at your apartment like a complete—”

“I left Congress.”

The words cut through your spiral, stopping you mid-sentence with your mouth still open. Your brain completely flat-lines for a moment and then reboots, and for a second you just stare at him while the information tries to process.

“What?”

“Congress. I left.” He says it simply, like he's commenting on the weather. “About three weeks ago.”

“Oh.”

The word comes out flat and stupid. You blink at him. Process that. Try to figure out what expression your face is making and whether it's appropriate.

“Oh,” you repeat dumbly, because apparently that's all your brain can produce. “I didn't—I didn't know.”

The silence that follows is excruciating. And you're suddenly extremely aware that you're standing in his hallway, that he's looking at you with an expression you can't parse, that you've just made a complete fool of yourself by showing up here based on incorrect assumptions about his schedule.

This was a mistake. This was such a mistake.

“Right. Of course.” You take a step back toward the elevator, face hot with embarrassment. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—this was inappropriate, I'll just—"

“Do you want to come in?” The question comes out slightly strangled, like it surprised him as much as it surprises you.

It stops you mid-retreat. You look at him and he's watching you with something that might be hope or might be caution or might be both.

“I don't want to intrude—”

“You're not.” He steps back from the doorway, making space. “I mean, you're already here. And I'd like to talk to you, if that's okay.”

You should say no. Should absolutely say no. Should get back in that car and go to your hotel and let this remain a awkward three-minute interaction you can both pretend never happened.

“Okay,” you hear yourself say instead.

You step inside and it hits you how familiar everything still is. Same layout you could navigate blind, same view of the street you used to watch on sleepless nights, same couch you both used to fall asleep on after long nights reading political documents. 

But the congressional briefings that used to bleed across every flat surface are gone. In their place are books on the side table - actual books that look read, spines creased, pages dog-eared. The kitchen looks like someone's actually been using it instead of just microwaving leftovers at midnight. It's still the same apartment, but it feels different. Like someone actually exists here instead of just sleeping between eighteen-hour days.

You're standing there trying to process it when you realise Bucky's closed the door and now you're both just awkwardly existing in the same space, six feet apart, neither of you sure what to do with your hands.

But damn, he looks good. That's the thing you keep getting stuck on. The permanent furrow between his brows has smoothed out. His shoulders sit easier. Even the way he's standing is looser, less like a man braced for impact. And he's looking at you like he's trying very hard to be normal about this and failing completely. Like you're something he's not allowed to want anymore but can't quite help it.

You clear your throat, grasping for something to say that isn't we got divorced and you look good and I don't know what to do with that.

“So… Not Congressman Barnes anymore.”

He actually cringes, then huffs out a surprised laugh. “Yeah. Thank god.”

“What happened?” You're trying to keep your voice neutral, conversational, but it definitely comes out more loaded than you intended. “I mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I don't have a right to—”

“You have a right,” he interrupts quietly, then seems to reconsider. “Or, I don't know if you have a right, but I want to tell you anyway.”

You nod, not trusting your voice.

He runs a hand through his hair, and you watch him gather his thoughts. That little exhale he does when he's trying to figure out how to be honest about something difficult.

“After the divorce—” He stops on the word, like it physically hurts to say. He swallows, tries again. “I did a lot of thinking. About why I ran for Congress in the first place, what I was trying to prove. And I realised I hated it. Hated the politics, the performance, the constant posturing. I was terrible at it, you know I was terrible at it. The only reason I didn't completely implode was because you were there coaching me through it, and once you weren't...” He trails off, shaking his head. “I kept going anyway because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. That quitting would mean I'd failed, or that I was giving up.”

He's looking at his hands now, the flesh one fidgeting against the metal one.

“But you were right. I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. Trying to be someone I thought deserved you instead of figuring out who I actually am.” He lets out a breath. “Not for you, not to prove anything to anyone. Just for me. I'd never done that before.”

He shifts his weight, suddenly looking uncomfortable with how honest that came out, and you have to swallow past the tightness in your throat because that might be the most vulnerable thing he's ever admitted to you.

“So I quit.” He shrugs like it's no big deal, trying to play it off. “And then I started thinking about what I actually wanted to do if I wasn't trying to prove I was more than what Hydra made me.”

He glances up at you then, and there's something almost hesitant in it, like he's trying to gauge your reaction. Like he can’t help that some part of him still wants you to be proud of him even though he's doing this for himself. “Sam's been building something with the Avengers. A new team—”

And he must catch the concern that flickers across your face because he quickly adds, “I'm not fighting; I'm done with that. But I’m going to help with training programs, support systems, trying to make sure the next generation doesn't get chewed up the way we did. He asked if I wanted to help, and for the first time in years something just... clicked.”

You're staring at him, trying to process all of it. The growth. The self-awareness. The fact that he actually heard you, actually sat with it, actually made changes not to win you back but because he needed to be better for himself.

“That's—” Your voice comes out rough and you have to clear your throat. “That's really good, Bucky. I'm happy for you.”

And you are. You are genuinely happy for him. But there's something bittersweet lodged behind your ribs too, something that tastes like why now and why couldn't you have done this when we were still trying and this is exactly what I wanted from you.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you,” he adds quietly. “I wasn't sure if it was my place anymore, or if you'd want to know. You asked for silence and I was trying to respect that, trying to give you the peace you deserved after everything I put you through.”

God. He's doing exactly what you asked him to do. Respecting your boundaries, not inserting himself into your life, letting you move on. And apparently getting what you want feels a lot like getting punched in the chest, which seems cosmically unfair.

“You're allowed to tell me things,” you manage. “Just because we're divorced doesn't mean I don't care about what happens to you.”

He nods slowly, but doesn't say anything, and the quiet that settles between you is thick with all the things neither of you knows how to say.

You're both still just standing there and you have no idea what you're supposed to do now. No idea what the protocol is for this situation. No idea how to be around him when he looks this good and this different and this much like what you'd needed him to be.

That's when you hear it. A small, inquiring “mrrp” from somewhere behind the couch. A white cat emerges, one blue eye and one green, tail high and confident as she saunters into the middle of the room and sits down to observe you both with feline judgment.

“You got a cat,” you remark, grateful for a distraction.

“Yeah.” Bucky says, and there's something almost embarrassed in his voice. “Her name's Alpine. I got her about a month after the divorce. The apartment was too quiet and I—” He trails off, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “She was at a shelter and she looked at me like she knew I needed someone around and I guess I did.”

The apartment was too quiet because you weren't in it anymore, is the thing he doesn't say. But it hangs there anyway.

Alpine pads over to you with the confidence of a cat who knows she's in charge, and you crouch down automatically, extending your hand for her to sniff.

“Hi there, sweet girl,” you murmur, and she immediately butts her head against your palm, purring like a small motor. Within seconds she's winding between your legs, tail curling around your calf with clear ownership.

“Well, that's it then,” Bucky teases, small smile tugging at his lips. “She's decided you're hers. Good luck leaving, she's very persistent when she wants something.”

The words hang in the air for a second, and you watch his expression shift as he seems to hear what he just said. Like he's just remembered that you leaving is exactly what's supposed to happen. That you have a life that doesn't include him or his cat.

“So, how are things with....” He clears his throat, and you can practically feel him trying to make his voice sound casual and normal. It doesn't work. “How's the boyfriend?”

Your hand stills on Alpine's fur. You look up to find him studiously examining a spot on the wall like it's the most fascinating piece of architecture he's ever seen.

“Matt moved back to New York a few months ago.” You straighten up slowly, Alpine protesting the loss of attention with a small trill. “We ended things. Wanted different things from the relationship.”

“Oh.” Bucky's eyes finally land on you, and there's something complicated happening in his expression. “I'm sorry.”

“No you're not.”

It comes out before you can stop it, and for a second you think you've made it weird again, but then Bucky laughs. It's surprised out of him, genuine and a little helpless, and god you've missed that sound.

“No,” he admits, smile going crooked. “I'm really not.”

The honesty of it sits between you for a moment. Then something changes in his face, the amusement fading into something more vulnerable.

“But I should be sorry,” he continues quietly. “It shouldn't matter what I think. You deserve to move on, to be happy with someone who—” He cuts himself off, looking down at his hands. “Someone who can actually be what you need. And I'll deal with that eventually. I will. I'm just—” Another pause. “I'm sorry that I played a part in screwing that up for you, with Matt. And I’m sorry if the divorce or the complications or just... me... if any of that made it harder for you to have something good.”

The sincerity in his voice makes your throat tight. Here he is, your ex-husband, apologizing for potentially ruining your other relationship while also admitting he's not sorry it ended, and somehow it's the most honest you've been with each other in months.

“It wasn't you,” you hear yourself say. “Not directly, anyway. Matt and I… we wanted different things. He wanted easy and uncomplicated, and I'm apparently incapable of either of those things.”

“That's not true—”

“Bucky.” You raise a brow. “I showed up at my ex-husband's apartment unannounced because I got worried when he didn't show up to committee meetings. I think we can agree that 'easy and uncomplicated' is not really my strong suit.”

His mouth twitches. “Fair point.”

“But,” he adds, “you deserve someone who doesn't want easy. Someone who wants all of it - the complicated, the messy, the hard parts. Someone who wants you exactly as you are. Because you show up. Even when you shouldn't, even when it's inconvenient, even when you have every reason not to. You came here today because you were worried about me, because that's just who you are. You care so completely, so deeply, even when it costs you. And you deserve someone who loves you enough to show up for you the way you've always shown up for everyone else.”

The words land like a physical blow, stealing the air from your lungs. Your eyes start to sting and you have to look away, blinking hard against the sudden heat behind them because you're not going to cry in his apartment, you're not.

Except apparently you are, because your vision's already blurring and there's a tightness in your chest that won't ease and when you try to speak nothing comes out but a slightly choked sound that you immediately wish you could take back.

“Hey,” Bucky moves toward you immediately, concern flooding his face. “Shit, no, I didn't mean to upset you.”

You try and recover the situation, aiming for light, but it cracks halfway through. “No, I’m fine, that’s a very—that's nice, that's a really nice thing to say, thank you for the—”

You stop because you're not making sense, because the whole thing is so mortifying you want to sink through the floor.

“Sweetheart, what’s happening?” His hand comes up immediately, thumb brushing across your cheek with a gentleness that makes it worse. He’s so close now that you can see the flecks of grey starting to thread through his hair at his temples. Close enough that you catch the scent of his cologne - the same one you bought him three years ago for his birthday. Close enough that your body remembers what it feels like to fit against his before your brain can stop it.

And god, he still feels like home. Still looks at you like you're something precious. And it's too much, all of it is too much, and the tears that have been threatening finally spill over.

“Don't call me that,” you choke out, but there's no heat in it. “And don't—you can't just—”

The words are getting tangled up with the crying, which is humiliating, but now that you've started you can't seem to stop.

“You don't get to do this,” you manage, and it comes out accusatory and broken at the same time. “You don't get to make all these changes and become this better version of yourself after we're divorced. You don't get to quit the job you hated and figure out what you actually want and get a cat and look at me like that when we're not—”

You stop, pressing your palms against your eyes because maybe if you can't see him this will be easier.

“You're doing everything right and it's too late. And god, I'm here being pathetic, showing up at your apartment because I couldn't handle not seeing you at a meeting. You've moved on, you're this whole new person, and I'm still—”

“You think I could ever move on from you?”

The question cuts through your spiral, stops you mid-sentence. You lower your hands and look up at him, and his face has gone soft and raw and heartbroken in a way that makes your chest cave in.

“I haven't moved on.” His voice drops to barely more than a whisper. “I couldn't move on from you if I tried.You think I got a cat because I moved on? I got a cat because I was so fucking lonely and every time I tried to date, I couldn’t. I couldn’t let anyone else in here. Couldn't stand the thought of someone in this space who wasn’t you.”

He takes a breath that shudders slightly on the exhale, and you can see him fighting to hold himself together.

“I'm not a better person because I moved on. I'm a better person because losing you destroyed me and I had to either figure out who I actually was without you or let it kill me. So I figured it out, because I owed it to myself to be more than just the wreckage of our marriage.”

His thumb continues to trace slow paths across your cheekbone, catching each tear as it falls. The space between you has shrunk to almost nothing. You don't remember either of you moving but suddenly you can count his eyelashes, can see his eyes are wet too. 

Your eyes drop to his mouth. His lips are slightly parted, close enough that you can feel the warmth of his breath ghosting across your skin, and you watch him notice where you're looking. Watch the way his pupils blow wider, the way his grip on your face tightens just slightly.

“But god, I’m sorry,” he continues, and his forehead drops to rest against yours. “I'm so fucking sorry for all of it. For running for Congress without talking to you first. For shutting you out instead of letting you help me. For making you feel like you weren't enough when you were always everything.”

“Bucky—”

“I'm sorry for manipulating your calendar and lying to Matt and thinking I could orchestrate our marriage back together instead of just talking to you like a fucking adult.” His other hand comes up to cup your face, both palms cradling you as his thumb brushes your bottom lip “I'm sorry for making you feel like you had to be perfect instead of just being yourself. I'm sorry for taking you for granted and not fighting for us until it was too late. I'm sorry—”

You kiss him. 

You can't help it. Can't wait another second, can't stand anymore distance between you when he's been standing there saying everything you'd needed to hear for months and he's finally, finally letting you all the way in and you need him closer. Need his mouth on yours more than you need air right now.

He makes this startled sound against your lips, like he didn't dare let himself believe this was actually happening. But then his hands tighten on your face and he's kissing you back, desperate and messy, your face still wet with tears.

“Keep going,” you gasp against his lips between kisses. “Don't stop.”

“I'm sorry for every time I chose my pride over our marriage.” The words tumble out between kisses as he walks you backward, one hand now gripping your waist, the other sliding up to cup the back of your head. “For every time I made you feel small or unimportant or like you were the problem when it was always me.”

You hit the wall with a soft thud, his palm deliberately taking the impact for your head, and his mouth finds your throat immediately, hot and desperate, teeth grazing your pulse point before his lips soothe over it.

“I'm sorry for wasting so much time,” he breathes against your neck, hands finding the hem of your shirt and pulling back just enough to drag it over your head. “For not appreciating every second I had with you. For not telling you every single day that you were the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Bucky—” You plead, fingers tugging his hair hard enough to make him groan against your skin.

He pulls back just enough to look up at you, chest heaving, lips swollen, eyes blown completely dark, and the desperation on his face mirrors everything coiling tight in your stomach.

“Let me make it up to you,” he pants, mouth already trailing lower, kissing down your throat, your collarbone, your sternum. “Please. Let me get on my knees and show you exactly how sorry I am, sweetheart.”

“Fuck—please, Bucky. Yes!”

His mouth keeps moving lower as he sinks down, lips pressing hot and wet over your stomach. When he reaches the waistband of your skirt his hands slide around to find the zip, tugging it down over your hips. 

He peels it down slowly, mouth following the same path, pressing open kisses down your hip, the outside of your thigh, your knee, helping you step out of it carefully but making absolutely no move to take your heels off. For a moment he just stays there, looking up at you from the floor with blown dark eyes.

The sight of him down there looking at you like that makes your breath come out shaky.

“Missed you so fucking much,” he breathes against your inner thigh, lips dragging higher again. “Missed this.” His fingers find the waistband of your panties, peeling them down slowly, and when they're gone his right hand lingers on your calf, squeezing.

“Missed the way you sound when I do this—” He presses his mouth to your clit, barely anything, just enough to make you whine and your hips jerk forward chasing more. “Missed the way you taste. Been so fucking long, sweetheart, I'm gonna make sure you feel every single apology.”

Then he hooks your leg over his shoulder, spreading you wider, the stiletto of your heel digging into his back. He groans against you like he's been waiting months for exactly this, tongue dragging through your folds, tasting every inch of you, before his mouth closes around your clit and sucks.

You're already soaked, embarrassingly so, slick and swollen and desperate, and the obscene sounds he's making against you make your face flush hot. Like he's enjoying this more than you are, which makes the heat pooling in your stomach coil tighter and more urgent. 

Your fingers bury themselves in his hair, gripping hard, and the moan that rumbles out of him against your folds is immediate, hips shifting like he can't help it. You tug again, twisting tighter, and he groans louder, like he'd let you pull as hard as you wanted as long as you kept him right there.

His tongue curls and your back arches off the wall with a broken, high little sound, thighs trembling against his shoulders. The heel of your stiletto presses harder into his back as your leg tightens around him.

He teases you mercilessly, knows exactly how to make you chase it. Tongue circling your clit until your hips roll forward without shame, grinding against his face, chasing friction with a desperation that would be humiliating if you had any capacity left to feel embarrassed. Every time you get close he pulls back, mouthing at your inner thigh or the crease of your hip, until you whine with frustration.

“Please—” It comes out wrecked, barely recognisable as your own voice. “Bucky, please—”

He makes this low, pleased chuckle against your folds that you feel everywhere, clearly delighted with himself, and the vibration of it makes you desperately clench around nothing and moan so shamelessly that he does it again on purpose. 

His tongue fucks into you and the world goes soft at the edges, thoughts dissolving one by one until there's nothing left but the wet heat of his mouth and the needy little moans you can’t seem to stop making. His nose bumps your clit with every movement, pressure building so deep and overwhelming that you've stopped being capable of anything as complex as forming words. 

Just fingers buried in his hair, back arched, existing entirely at the mercy of his mouth.

Then his left hand closes around your standing thigh, metal fingers wrapping around soft flesh. He pulls his mouth away just far enough to speak, his breath hot and damp against your soaked, swollen folds.

“Up,” he rumbles directly into your cunt, breath hot, and you hear it somewhere distant and unimportant. 

Your legs aren't really receiving instructions anymore - you're not capable of much of anything right now, every nerve ending in your body shorting out under his mouth. Too far gone already to manage something as complicated as lifting a leg.

The crack of his metal hand against your ass brings the world back in one sharp snap.

“Up, pretty girl. C'mon.” His voice is rough, amused, unbearably fond. “Can't have gone dumb on my tongue already, sweetheart. I’ve barely even started.”

“Fuck,” you manage.

“There we go,” he murmurs, the deep warmth in his voice is devastatingly attractive. “Good girl. Up.”

His hand guides you this time, helping you move your other leg up and over his shoulder so both thighs bracket his head. Before you can process what’s happening, he rises, straightening to his full height with an ease that makes it obvious how little you weigh to him. How effortless this is. How completely in control he is of the situation. And it makes your stomach swoop. 

Your fingers yank his hair on instinct, panic and want tangled together, and the moan that drags out of him reverberates directly against your pussy in a way that makes your whole body shudder.

The wall catches your back. His hands lock around the backs of your thighs, one warm, one cool metal, fingers pressing into your flesh as he pins you exactly where he wants you. His face is buried between your legs and there's nothing below you but six feet of immovable super soldier who has absolutely no intention of letting you go anywhere. The realization of how thoroughly he has you, how completely helpless you are right now, sends a fresh rush of arousal flooding against his mouth that makes him moan his encouragement.

“Fuck— please—Bucky.”

The answering groan he makes against you says he heard it just fine. And then he gets greedy.

His tongue finds your clit and doesn't leave, licking and sucking with a focused relentlessness that has you sobbing. You're soaked, dripping down his chin. Every careful, deliberate stroke of his tongue pulls another helpless mewl from your throat while his hands keep you pinned exactly where he wants you, going nowhere, taking everything he decides to give you.

He learns you all over again like he has all the time in the world. Finds every spot that makes your thighs clench around his head and returns to them, again and again, cataloguing your reactions with the focused intensity of someone who has missed this more than they can articulate and intends to make up for every lost month tonight. 

“Taste so fucking good,” he groans into you, the words vibrating against your clit, hips grinding forward against nothing. “Missed this pussy so much. Missed how wet she gets for me. Could eat her all night and never get enough.”

The knowledge that he's this worked up just from going down on you makes another rush of arousal flood against his tongue. Heat spreads through you in waves, the orgasm building each time he seals his lips around your clit and sucks, each time he groans against your folds like he's the one being taken apart. Your thighs are shaking around his head, his name spilling out of you in a broken, continuous stream that you can't stop.

“That's my girl,” he rasps into you, fingers digging into your thighs. “Feel her getting close. Gonna give me what I want.”

You come with a wail, clenching so hard around his tongue that he groans like it's the best thing he's ever felt. His hands remain steady around your thighs as he licks you through every shuddering wave, greedy for every last pulse of it, not pulling back until you're twitching and whimpering and completely wrecked above him.

He pulls back with one last filthy, open mouthed kiss to your cunt that makes you mewl, and then his hands shift, sliding you down his body until your legs wrap around his waist. You can feel how hard he is through his jeans, thick and insistent against where you're still throbbing, and your hips roll forward instinctively.

“Look at you,” he murmurs against your throat, hands gripping your ass, holding you up effortlessly. “So pretty when you cum for me. Did so good.”

You make some soft, wrecked sound against his neck that might be his name.

Then one hand comes up to grip your jaw, tilting your face up to his. His chin is slick with you, lips swollen and pink and kissable. His thumb presses against your bottom lip, dragging it down. “Open that pretty mouth.”

Dazed and pliant, you open your mouth without thinking, too gone to do anything but comply. He leans in and lets a slow string of spit drop onto your tongue, mixed with the slick mess of you.

“Atta girl,” he rumbles, watching your face with a primal satisfaction. “You taste so fucking good, sweetheart - had to let you have some.”

You swallow and he groans his approval, crashing his mouth back to yours before you can breathe. The taste of yourself on his tongue makes you dizzy, fingers twisting in his Henley. Your brain several steps behind your body as he starts moving, carrying you through the dark hallway without breaking the kiss, navigating entirely on muscle memory.

The bedroom is dark. He lays you out across his bed, stepping back to look at you. Spread across his sheets still in nothing but your heels and bra, chest heaving, thighs slick, eyes blown completely dumb. The look on his face makes your stomach flip all over again.

“Been dreaming about seeing you in this bed again,” he says, crawling over you, caging you in with those unfairly big biceps. “Not done with you yet, pretty girl. Not even close.”

Your hands find the hem of his top immediately, fisting the fabric, and he helps you drag it over his head. His dog tags fall forward as the shirt comes off, swinging between you both as he dips back down to your mouth.

Already your fingers are at his belt, clumsy and impatient, fumbling with the buckle while he kisses down your jaw and unhooks your bra before tossing it aside. His mouth finds your nipple immediately, greedy,tongue curling around it, and your hands stutter.

“Bucky—” You're swearing under your breath, hands shaking as you try and fail to get the buckle undone. “Come on, fuck, come on!”

He grazes his teeth against your nipple and your fingers slip entirely. 

“Shit, please,” you whine, utterly shameless.

Bucky just laughs against your tits, warm and low, not even slightly helpful. Finally, though, the belt gives, button pops, zip drags down, and you're shoving everything down his hips in one desperate motion as his cock springs free. Thick and hard and heavy between his legs, and your mouth goes dry. 

It’s been almost a year since you’ve seen him like this and your eyes drag down his body with a hunger you can't even pretend to hide. You reach for him immediately, needing to touch, needing to feel the weight of him in your hand, but he catches both wrists before you get there, pinning them above your head against the pillow. 

“Patience, pretty girl,” he murmurs, hips settling between your thighs, cock heavy against your folds but not where you need him. “We've got time. Not rushing this.”

You whimper, hips lifting, trying to find friction, finding nothing.

He slides his cock through your folds, dragging through how obscenely wet you are, and the feeling of it pulls a broken noise from both of you simultaneously. Slow and deliberate, he teases the swollen head through your slick, catching your clit on the way, and your whole body jerks underneath him.

“Bucky,” you mewl. Your wrists flex against his grip, not really trying to get free, just needing somewhere to put the desperation flooding through you. He drags his cock back through your heat while you clench desperately around nothing, watching your face fall apart with an expression of filthy satisfaction.

“There it is. Look at that pretty little cunt begging for it.” Another slow roll of his hips, cock dragging through the mess of you. “Gonna give it to you. Just want you to ask nice price.”

“Please,” you manage, and it comes out so small and wrecked and needy that his hips stutter. “Please, Bucky, I need—I can't—please—”

He releases your wrists and your hands fly to his shoulders instantly, nails digging in hard, needing to touch him, needing to anchor yourself to something solid while his cock nudges your entrance, barely breaching, just enough to make you clench desperately around nothing.

“Shh,” he coos, hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise, holding you exactly where he wants you even as your hips try to roll forward chasing more. “I've got you, baby.” The head of his cock presses a little deeper, teasing, and your nails drag down his shoulders as your back arches off the bed. “Always gonna take care of you. You know that.” 

He pushes in slowly, and the stretch of him makes your whole body go rigid, nails carving lines down his shoulders that make him hiss as you take him inch by inch. Your walls flutter around him, clenching, trying to pull him deeper even as your body relearns the thickness of him, the weight, the specific fullness that you'd spent three months trying to forget and never quite managed.

“Fuck,” he grits out, hips stilling when he's buried completely, forehead dropping to yours, breathing ragged. “Always so fucking tight. Feel that? Feel how well this pretty cunt fits me?” His hips roll, just slightly, and you cry out. “Feel so perfect around my cock, pretty girl.”

You can't form words. Can only moan and dig your nails deeper into his back and breathe through it, through the overwhelming stretch and heat and the fact that it's him, it's Bucky, it's finally Bucky again after everything.

Then he starts to move.

Long, deep strokes that drag against every sensitive place inside you, his cock splitting you open over and over until you can't remember what it felt like to be empty. The cold metal of his dog tags brushes your chest with every thrust. His hand slides between your bodies, thumb finding your clit, and the dual sensation pulls a needy little wail from you, toes curling in your heels

“That's it,” he breathes against your lips. “That's my girl. Take all of it.”

You drag him back down into the kiss, desperate, one hand tangling in his hair and the other still clawing down his back, needing more of him, needing every part of him pressed against every part of you. He gives it to you, kissing you filthy and deep, hips rolling into a rhythm that's making coherent thought impossible.

“Missed you,” you gasp between kisses, and once it starts coming out you can't stop it. “Missed you so much, I missed you every single day, I tried not to but I couldn't stop, I missed you, I missed you—”

“I know.” His voice breaks on it. “Missed you too, baby. I'm here. I've got you.”

“Don't stop,” you sob against his mouth. “Please don't stop.”

“Not stopping.” His thumb keeps circling your clit and his hips snap forward harder, the wet obscene sounds of him fucking into you filling the dark bedroom. “Not going anywhere ever again.”

The pleasure and the grief and the overwhelming relief of having him back crash into each other all at once and the tears come again without warning, spilling hot down your cheeks. You're coming and crying at the same time, clenching so hard around him that he groans like it's the best thing he's ever felt.

Instinctively you hide your face against his neck with a mewling, broken little sound, as the waves keep crashing through you. His hand finds your jaw immediately, fingers gentle but certain, tilting your face back to his.

When he sees you - eyes wet and glassy, tears tracking freely down your cheeks, kiss-bitten bottom lip caught between your teeth - his expression cracks wide open. His thumb drags slowly through the wetness on your cheek, just looking at you, chest heaving, cock still buried deep inside you. 

“Fuck,” he rasps, hips driving deeper, mouth dragging across your wet cheeks, licking away the tears. “Don’t hide from me. Not this. So beautiful when you cry for me like this.” 

Another deep thrust punctuates his words and your sob breaks against his throat. The orgasm is almost too much, pleasure cresting so sharp and overwhelming that you're squirming beneath him, trying to get away from it and chase it at the same time. Your hips buck uselessly as his thumb keeps bullying your swollen clit , wringing every last shuddering wave out of you whether your oversensitive body can handle it or not.

“Made you cry too many times for the wrong reasons.” His mouth moves to your other cheek, kissing the wetness away gently even as his hips keep pounding into you. “Never fucking again. Only time you cry because of me now is when I've got you so full of cock you can't fucking think straight.”

Then he pulls back to look at you, pupils blown, taking in your wet lashes, your ruined expression. “That's the only reason I ever put tears on this pretty face again. On my fucking life.”

You're trying to say his name but it keeps breaking apart every time his hips drive forward, dissolving into breathless, helpless sounds against his mouth. But you can’t stop them, can’t control it, can’t do anything other than moan because he just keeps fucking you through every shuddering wave of your orgasm until you’re trembling under him. 

You whimper, oversensitive and shaking, hips trying to shy away from his thumb even as your walls keep fluttering around him.

“Can feel her gripping me,” Bucky murmurs, almost to himself, hips still rolling slow and deep. “Feel that? Still so greedy even when you're all fucked out.” His thumb lifts and you exhale in relief, but his cock is still thick and heavy inside you, every slight movement magnified by how sensitive you are. “Got one more in there for me, baby. I know you do.”

Turning your face into his neck, you make a sound that's half-protest, half-desperate agreement. 

“C’mon pretty girl,” His voice drops to something low and coaxing, lips brushing your ear. “You gonna give it to me?”

You nod weakly, barely managing it, pliant and soft and entirely his to do whatever he wants with. You'd agree to anything right now. Give him anything. You just want whatever he'll give you, want to stay exactly like this forever, warm and full and completely undone.

The rumble that comes out of him is deep and satisfied. “Good fucking girl.”

The words land low in your stomach even before his hands are moving, even before he pulls out with a groan that you both feel everywhere, even before the cool air hits the slick mess between your thighs. The empty whine that escapes you is involuntary and embarrassing and he hears every second of it.

His hands find your hips, turning you with that easy, devastating strength, flipping you over like you weigh nothing. Your face finds the mattress, and before you can process the change in position his palm is pressing warm between your shoulder blades, urging you down while his other hand slides under your hips, pulling them up to meet him.

You go pliant without resistance, body soft and utterly compliant beneath his hands, brain several steps behind everything. Your cheek presses into his sheets and you can smell him on the fabric, sending a fresh pulse of want through you.

He leans over you, his chest warm against your back for just a moment, and then his hand slides into your hair. Gathers it gently, sweeping it away from your face with a tenderness that's completely at odds with how thoroughly he just fucked you apart. His fingers are careful, unhurried, and you turn your face slightly into his palm like a cat.

“There you are,” he murmurs, low and warm, and you can feel the smile in it. His lips press to the nape of your neck, the top of your spine, each vertebra down between your shoulder blades.

He stays there for a moment, just looking at you. Taking in the slack, cock-drunk softness of your expression. The way your eyes have gone heavy and distant, lashes still wet, lips parted and swollen.

Then the blunt head of his cock presses against your entrance again and you keen into the sheets.

He pushes in slowly, achingly slowly, and the stretch of him at this angle is deeper, fuller, hitting every nerve ending at once. You're so wet and so oversensitive that every inch of him dragging inside you pulls sounds from your throat that you couldn't muffle if you tried.

“Fuck,” he gasps, hands locked around your hips, pulling you back onto him as his last inch disappears inside you. “Look at that. Taking every fucking inch. Good girl.”

He starts to move and your eyes roll back.

It's different like this. Harder, deeper, each thrust rocking you forward into the mattress, his hips snapping against your ass with a sound that fills the dark room, punctuated by his own rough exhales. One hand is splayed across your lower back to keep your hips tilted exactly where he wants them, the other gripping the curve of your hip hard enough you'll have fingerprints tomorrow.

You fist the sheets. It's all you can do. Knuckles white, face pressed into his pillow, breathing in desperate gasps because he keeps knocking the air out of your lungs with every thrust.

“Fuck, baby. Listen to how pretty you are like this.” His voice has gone rough, stripped of everything except want. His cock drags out slow and thrusts back hard, knocking another moan from you. “Hear that?”

You hear it. The wet, filthy sounds of him fucking into you, the slap of skin, the helpless little mewls you can't stop making. His dog tags swing forward with every thrust, cold metal grazing your back. Your face burns hot in the dark.

“C’mon, use your words,” he murmurs, hand smoothing up your spine. “You hear how good this pussy sounds taking me?”

“Yes,” You moan agreement, barely recognizing as your own voice. “Yes, fuck, yes”

His hand snakes around your throat, pulling you back against his chest in one smooth motion like you weigh nothing at all. And god, to him you don't. You’re so light in his hands that he barely has to think about it, and the ease of it sends a sharp pulse through you. You gasp as your back hits his chest, Bucky’s free arm secure around you, while his cock keeps driving up into you, the new angle hitting deeper.

He groans softly against your ear when you clenches hard around him. “Fuck. Knew you’d like that.”

You can’t respond. All that comes out is another needy little sound while your hands scramble desperately for purchase, one gripping his forearm where it rests against your throat, the other reaching back blindly for him. Bucky catches your hand immediately and presses it flat against his lower stomach, holding it there so you can feel every thrust, every flex of muscle as he fucks into you.

“That’s it, good girl. Hold on,” he murmurs approvingly, feeling you squeeze around him again. “Feel what you do to me?”

His free hand slides down your stomach, over the curve of your hip, fingers finding your clit once more. You jolt at his touch, a high broken sound tearing out of you, hips lurching forward despite yourself.

“Shh.” His lips brush your ear. “I've got you. Stay still for me.”

You try. You genuinely try. But he's fucking up into you and rubbing your swollen clit simultaneously and the combination is devastating, pleasure crashing through you in waves that make it impossible to do anything except squirm against him and make sounds you'll be embarrassed about later. Your fingers dig into his forearm, nails pressing crescents into his skin, and his breath hitches against your neck.

“Fuck, good girl,” he hisses. “Scratch me up, sweetheart. Let me feel it.”

His fingers work faster and your head drops back against his shoulder, completely gone. Everything is his hands, his cock, his voice in your ear saying things that dissolve into heat before you can parse the words. You're making these desperate mewling sounds with every thrust, fingers scrabbling at his arm, his hip, any part of him you can reach, just needing to touch him, needing to feel him everywhere at once.

“Feel how wet she is,” he murmurs, fingers slipping through the absolute mess between your thighs. “Dripping down my hand. Making a mess of me.” His cock drives deeper and you sob. “So fucking perfect.”

His hand shifts from your throat to your jaw, turning your face toward his, and then he's kissing you.

It’s messy and overwhelming, his tongue sliding against yours while he keeps fucking you hard enough to make you moan helplessly into his mouth. Bucky swallows every needy little sound you make, kissing you deeper every time you squirm against him.

You can barely keep up with it. Head fuzzy, heavy with pleasure, especially with the way he’s still rubbing your clit in relentless slow circles that make your whole body shake harder every second.

“Come for me,” he breathes against your lips. “Want to feel that pretty pussy squeeze my cock again, baby. Can you do that for me?”

"Yes, Bucky, please.”

“So fucking good for me.” The hand at your jaw slides back to your throat, tilting your head back against his shoulder, baring your neck. His mouth finds your pulse point immediately. “Best thing I've ever had. Best thing I've ever touched.” His teeth graze your throat and you whimper, thighs shaking. “The only thing I ever want.”

His fingers press harder against your clit, hips rolling forward in a way that make you tremble in his grip, knees threatening to buckle, the only thing keeping you upright the arm locked around you. 

“Fuck—I love you,” he grits out against the back of your neck, and it sounds like it's been tearing at him from the inside for months. “I love you. I love you.” Each repetition punctuated by a thrust that makes you cry out. “Loved you every single day I was without you. Never stopped for a second.”

The words hit somewhere deeper than anything else. Deeper than his hands or his mouth or any of it. Something cracks open in your chest, warm and enormous, and you’re coming again. Harder than before, your whole body seizing as you clench around him so completely that your knees do give out entirely. Just ragdoll weight caught entirely in his arms.

“Bucky,” you cry name in a needy a sob. “I love you too—fuck—I love you so much.”

The confession tears out of you and follows you over with a groan that shakes through his whole body. He buries himself to the hilt, cock pulsing in deep, spilling inside you with your name on his lips.

You’re both breathing in ragged pulls, and if it weren’t for his arms still locked around you, you’d have collapsed onto the bed. His chest heaves against your back, lips pressed somewhere near your temple, and neither of you speaks for a moment.

Eventually, carefully, he lowers you both down to the mattress, turning you over and pulling you against his chest. You lay boneless against him as his hand strokes slowly up your side, over and over, like he can't stop touching you now that he's allowed to again.

“I've got you,” he murmurs into your hair. “I've got you. You're okay. I've got you.”

And for the first time in almost a year, you actually believe it.

You stay like that for a while, neither of you moving, his hand still stroking slowly up your side. The room has gone quiet and warm around you, just his heartbeat under your ear and the city humming distantly outside.

But eventually he shifts, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Stay there.”

A weak sound of protest escapes you when he moves but he's already up, disappearing into the en-suite. You hear water running. When he comes back he sits beside you on the bed, warm cloth in hand.

“I can—” you start.

“I know you can,” he agrees simply, but he does it anyway, cleaning you up with gentle, unhurried hands. Then his free hand strokes down your leg, gently tugging one heel off, then the other, puts them both on the floor.

When he's done he disappears briefly, and then the mattress dips and he's pulling you into him, tucking you against his chest. The duvet settles warm around you both, and his hand starts moving slowly through your hair in soothing strokes.

“Sleep,” he murmurs against your temple, lips barely moving. “I've got you.”

You don't have much choice. Your body is already pulling you under, warm and safe and held in a way you'd spent months trying to convince yourself you didn't miss. His heartbeat is slow and steady under your ear, his chest rising and falling with a deep, even calm that pulls you further under with every breath.

His hand keeps moving through your hair, and the city outside feels very far away, and sleep takes you before you even feel it coming.

── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹

The blaring of you alarm pulls you up from the deepest sleep you've had in months, and for one blissful, unthinking moment you're just warm. Bucky’s chest rises and falls slowly beneath your cheek. Reality hovers at the edges of your consciousness, waiting to be let in, and you squeeze your eyes shut against it, burrowing deeper into the duvet like that might keep it at bay.

Alpine is curled heavy and purring against the backs of your knees, warm and certain, like she's been there all night. Like you belong here. The thought sits in your chest, complicated and tender.

But your phone doesn’t stop shrilling from the nightstand. 

You reach over and fumble for it, managing to silence before Bucky stirs. His arm tightens around you, pulling you back into him with a sleepy, wordless sound of protest, lips pressing somewhere near your hair. But then he goes still. 

“…Was that your alarm for your flight?” His voice is rough with sleep, and underneath the grogginess you can here the carefulness.

“Yes,” you reply quietly, but make no effort to move.

The city hums distantly outside the window. Somewhere below, DC is already going about its morning. Up here, in the warm dark of his bedroom, time feels suspended, neither of you quite willing to be the one to break it.

You turn over. His eyes scan your face with an intensity that's so nakedly desperate it makes your chest ache. Like he's trying to memorize your face in case this is the last time he's allowed to be this close. Like he hasn't yet let himself believe last night was real.

“Stay.” The word comes out before he can stop it, blurted and slightly wrecked. His jaw tightens immediately afterwards, like he's bracing for it to land wrong. “Could you stay? I want you to stay. Just—a little longer, or—I know we haven't talked about anything properly yet, I just—" He exhales, slightly pained. "Please stay."

You look at him for a moment. Let him sit with it a moment longer than necessary, watching the soft, desperate hope on his face exist exist without rushing to meet it, because you find you want to keep looking at him like this for just another few seconds. This new version of him that doesn't hide behind composure when something matters. 

It's devastating and wonderful in equal measure, and you want to hold onto the sight of it for a second before you say anything.

“I suppose,” you begin slowly, watching his expression flicker, “I could probably stay a little longer. Get to know this version of you that coaches Avengers and has a cat and apparently owns cookbooks he's actually used.”

The exhale that comes out of him is enormous. Pure relief, pure joy, and the smile that follows it - wide and unguarded and slightly incredulous - is the most beautiful thing you've seen in a very long time. He pulls you in and presses his lips to your forehead, warm and certain.

You let him. Then you pull back gently, hand finding his jaw, tilting his face down to yours.

“But slowly,” you add, and mean it. “We do this slowly. No grand gestures, no orchestrating, no deciding things on my behalf. We actually talk. We work through all of it - the things we broke and the reasons we broke them. We make real effort this time, not just falling back into old patterns because it's easy and it feels good short term.”

He nods. Immediately, earnestly, like every word is being carefully filed away. “Slowly,” he repeats. “Yeah. I can do slowly.”

You raise a brow.

He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. “I can learn slowly.”

You're both quiet for a moment, considering this. You are not, historically, two people who do anything slowly. Your entire relationship has been characterized by intensity and momentum and grand gestures and catastrophic miscommunications. The idea of slow is almost comically foreign to you both.

“I'll come to London more,” he offers after a moment. “My schedule is flexible. I can make it work—I want to make it work. And I know the distance is real, and I know it won't always be easy, but I'd rather figure it out than spend another year without you.”

“And I'll come here too,” you add quietly. “I should've done that more. Made the effort in both directions instead of letting the Atlantic become an excuse.”

“Okay,” he says. “We start there.”

“We start there,” you agree.

And maybe it’s foolish. Maybe you'll look back on this morning and recognise it as just another impulsive decision in a marriage that's always run on chemistry and stubbornness and the particular madness of two people who can't seem to leave each other alone. Maybe the distance will be hard and the conversations will be harder and somewhere down the line you'll hit another wall neither of you knows how to climb.

But when he looks at you like that - open and unhidden in a way he spent years not knowing how to be - it doesn't feel like a mistake. It feels like something you've been working toward through every wrong turn and bad decision and midnight argument. Like the mess of the last year was just the long way round to something you were always going to find your way back to.

“Come here,” he murmurs, and you let him turn you back over, let him pull you into his chest where you fit so perfectly.

The relief of not having a flight to catch settles over you like the duvet itself.

His lips find the curve of your neck, lazy and warm, just the occasional soft press of his mouth against your skin. Just enjoying the fact that he can. That you're here and not leaving and there's nowhere either of you need to be.

Your eyes drift closed, hovering in that soft place between sleep and waking again. Alpine purrs against your feet. You feel more at peace than you have in longer than you can remember. And then, through your sleepy haze, you gradually become aware of his hand.

It's moved without him seeming to notice, fingers drifting down your arm, over your wrist, settling at your left hand. His thumb brushes absently over your ring finger, back and forth, over the bare skin where your ring used to sit. Slow and absent, like he doesn't even know he's doing it.

Your right hand moves to cover his, and he still immediately. A slight tension moving through his chest, like he's been caught at something, like he's about to pull back.

“Ask me again someday,” you murmur into the pillow, half-conscious. “When we're ready.”

The tension bleeds out of him all at once, his whole body exhaling like he's been holding that breath for months. His arms tighten around you and his mouth presses to the back of your neck again.

“I will,” he affirms quietly, against your skin. “I promise you, one day, I will.”

His thumb resumes its slow path over your ring finger, gentle and deliberate now. A quiet promise being made in the dark.

“I love you,” he murmurs into your hair, lips barely moving. “Missed saying that. Missed you hearing it. I love you so much.”

You sink deeper into his arms, into the warmth of him, into the love in his voice, into the particular peace of being somewhere you belong after a very long time of being without it.

You fall back asleep before you can answer. But that's okay, you have time now.

more mads: that's all folks! I really, really hope you enjoyed, like seriously. this fic has both been the bane of my existence and a precious little baby because i do really love these idiots. i hope i gave them a satisfactory ending and that it was worth the wait, and i would absolutely love to know your thoughts via any comments or reblogs! thank you so much for reading :)

damn maddie you really know how to tear into someone’s chest, grab their heart and squeeze until it’s leaking out blood. ts was like watching an actual movie.

atp i wish i could clone myself so i can give myself to bucky and matt. cause this pussy really is too good if they keep coming back like this

but knowing matts avoidant ass, he’d somehow self sabotage for himself.

another thing i loved is when reader kept crying because as a crybaby myself i felt really seen.

i’d cry all the time too if i had matt and bucky fighting over me instead of coming to a resolution to share me

this is also reminded me how deeply non-confrontational i am especially when matt tried to have lunch with her and bucky barged in and she essentially had to choose, atp id just go to lunch with myself to not hurt anyone’s feelings

bucky, oh bucky, i love how so terrified of losing her, he fucked up by trying to manage her life, like she’s so valid in all her feelings and emotions but she’s so honest to god much stronger than me with putting her foot down and standing on business.

the talk between them at the end felt like a kiss on the forehead after being repeatedly kicked in the stomach,

“But,” he adds, “you deserve someone who doesn't want easy. Someone who wants all of it - the complicated, the messy, the hard parts. Someone who wants you exactly as you are. Because you show up. Even when you shouldn't, even when it's inconvenient, even when you have every reason not to. You came here today because you were worried about me, because that's just who you are. You care so completely, so deeply, even when it costs you. And you deserve someone who loves you enough to show up for you the way you've always shown up for everyone else.”

but bucky i just want you☹️

and the smut felt like a sweet treat i’m rewarding myself with in the middle of the night. it was so fucking good after crying for the angst, my thighs were squeezed tight and my lips parted while reading

“Made you cry too many times for the wrong reasons.” “Never fucking again. Only time you cry because of me now is when I've got you so full of cock you can't fucking think straight.”

honestly i just needed matt and bucky to eiffel tower me.

anyway tldr i love this, i love you maddie. and pls never stop writing on this app

As you moved into the hall, you were surprised to find Ransom’s door wide open. The far bedside lamp was on, but his bed was empty. But when you went downstairs, none of the lights were on. You cautiously flipped on the light in the kitchen, checking around, but the whole floor was empty. That was a bit odd, but not enough to interrupt your mission. You went straight to the pantry and got out the jar of peanut butter, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. As you were about to go back upstairs, something outside, by the back door, caught your eye. You stopped and waited until you saw movement again, so you cautiously moved forward and peeked your head outside. Ransom was standing a few feet to the side of the door, his gaze on the trees that lined the yard. There was a glass of whiskey in his hand, but it looked untouched.

You came out to stand next to him, closing the door behind you. “Sorry,” he said, very quietly, “did I wake you?”

You weren’t sure how that could have happened, when he was standing alone in the dark, completely silent. “No,” you answered. “I was just hungry.”

He glanced down at what you were holding. His nose wrinkled. “You’re eating peanut butter straight from the jar.”

“Yup,” you confirmed with a smile. “It was the only thing we had that sounded good. What I really want is a burger to dip in it.”

He raised his eyebrow at you. “A burger? To dip in peanut butter?”

“Uh huh! With extra pickles and extra mustard. And jalapeños.” Your stomach gave a little rumble, as if to cement your position on the matter.

Ransom wrinkled his nose. “That sounds disgusting.”

“Yeah,” you agreed with a sigh. “I want it so bad.”

“So I guess that means your appetite is back.”

“Yeah,” you gave him a relieved smile. “Finally.”

He nodded. “That’s good,” he said, quietly.

You waited a beat, comfortable in the silence, and then asked, “What are you doing up?”

He shrugged, looking back out at the trees. “Just couldn’t sleep.”

“Mmm,” you hummed in response. You could have gone back in, finished your snack, gone back to bed. But you didn’t. You weren’t sure why. But you settled in next to him and looked out at the trees.

After several minutes, he added, “My brain just won’t turn off.”

“Oh yeah?” you asked, not turning your attention to him.

“Yeah,” he said, quietly. There was another very long beat before he continued, “I’m not going to be good at this.”

“Good at what?” you asked softly.

He shrugged, resolutely not looking at you. “Any of this. I have no idea how to be a father.” He swallowed, swirling around the ice in his drink but not taking a sip. “Or a husband. I don’t know how to be good at it.”

“Oh,” was all you said at first, his words landing in your chest. Then, “I don’t know how to do it either, be a wife or mother. Or,” you stopped, remembering all of your mother’s words and advice since you were a little girl and how hard you’d been trying to shut them out recently. “I guess I know how to be a certain version of a wife, but I don’t think that’s the kind I want to be.”

He finally looked at you, his eyes soft, a deep blue in the dark. “Like your mom, you mean.”

“Yeah,” you whispered.

“Hmm…” another swirl of his glass, “was she a good mom? To you?”

“Um…” you started, fully turning your head away, but you still felt his eyes on you. “I don’t know. I guess–“ You sighed. You knew the answer even though you didn’t want to say it. “No. No, I don’t think she was. Not in a malicious way, she just- I don’t think she ever had the capabilities. I think she was too beaten down by the time I came along. She loved me in the only way she was able, but… But maybe that wasn’t enough.” You blinked back a few tears and shook your head. The steady chirping of crickets filled the quiet. You tried to let it calm you.

“My parents never loved me,” Ransom said after a long enough beat for you to pull yourself together. “I know that for sure. They’d tell you they do, but they don’t. I’ve known it since I was a kid.”

You put the spoon in the peanut butter and set it down on the patio next to you. With both hands you cradled your stomach. You were starting to really notice it changing, now that you were officially in your second trimester. Now that there was no reason to try to hide it. “I want to love them so much, but I just, I’m afraid I won’t know how.”

Ransom put his glass down on the ledge behind him and then took a step towards you. He didn’t say anything at first, just looked at you very carefully. Then he took another step, reached a hand toward your middle and stopped. “Uh, do you mind if– Can I?“

It took you a moment to understand what he was asking for. Then, “Oh! Uh, yeah, sure.” You moved your own hands from your belly to make room for his. He carefully put both hands on you, cradling whoever was inside. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even really look up at you. But he stood there for a long time, holding you so gently, staring at your stomach like maybe if he stared hard enough, he could unlock some secret of the universe.

Eventually, you broke the silence, speaking softly in an effort to not disturb the peace you felt here in the dark. “I think,” his eyes shot up to meet yours at the sound of your voice. You gulped at the intensity of his gaze but kept going. “I think that as long as we try, we’ll be giving them more than we ever got. Maybe it still won’t be enough, but, it’ll be something. We just have to try.”

Ransom visibly swallowed, then looked you right in the eye and nodded. He took a step back and picked up his drink from where he’d left it, but he still didn’t drink it. He seemingly just needed something to do with his hands.

You stood in companionable silence for another long moment. Just as you were readying yourself to leave him alone with his thoughts and go back to bed, he spoke again. “What do you think about this house?”

“What?” was the only thing you could say to the strange abruptness of the question.

He was staring absently into the house now, a pronounced crease between his brows. “I keep trying to imagine a little kid running around here and I just can’t.”

Oh. You remembered back to that first day when you found out you were pregnant. You’d tried and failed to do the same thing. “No, I guess I can’t really either. And–“ you paused, finding your words, and he turned his attention to you, “when I first got here, I remember thinking that there was nothing in this house that seemed to have anything of you in it.”

He looked back into the living room through the large windows. “Linda got me this house when I turned twenty-five. It was already decorated and fully furnished when I moved in. I don’t know, I guess it was just the place I lived. Nothing more. And I never really thought about it.”

You didn’t say anything in response. He was clearly thinking through something. You took the moment to look at him, here in just the light coming out through the window. He looked different, you thought, now that you were actually getting to know him. Softer, maybe. Or smaller? Or, just, more like him.

“Maybe,” he said after several moments, “maybe it could be good to find a new place. Somewhere that fits all of us.”

“Yeah,” you said, quietly, a warmth moving through you. “Yeah, that could be really nice.”

He hummed in affirmation, and finally took a sip of his drink, before decisively putting it down again.

He didn’t say anything more, so you decided it was a good time to head back to bed. You quietly moved to the door, then stopped and turned back to him. “Hey, Ransom,” you called. He looked up at you, questioning, ready. “There’s still so much about this that really scares me, but I don’t think I’m scared of doing it all with you. Not anymore.”

The way he held your gaze at that was intense. Like he could really see you. And you could see him too. He swallowed roughly and then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. It came out rough. “Me too.”

You just looked at each other for a few more seconds. Then, with your hand on the door, you nodded back at him. “Okay. Well, goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight,” he said, soft and quiet. You felt his eyes on you until you were all the way inside.

Once you got upstairs, your room was empty. You went across the hall, and sure enough, Lola was curled up next to Ransom’s pillow. You smiled to yourself then went back to your room, leaving the door open, just a bit, a little dog-sized crack, in case either of them changed their minds.

You shouldn’t have been surprised how quickly things moved after that. If you’d learned anything about him it was that once he’d made up his mind about something, he acted quickly. The next week, Ransom had set up a meeting with a real estate agent—completely unaffiliated with his mother—and a week after that you were looking at houses. It felt surreal, actively making plans for your future family. But as the growth of your stomach became more noticeable every day, that future was starting to feel a lot more like your present.

There were some differences, it’d turned out, in how you and Ransom had pictured that future. You’d had your sites set on somewhere in Boston proper. Ransom’s empty neighborhood only added to your feelings of isolation and you were sick of it. You missed your apartment in downtown LA. and you wanted something urban again. You wanted parks and restaurants and walkability and culture. You wanted noise and activity and life.

Ransom couldn’t understand that. Especially with a baby on the way. He wanted privacy and quiet and space. But Ransom had a car he loved driving. Ransom had a job that got him out of the house everyday. Ransom had never had to worry about feeling isolated.

So you silenced the voice in your head that always sounded like your mom and put your foot down. This new life you were starting together would not involve another house that didn’t have neighbors. A house that made you feel like a ghost. A house that cut you off from society. So you stared Ransom down until he threw his hands up in exasperation.

Your real estate agent Deborah did her best to bridge the gulf between you, mostly looking at inner-ring suburbs that were quieter and upscale without feeling dead. You’d seen a few houses so far and at each one both you and Ransom had found reasons to turn them down. You hoped this one might be different. You were ready to have at least one part of your new life with this baby settled.

The car pulled up in front of a three-story, swell-front house in Brookline. It was constructed from red brick with black trim. There were brightly colored flower beds lining the walk up to the front door. It felt homey, at least from the outside. As much as you tried to focus on taking it all in, you were quickly distracted by the sight of Ransom, already there, pacing in front of the property and growling into his phone. You turned to the driver, asking him to wait there for you, as you weren’t sure if Ransom would be coming home when you were done or would need to return to work. As he nodded and got back in the car, you headed to Ransom who’d ended his conversation and now was shaking his head in frustration.

“Everything okay?” you asked him as you got close.

His shoulders relaxed at the sight of you. “Just fucking Harlan,” he said with an eye roll as he greeted you with a hug. That was something he’d been doing lately. Since that awful dinner at his grandfather’s house. It was nice. It was really nice. “He wants the baby to take his last name.”

That stopped you cold. “What?”

“Yeah,” Ransom scowled. “I think if he had it to do over again, he would have figured out a way to get my name changed when he made me his heir. But he didn’t, so now he wants to correct it with my heir.”

Your hands instinctively went to your belly. What if this baby isn’t your heir? a tiny voice asked. A voice that had been getting bigger ever since Harlan’s toast to your son at that dinner. But saying that out loud felt too much like tempting fate, so instead you voiced a safer anxiety. “The baby will have a different last name from us?”

“Hey, no. Don’t worry. I’ll figure out a way to talk him down. I promise.” He gently placed his hand on the small of your back. “Now, come on, let’s go let Deborah try to convince us that this is the house.”

You nodded, letting your hands relax at your sides, and let him guide you up the front steps to where Deborah was waiting to let you in.

Your first impression was that everything was very beige. It was staged beautifully. But god, you hated the color scheme. The paint, all the fixtures. All so beige. It was oppressive.

Deborah showed you through the house. The finished basement, the semi-open plan living and dining spaces on the first floor, the bedrooms and en suites on the second. It was nice, you supposed, fine. But it just felt like a house. You didn’t know what would push you over into loving it.

So, instead of looking around at the rooms you passed through, you started watching Ransom. You could see his keen eyes taking in every detail. You wondered what he was seeing. More than you were, it seemed. But you couldn’t tell what direction he was leaning. You still found him so hard to read.

Deborah ended the tour on the third floor. “This floor would make a lovely au pair’s suite,” she said with a soft smile toward your pregnant belly. You and Ransom hadn’t talked about that yet, the nanny situation. Only that you both lamented having been completely raised by nannies. “Or if you decide against live-in help, easily convertible into a set of offices.” She looked to you and then Ransom, who was peering around the small common living space. “Well, I’ll let the two of you explore a bit on your own. I’ll be right downstairs if you have any questions.”

You thanked her as she left, then turned to Ransom who was looking at you, a soft smile on his face. “This is the one, right?” he asked you.

“You think?” you asked back, looking around, trying to see what you were missing.

“I do,” he nodded. “I think it’s exactly what we need.”

You wrinkled your nose at the beige walls that surrounded you. “I hate all the colors.”

Ransom gave you a smile that you could only describe as affectionate. It made your stomach swoop oddly. “That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll get a decorator. Have it exactly how we want before we even move in.” He paused and his expression grew more careful. “You really don’t see it?”

You sighed as you looked around again. “I mean, I don’t hate it. And I’m trying, but…” You gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry.”

One last long, careful look at you had him asking, “Can I show you?” with his hand outstretched to take yours.

You only hesitated for a moment before putting your hand in his. “Okay.”

He quickly brought you down to the second floor, his hand warm and snug around your own. He stopped in the hallway. “We can figure out rooms for each of us eventually. You can have the primary if you want. I–“ He abruptly stopped, then shook his head. There was a look in his eyes that you couldn’t read. But then he gestured to the room directly across from the primary and said, “But that’s the nursery.”

You let him lead you inside. It was a large room with a window directly opposite the door. There were built in bookcases on each side of the window, with a low, padded window seat that ran between them. It was lovely.

Ransom came up behind you, close enough that you could feel a hint of his body heat, and pointed, over your shoulder, to one corner. “That’s where the crib will go. Something to match the built-ins.” He moved your attention to the opposite wall. “Some toy chests over there.” And then back to the space next to one of the bookshelves. “And a comfy rocking chair in the corner here. So we can sit with them.”

“Oh,” was all you could say. Tears had started to prick at the corners of your eyes. It wasn’t just that you could see what he was describing. It was that he could see it. That he had thought of the kind of room he wanted for your child. That he so clearly wanted them to be happy.

“We could do a forest theme. Sage and dark green walls, knick knacks on the shelves, get some big stuffed animals.”

“Yeah,” you nodded, trying to keep your emotion out of your voice. “That sounds really nice.”

He grabbed your hand again. “Okay, come on. There’s more.”

He brought you downstairs next, and into the kitchen.

It was large, spacious, with two sliding doors that could separate it from the rest of the house if needed. There was an island with a large gas range on top of it and stools lining one side. It was nice, with all the appliances you could want in a kitchen.

Ransom was watching you take it in. “We’ll have a housekeeper who can prepare meals, of course, but I want this to be a place you can use whenever you want. But only when you want. When the doors are open, I think the sight lines are pretty good to the rest of this level.” He walked over to the breakfast nook that sat under a large window to the backyard, looking at something you couldn’t see. “I really like this,” he said, quietly. “The kid could sit here and color or play or whatever, while you cooked. Or I could sit here with them, and talk to you. Keep you company. I think this could be a really nice place to spend time in.”

You swallowed harshly around a lump in your throat. He was imagining so much. “Yeah,” you agreed, starting to see what he saw. “You’re right. It really could be.”

“Okay,” he said with a soft smile. “One last thing.” Then you let him pull you, a little dazed, into the backyard.

It was bigger than you’d expected, due to it being a corner lot. But you thought the property must have been extended at some point as well. There was a carriage house with the same red brick and black trim as the main house converted into a multi-car garage in the far corner. A paved drive leading from it to the street guarded by a wrought-iron gate. Nearer to the house, there was a small patio, big enough for a dining area. It was beautifully landscaped, surrounded by a tall, thick hedge screen.

“It’s not huge, but big enough I think. Lola would have plenty of room to run around. And maybe we could put a little swing set or something over there, some sort of play area” he gestured back to the dining area, “and you and I could spend nice nights out here, watch the kid play–“

He kept talking. You know he did. But you were so overwhelmed you couldn’t take in anymore. He hadn’t just imagined his own life in this house, with you as a background character. No, he’d imagined the three of you here, as a family, and the way these walls might contain your whole lives together. You were so overcome with feeling. You’d never felt like this before. You lunged for him without a single conscious thought to do it, connecting your lips to his.

Ransom went very still. Shocked. His whole body stiff against yours. Just as you felt him start to relax minutely, you brain finally caught up with your body and you pulled away, taking several steps back. Your hands came up to your mouth in horror. “Oh my god,” you muttered. What had you done? Why had you done that? “I-“ you started and stopped. You wanted to apologize but you didn’t know how to get the words out. And he was standing there, stock still, just staring at you. “I, um,” you swallowed harshly. “You’re, uh, you’re right. This house is ours. Um. You should go tell Deborah. Get the process started. But I–“ You tried to force yourself to breathe. “I have to go.”

And then you ran away, even with him calling after you. Back to the waiting car and then back home.

You beat Ransom home. Of course you did. Hopefully, he’d be gone for a while, getting things settled with Deborah. You didn’t know how you would face him. You fed Lola and let her out, and then you just paced around the lower floor of the house, round and round, before you finally got out your phone and typed a message.

Shit Steve, I think I really fucked up

The three dots to show he was typing appeared immediately, then disappeared, and reappeared.

Give me two minutes

You reacted with a thumbs up and waited. Two minutes later, on the dot, your phone rang. “Hey Steve,” you answered.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, urgently. “Do I need to come out there and beat someone up?”

“No,” you sighed. “This one’s all my fault.”

“Chip, what happened?”

You braced yourself. “I kissed Ransom.”

Steve didn’t say anything in response. For too long. Oh god. You really had fucked up. “Steve?” you asked nervously.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, sounding caught off guard. “I thought– Is that it?”

Your brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean ‘is that it?’”

“I– I guess I don’t really understand what the problem is here. You think you fucked up because you… kissed your husband?”

“No, that’s not– When you say it like that–“ you struggled, then sighed. “You know that’s not how we are.”

There was another long pause from him and when he spoke again his voice was shockingly soft. “Are you sure about that?”

“Steve, I– What are you talking about?”

“Chip, I was there. From everything I saw and everything you’ve told me since, it’s obvious he cares about you. And vice versa.”

This time it was you who was quiet for a moment as you gathered your thoughts. “I know that he cares about me,” you said, and you meant it. You could finally admit that you felt his care every day. “But caring about me isn’t the same thing as wanting that kind of relationship with me. We’re friends and–“ you stopped, not sure how to say exactly what you meant. “We’re friends.”

When he paused this time, the silence was thoughtful. “Okay, Chip. I can tell you're really panicking and I want to help you, but I need you to help me understand why you’re so upset."

“I just–“ You took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears that wanted to form. “I don’t want to have ruined everything.”

“But what if you didn’t?” he asked, his voice gentle. “What if he feels the same way?”

You immediately shook your head, even though he couldn’t see you. “No,” you argued, voice quiet. “No, he can’t. That’s not something I get to have.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, hesitantly.

“I– I’ve always known that that isn’t for me. I– That’s not– Even being friends is more than I ever imagined I’d get to have. I should be so grateful to have a husband who cares about me at all. It feels too greedy to want anything else.”

“Oh, Chipmunk.” His voice was so sad. “It’s okay to want good things for yourself. I want everything good for you. I want you to have it.”

Your eyes were fully watering now. “I don’t think I know how to do that.”

“Listen, you know I hate to say anything nice about Ransom. But I think he really wants to take good care of you. If that’s true, he’d want you to talk to him about this. I think it’ll go better than you expect. I think you can trust him.”

“I want to,” you whispered.

“Talk to him,” he ordered. “Promise me you will.”

“Okay,” you acquiesced, your voice so small.

“It’s going to be okay, Chip.” He sounded so sure. “No matter what happens, it’s going to be okay.”

And for a moment, you were ten again, believing everything your big brother told you. “Okay,” you said. “Thank you.”

“Always,” he said, without hesitation. Then he sighed. “All right. I should probably get back to my meeting.”

“What? Oh no, you didn’t–“

“Stop, this was more important. But I should get back now. Let me know how things go.”

“I will. Thank you, Steve.”

“Love you, Chip. Bye.”

Love you. Bye Steve.” You hung up the phone and tried to hold onto the feeling that things might be all right.

You’d done your best to try to settle yourself down. You’d sat on the couch. You’d picked up the book you were in the middle of and opened it to where you’d left off. But you didn’t read. You couldn’t. Your eyes stayed locked on the front door. You had no idea how this was going to go.

Even with all of your attention on the door, you still startled when it opened and Ransom walked in. He froze, a little, when he noticed you on the couch. He was carrying something. Your eyes flicked to it as you stood up, taking a few steps forward, but still leaving a gulf between you.

“I got you something. To eat,” he said, shockingly timid, gesturing at you with the greasy, white paper bag in his hand. He set it down on the kitchen island and took a step back.

You walked to the island and very carefully opened it. It was a burger, absolutely slathered in peanut butter. With extra mustard, extra pickles, and jalapeños. The exact burger you’d told him you’d been craving.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, “it took me a while to find a place that could do it. Because, you know, it’s disgusting.”

You just stared at it for a long moment, ignoring his teasing. Those feelings welling up inside you again. But no matter how he cared for you, you decided, it was enough. No matter what Steve said. You couldn’t fuck that up. “I, uh– I owe you an apology,” you said nervously, your fingers fidgeting on the counter top in front of you. You felt Ransom’s gaze snap to you, but he didn’t say anything so you continued. “I’m so sorry I kissed you. I never should have done that and it won’t happen again. I’m really sorry.”

You kept your gaze on your hands until the silence stretched on far longer than you were comfortable with. Nervously, you looked up, locking eyes with Ransom. His brow was furrowed. He looked upset. Was the apology not enough?

He stared at you for too long, like he was trying to find something in your expression, but you weren’t sure what. Then, finally, he asked, “What, exactly, are you apologizing for?” When your only response was to look at him in confusion—you thought you’d been clear—he rephrased. “Why are you sorry you kissed me?”

“Because–“ It felt like your breath was caught in your throat. The moment suddenly felt charged, for reasons you didn’t fully understand. “Because I know that’s not something you want and I–“

“I think,” he cut you off, voice low and so serious, “that you have no idea what I actually want.” And then, before you could parse what he meant, he surged forward, taking your face in both hands, and kissed you.

It took a moment for your brain to register what was happening, it was so far beyond anything you’d expected. But then you caught up, feeling his soft lips on yours, his hands gently cradling your head, the warmth of his body seeping into you. You let out a little gasp, finally understanding, feeling it for real, and he took it as invitation to deepen the kiss, his tongue tentatively entering your mouth. You sank into it, taking everything he was giving you. You’d never been kissed like this, never with such feeling. All you could do was ride its wave.

Far too soon, Ransom pulled away. But not far. He pressed his forehead to yours, his lips still so close, and whispered, “What I want is whatever you’re willing to give me. Not a single thing more, but not anything less, either. I want anything you might want.”

“Really?” you asked, your voice so small, overwhelmed. You could feel the tears starting to gather in your eyes, and you futilely tried to blink them away.

“Really,” he answered, and the certainty in his voice moved through you, as he brushed a tear off your face with his thumb. “I promise. Anything you want. Always.”

You took a deep breath. “I want to be a family with you,” you whispered. And with those words, you felt something inside of you, something that you hadn’t fully realized was undone, settle for the first time since you’d sat in Joseph’s office and been forced to sign that contract.

“Me too,” he whispered back. “Let’s be a family.”

And then he kissed you again. Like he meant it. And you believed him.

A/N 2: 😭😭😭 It only took eleven chapters but they finally did it, you guys!!!! I hope you love this as much as I do. Please let me know what you think!

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“Mother, please you’ve been dealing with this for weeks..” you beg kneeling down by her side of the bed grabbing her hand. “Please let me just go speak with the healer again” you ask. She closes her eyes leaning her head back before opening them again and looking at you “y-you worry to much my heart. I am fine, pl-please go. Before you are late for your duties” she huffs out, breaths uneven. You shake your head, face full of concern. But you listen to her and leave. Making sure to speak with Jeanie on the way out who offers to check in on her for you while you work.

It’s been weeks now, what started off as a cold long before the prince had arrived back has turned into a lung rattling cough that just won’t go away. The teas no longer work and you hear the gravely sound in her chest when she breathes. She should’ve been resting more long before now. But your mother is nothing if not stubborn. She’s been working all the events recently. After the princes welcome home ball she had insisted on working the events that came after. The long nights finally catching up to her have now caused her to be stuck in bed for the past two days.

A small part of you wondered if she had taken the shifts because of you. Because all the events recently were for him. Were to find a bride. Had she been taking them so you didn’t have to see? It broke your heart to imagine she had been pushing herself so much just to protect you. Shaking your head, trying to push the thoughts away you make your way outside heading for the stables.

Pulling open the rickety door you grab the bucket next to it and fill it with grain, heading back out to the rather large pasture on the other side of the stable to the trough, dumping the grain into it. Walking back to the stable you pull open the large doors on the side closets to the pasture. Propping the open and stepping in you pull open the gates to the four horses stalls, clicking your tongue calling for them to follow you out. Three follow, but one is missing. Alpine. James’s horse. You walk back inside the now empty stable and to alpines stall. She’s not there. James must’ve taken her out. It’s awfully late for a ride.

You brush it off and head back to the pasture. The other three horses now eating you grab two other buckets and head for the well. Sun beating down on your back you trek the few feet it takes to get to the water pump. It sits atop of a hill that leads down to the lake. Absentmindedly you set the buckets down, one placed underneath the spout and grab the handle of the pump. Giving it a few pulls the water eventually spurts out. Your minding your own business. lost in thought full of worry for your mother, and going through your mental checklist of everything you have to get done today. You don’t notice two bodies down by the lakes. Not until you hear a giggle.

Looking up you squint glancing down towards the sound. It’s James, but he isn’t alone. He is walking with someone. A lady. Looking harder to make out who. Lady Elizabeth. They walk side by side. Alpine getting pulled by her reins on the other side of James. They are talking… and laughing. And coming this way. Shit.

Abandoning the buckets, you quickly beeline it for the large tree that also sits on top of the hill. Hiding on the side they won’t see you from. You press yourself against it as their voices start to become clearer. “You know, your highness I’ve never been bucked off a horse before” Elizabeth states, voice attempting to sound nonchalant but you can tell the bitterness in it. “Yes.. alpine is.. she can be a tad difficult around new people” James mutters. You hear the movement of their feet in the grass. Coming closer. They walk a few more steps before they seemingly stop.

Shuffling quietly you shift so you can peak out behind the tree. They stand not too far from the water pump. Facing each other now. “I can see that” Elizabeth adds, giving a light chuckle. “But besides my now sore bottom I am looking forward to tonight” she says, her hand reaching out the touch James’s arm. He looks down at it and then back at her “as am I” he says softly, but he takes a step back. Glancing around. You see when he notices the abandoned buckets you had left.

“Shall I expect more dances with you again?” Elizabeth’s voice cuts through the air, his head snapping back to look at her. “If time allows it” he says rather rushed. He glances towards the tree then, and you quickly duck back behind it. Silently cursing yourself. he didn’t see you did he? “Well then I look forward to seeing you” Elizabeth says and James offers her a farewell. You hear light foot steps walking away then. But only one pair. “I saw you” James voice cuts through the air. Damn it. “You can come out now”

Slowly you step out from behind the tree. Hands clasping in front of you as you bow to him “your highness” you say looking down at the grass. “Did you forget something?” He asks pointing towards the buckets. You glance at them “I was filling them.. for the horses” you explain. He nods “and then you ended up hiding behind a tree?” He asks eyes squinting at you taking a step closer. “I umm I-“ you stutter and he takes another step towards you “were you spying on me?” He asks, his face nothing but serious. you snap your eyes to his “no! I was getting water for the horses! Which yours shouldn’t even be out right now!” You exclaim chest heaving slightly at his accusation.

He looks at you for a moment before his lips crack into a smile. You squint at him before your mouth drops open slightly “your messing with me” you breath out, he covers his mouth and chuckles. Shaking your head you step around him heading back towards the buckets. He turns, eyes following you as you move. “You never were very good at hiding” he states and you glance at him as you pull the pump handle to finish filling the first bucket.

You don’t reply, and he doesn’t act like he’s leaving anytime soon. Glancing at him again as you switch out buckets, he’s petting alpines neck and looking up towards the sky. “Looks like it might rain” he points out. you look up. He is right, clouds are quickly rolling in. “You should get back inside then” you say stopping what you are doing once again and walk over to him to grab alpines reins, but he pulls them out of your reach. “What are you doing?” He asks.

“I’m going to take her back to her stall” you say, trying to reach for them again but he moves them away. “I’ll do it” he says quickly, “no, I will. You need to head back to the castle” you say in a slight matter of fact tone. He cocks a eyebrow at you “did you just tell me no?” He asks and you all but almost glare at him before attempting another reach for her reins which he dodges and shifts moving alpine a little further away from you. Huffing you try again and he steps alpine out of your way. She jerks her head slightly at the abrupt movements “you are stressing her out” you snap crossing your arms over your chest.

James scoffs a laugh “I think the one aggressively trying to reach for her reins is stressing her out” he says and you scoff back at him “she is perfectly comfortable with me. Who do you think has been taking care of her for over a decade while you were gone?” You state putting your hands on your hips and tilting your head at him. Before he can respond though there is a rather bright crack of lightning over head that’s quickly followed by booming thunder. The abrupt noise causes alpine to buck up, James losing his grip and drops her reins. She neighs loudly stomping on the ground before she bucks up again. Way too close to you. James quickly grabs your arm pulling you out of the way. The jerking movement and uneven ground causing you both to fall back as you hit his chest.

You land almost completely on his lap as he lands on his bottom with a grunt. Before you can even begin to think of how wrong this must look another boom from the sky goes off and alpine shuffles before taking off down the hill. In the opposite direction. “Alpine!” You shout and quickly get up sprinting after her. James shouts after you but you’re more worried about the horse you were supposed to be taking care of at the moment currently booking it towards the more wooded area. You grip the skirt of your dress with one hand hiking it up so you’re able to run easier without tripping.

Alpine jumps a fallen tree and skirts around another weaving into the trees. “Alpine!” You shout again. slowing slightly as you approach the tree line. Careful to step over the fallen tree and brush. It startles you slightly when you hear James not to far behind you call for her too. Not expecting him to follow. It’s starts to sprinkle then, before another flash of lightning hits and it down pours. You gasp at the sudden cold but keep moving through the trees calling for her.

Eventually you spot her, reins caught and tangled in a thicker spot of brush. She’s bucking trying to get out. You quickly go over to her, hushing her and grabbing the upper part of her rein steadying her. James comes up behind you heaving “She’s caught on something” you shout over the heavy rain beating down on the three of you. James nods and squints walking around to where her reins at tangled. He pulls a small blade from his boot and starts cutting at the brush.

you pet alpines neck, trying to keep her calm as he cuts her out. Soon her reins snap free and she takes a few steps back pulling at her reins but you keep a firm hand on them and hush her gently “we have to get back!” James shouts and grabs the other side of her reins. You both walk quickly back towards the stables. James gets her back into her stall while you rush to the pasture to usher the other three inside. You close the large doors and James assists you with getting the others into their own stalls.

Taking in a heavy breath you sigh leaning against the wall of the stable closing your eyes for a second. You open them at the sound of James grunting. He’s shoving off his waistcoat, revealing is drenched almost see through white under shirt. He goes to remove it and you turn around quickly “what are you doing?” You ask in a rushed tone. “Ringing out my shirt it’s drenched” he says nonchalantly “why have you turned away?” He asks and your eyes widen. “We-we need to get back to the castle” you stutter ignoring his question. He laughs “I am not running through that again, we’ll just wait here” he states and you turn then, eyes practically bulging out of your head “what?”

Your breath catches at the sight of him. He’s looking down as he squeezes the water from his shirt, but he’s standing straight and by god. He really has… changed. He’s damn sculpted. Your eyes catch onto a drop of water that trails down his chest all the way to his toned belly and towards his- Jesus Christ woman look away!

You snap yourself out of it and glance off to the side, now finding the wood of the stalls interesting. Why do your cheeks feel warm? “I’m not walking through that again, you shouldn’t either. Hopefully it’ll let up soon” he says looking up at you now. He squints at you, taking in your demeanor. “Are you uncomfortable?” He asks and shake your head perching your lips. “No.. just. I have to get back, I have more to do and someone will start to wonder where I am” you explain, trying to sound natural while still avoiding looking at him.

“I’ll just explain what’s happened. No repercussions will fall on you” he states, like it’s that easy. But for him you guess it is. You only offer him a nod then. “Are you sure you’re alright?” He asks taking a step closer to you, his shirt hanging in his hand at his side. You glance at him from the side and nod again “yes, just- you should put your shirt back on” you rush out. James looks down at it in his hand and then back at you letting out a low chuckle “you are acting strange… because I don’t have a shirt on?” He smirks “it’s improper! And if someone sees-“ “no one is going to come out here in this weather and I am not a fan of wearing rain soaked clothes” he cuts you off and takes another step towards you.

You shift slightly turn more away from him “look at me” he says and you shake your head, wrapping your arms around your middle. He takes another step, and you feel the warmth of him at your back now. He says your name softly “please, look at me” he whispers. You take in a shaky breath slowly turning to face him. Your eyes flicking up to meet his. He looks more serious now. Bringing his hand up he gently brings it to brush your cheek. “What are you-“ “you’re freezing” he mutters cutting you off. Dropping the shirt his other hand comes up to rest on the other side of your face. Rubbing both his thumbs along your skin and tilting your head back slightly, forcing you to look at him more directly.

Your breathing is uneven, and your stomach feels as though a million butterflies are trying to escape it. He leans his head closer to yours and instinctively you try to move back but he stops you “don’t move” he whispers. You blink at him, shaking slightly as he gets closer. So close you can feel his breath on your lips. Your breathing picks up more. Brain reeling. You panic. “Are you courting her?” You ask rushed. He shifts back slightly looking you in the eyes again. He swallows hard. Chest heaving now you gently bring your shaking hands to where his rest on your face, grabbing his wrists and slowly removing them “this isn’t right” you state voice shaking. Taking a step away you let go of him.

He says your name but you ignore it “this isn’t right… you-you’re courting her and I-i need to get back” you go to reach for the door of the stable. Quickly walking past him he calls your name again and you whip your head around to look at him “why would you do that?” You ask shaking “why.. why? Everything was fine before you came back. I was fine. My mother was fine. I knew what I am and what I should do and now I-“ you cut yourself off, taking a deep breath. “I wish you hadn’t done that” you say, voice breaking. Swinging the door open you step out.

The rain has lightened up and you quickly walk, wiping your eyes. Not really sure if it’s tears or rain you’re trying to wipe away. James shouts after you and you glance back. He’s stepping out of the stables shirt thrown back on and he’s shoving his arms through his waistcoat as he jogs after you. You turn forward again not stopping, picking up the pace a little bit. You hear him groan and run up to you. Quickly getting in front of you and sticking his hands out to stop you. “I’m sorry. I am. I don’t know- so much is happening and you’ve been distant-“ you cut him off

“distant? I am distant because I am not a lady. I am not a duchess. I am not someone who gets to talk with you whenever I like because if I do I could lose a ear. Or get my tongue cut out. I don’t get to enjoy fine clothes or fancy feast or balls. I serve. I am a servant. I am nothing more than someone who picks up after you. We are not friends and I am not someone you get to do… whatever that was with. Because for you it’d be a slap on the wrist maybe less but for me.. I could be killed.” You rant. Chest heaving as hot tears roll down your cheeks mixing with the rain. “You are a prince. Eventually to be king. You should remember that” you finish shaking.

James opens his mouth, but closes it again dropping his arms to his sides. He opens it again taking a breath but shouting cuts through the air. Looking behind him you see Jeanie running towards you calling your name. You move past James and meet her half way. “Jeanie? What’s the matter?” You ask as she slows in front of you. “It-it’s your mother… you must come now”

You both make it to his chambers, your small bodies quietly sneaking through his door as to not wake the guard posted outside his room. Bucky shuts it softly with a sigh of relief, he takes your hand again and you both move for his bed.

This isn’t the first time during a storm the young prince has come to find you. You’ve grown up together, granted you were both born into different lives but that didn’t stop the bond you two had. Your father was a knight, But was killed for treason. To spare you and your mother the Queen allowed you both to stay in the castle and work as servants for the crown.

When you first came here you were only three, Bucky was five. The princess, Rebecca being the same age as you, the Queen allowed you to attend some of her courses with her while your mother worked around the castle. Becca was sweet and always made sure you were right by her. Especially during dance lessons which were your favorite.

Bucky, even at the age of five. Was attending lessons on how to rule a kingdom. It wasn’t until almost two years later, during the night you had snuck out of your small room you shared with your mother, feeling restless and craving a snack. You were planning on making a quick trip to the kitchens to snag a biscuit the chef always left out for the guards who worked during the night.

But on your way, in the dark hall you heard sniffling. Your brows furrowed together, your small face scrunching with curiosity. You followed the sound to find the young prince hidden behind a pillar, one of many that decorate the hall.

“Are you alright your ma-majesty?” Your small voice asks, concentrating hard on the last word so that it is pronounced correctly. He snaps his head up, quickly wiping his eyes with the back of his hands “yes. Go away.” He snaps turning away from you more.

“But you are crying” you point out “my momma says if you see someone crying sometimes they just need a hug. To get the sad out” you extend your small arms, smiling softly. He turns his head slowly, looking at you over his shoulder. “I don’t hug servants” he mumbles. “It’s not proper” he adds as he moves to stand.

You drop your arms back to your sides “What’s proper?” You ask head tilted in confusion. He looks at you, head pointed down slightly. “I’m not really sure. But father says I’m not supposed to be kind to servants” he admits, picking at his sleep shirt sleeve.

“Oh” you mutter, “but can you talk to them?” You ask. He shrugs “yeah, to ask for something” you smile then “then why don’t you just ask for a hug? Then it’d be pro-proper” you say matter of factly struggling with the last word slightly. Bucky smiles then. It’s small but there. he glances around the pillar making sure no one is passing before he whispers “may-may I have a hug?” He asks.

You nod quickly and wrap your small arms around his torso. He’s not much taller than you, but he’s tall enough that his chin can rest on top of your head. “Is the sad gone now?” You ask quietly. He slowly wraps his arms around you and nods “I think so” he says and steps back after a few seconds.

Lightening strikes outside the castle walls, causing Bucky to jump slightly. You look from him to the stain glass window where rain is hitting against it. “Do you not like the rain?” You ask and he shakes his head “no… it’s loud and I can’t sleep when it rains..” he mumbles looking down. “I don’t like it either, when I can’t sleep my momma plays with my hair or rubs my back, OH! or sometimes she’ll sing a song! I could do that for you!” You say getting a little excited.

Bucky’s eyes widen a little, “you would?” He asks softly and you nod, “mhmm”. That was the first night you had ever shared a bed with someone other than your mother. A scared seven year old Prince, who let a five year old servant girl rub he’s back until you both fell asleep. That morning you had woken up back in your bed though. You never knew how you got back there but your five year old mind brushed it off. It wasn’t the last time though. You spent many nights running around the castle or sneaking into his chambers with the young prince, comforting each other during the rainy nights and others just spending time together to be kids. Kids without roles that were placed on them at birth.

Now, at the ages ten and thirteen here you are again. Bucky sneaking you into his chambers on a stormy night. You both sit on his bed facing each other, “did you hear?” He asks, fiddling with his thumbs. “Hear what?” You question. “My father’s sending me away.. to a school in the east.. says I’ll become a proper prince there and that they’ll teach me how to be a king..” you frown “in the east? Where in the east? For how long?” You ask quickly, your breath becoming uneven. Bucky shrugs “somewhere called.. Mo-Moldova? I don’t know when I’ll be back…” he sniffles slightly, head pointed down to his lap.

You shake your head, taking in a shaky breath as your eyes fill with tears “but.. but you can’t go..”. He looks up at you as a tear slides down your cheek “I have too, my father ordered it.” He states “but it’s not fair!” You exclaim “you’re my best friend..” you add sadly. Something changes in him then. Something you’ve seen a little of before in recent months but it’s never been directed towards you. Not until now.

“I am not your friend.. I am your prince and soon to be king..” he mumbles. Voice sounding bitter now. “W-what? Bucky-“ he cuts you off standing from his bed now. “My name is not Bucky it is James! Prince James! And you will address me as such!” He snaps, your eyes widen at his out burst. “Get out! Get out! You-you nasty servant! Get out before I call my guard!” He shouts pointing towards his door.

Your breath quickens, and you scramble to stand hopping down off of his bed, running to his door. You pull it open and step out, but glance back once. His back is still towards you and his shoulders are heaving. You shut the door then and with tears streaming down your cheeks you run all the way back down to the servants quarters. All the way back to the small room you shared with your mother. That night, as your mother lay quietly next to you in the small bed you wept quietly. That was the first time a boy has ever made you cry.

——

Now, thirteen years later. You have grown into a young woman. You now assist with chores around the castle and sometimes, you assist the princess. Becca has always been a constant, besides your mother she is a warm comfort during your long days. She’s someone you are able to confide in without worry of repercussions.

Currently you are helping her with her hair. Working on a beautiful updo. “Did you hear?” Becca asks softly, fiddling with a bracelet on her wrist as she glances at you through the mirror in front of her. You smile shaking your head softly “hear what?” You ask “dear James is coming back, should be here in a day or so is what mother says” she explains smiling. Your hands slow on her hair slightly “oh?” You say softly and she nods “yes! Can’t wait to see him, he’s been gone for so long” Becca adds and you hum in response, choosing to stay quiet.

She senses the change in you. Squinting at you through the mirror before turning around to face you. “Aren’t you excited?” She asks. You remove your hands from her hair looking down at her from where she sits. “Of course… it’s just, you know how our last talk was” you explain. The day after it happened you had confided in her about it during a dance lesson you were allowed to go to. Rebecca’s face softens then and she gently grabs your hand in hers “I know, and I know it hurt him just as much. But he does care” she says softly.

You shake your head, offering a small smile as you place your hands on her shoulders and gently turn her to face the mirror again. “I doubt he feels that way now..” you say as your hands begin fixing her hair again. Becca laughs lightly “then you truly don’t know my brother”

——

Two days passed by quickly, and the castle was buzzing with the excitement of the princes return. Some wondering how he’d react being back after being away for so long and others, mostly the younger servants and ladies maids gossiping about how he must look and if he’s as handsome as some say he is now. You were just wondering if hopefully… he’d remember you.

A small part of you always dreamed of this day, when he’d return and things between you would be as they were before that night so long ago. But you knew, deep down. It was a foolish thought. A dream.

“My dear hurry with those linens, we haven’t got much time before he arrives and we are all to be in the entrance hall for his arrival” your mother rushes, shoving a basket of clean linens into your hands and effectively snapping you out of your thoughts. “Yes mother” you nod. Adjusting your grip on the basket you make the all too familiar walk to his room. His chambers. The one for years now has been empty.

Stepping in felt like stepping into a memory. Everything relatively the same besides a few things missing that he had taken with him before he left. You hadn’t stepped back in here since that night. Letting out a heavy sigh you begin undressing the bed, replacing the old linens with the new. Making sure there was no wrinkles or creases. Taking your time to straighten and fluff the pillows. As you finish you slowly leave the room. On your way out taking one last look.

As you make your way back down the hall your mother calls for you, her dress shirts gathered slightly in her hand as she approaches you in a rushed jog “my dear hurry! The carriage has just arrived!” She exclaims, and you both rush to the servants quarters, quickly setting down the baskets you both carry before turning and rushing to the entrance hall where other servants and maids lineup on each side of the grand double doors. Guards stand in a stiff line in front of you. Heads stuck looking straight ahead while you and the other servants behind them stand heads pointed down with your hands clasped in front of you. You were never to make direct eye contact with a royal.

Trumpets blared and cheers roared outside the castle, signaling the prince’s arrival. After what felt like hours but was only minutes the grand doors opened. Revealing the royal family as they walk in together. You glance your eyes up, trying to get a glimpse of them. From what you can see, the prince.. James, and his father were in front. The Queen and Rebecca walking not too far behind them.

They stop in the middle, the king announces his son’s return “the prince has returned!” He exclaims proudly, all the guards and servants bow. In unison we all welcome him back “welcome home our prince” before standing straight again. You glance up once again, careful to not move your head. You spot him through the bodies of guards in front of you. He has grown. He’s taller, a lot taller. Broader too and his hair now hangs softly at his shoulders. He looks strong. He looks like someone who would be king.

He’s looking around, staring at the rows of guards and servants before him. His eyes pass over you without a thought, before.. for a spilt second they come back to you and your eyes lock onto each other. And for that small moment your heart picked up its pace. Does he remember me? But the thought was quickly stopped. Your mother’s elbow poking at your side snapping you back into your proper place.

The sheets felt unusually cool to the touch, buried in Egyptian cotton, your hand reached to the other side of the bed— empty — is he not in bed anymore?!

You were up before you could even put on your glasses on first, "shoot shoot shoot!". The scent of fresh coffee lingered in the air, that meant he was one foot out the door if he hasn't left already.

The front door slammed shut, the echo of it like a held breath finally released.

With a reluctant sigh you sat on the bed, looking into your beautiful papered walls; mentally preparing yourself for the day that would come.

Since you didn't have to cook for John anymore, you opted for a simple breakfast, a piece of toast and a soft boiled egg, but of course not before making the bed, ironing his pajamas and robe, refilling his liquor cabinet and placing a new package of his favorite cigars — which you hated the smell of — sometimes you wondered if he noticed the small things you did for him.

With your hair securely in rollers, and a special little red dress you wore the first time you met John, you tweaked your eyebrows until you accidentally drew blood, maybe he'd like that shade of blush on you, no no no, too much red, you know what they say…

A fair amount of time later you walk up to the full length mirror, feeling like a hundred bucks! that is until you carefully examine yourself — the hair —horrified you pull the pins out of your hair without a second thought, today you had to be perfect.

With a fresh new look and determined to make the best of today, you decided some ice cream would hep with the summer heat, you bargained with yourself that the cleaning could wait just a little.

Wiping the dust off your grandmother's hand-cranked ice cream maker, you put yourself to work, on your counter you lined up sugar, eggs, heavy cream, strawberries from your garden and of course some milk.

Earlier in the morning the milkman dropped off fresh bottles, you wondered why Bucky hadn't dropped by to say hello, probably just busy with Mrs Scavo down the street, or according to Carol Danvers he's been making extra special deliveries to Wanda Maximoff, a real operator that one.

As you cranked, you wondered why those women had such an easy time cheating on their husbands, sure Bucky had eyes that made you want to swim in the ocean, a smile that could make you feel like you're in front of the sun… soft hair that you'd love to rake your fingers through while he sleeps next to you-

Your hands stopped moving — gosh, what a silly crush! — Not even that, curiosity, you decided to call it. Surely it was normal to wonder if so many women raved on and on about him, your marriage was safe and you loved your husband, — he gave you everything — you reminded yourself.

You churned until your shoulder ached and the handle grew stiffer with every turn, focusing on making the perfect consistency instead of the real reason you decided to make the sweet treat in the first place.

With the ice cream locked away in the freezer, you saw the time and you felt your stomach drop, if you wanted to get everything done on your list you'd need a miracle.

You would never tell this to another living soul but you found it aggravating to clean such a big house, you felt ungrateful for even thinking it, it was any woman's dream to take care of such a lovely home, you tried to make it your own, to imagine your children playing and laughing; you always wanted a big family, but you still haven't been able to get pregnant, maybe buying such a big house jinxed it, you told John as much and he laughed in your face, even after 5 years of marriage, you still weren't used to such nice things, you felt out of place in your own home.

A small part of you, the voice you rarely let speak its mind, felt relieved you haven't been able to carry a son for John, you loved him of course but-

Shaking your head you caught yourself standing at the sink with the water running, not sure how long you'd been there, with a sigh you took off your gloves, —the cleaning would get done so much faster if you lived in a smaller house.—

You pick up his shirt to smell the neck, powdery and sour of course, what kind of self respecting- wait no, you're not mad at her. You should focus all of your anger on your idiot of a husband.

Moving from room to room, dusting and sweeping, finally the last thing you had to do was laundry. As you picked up clothes to put on the basket, there's a particular smell in one of John's shirts that caught your attention. It was unfamiliar, powdery, sharp.

It wasn't yours.

You stood there for a long moment, the shirt still in your hands, the smell of it settling into something you couldn't understand. Powdery. Sharp. The kind of perfume a woman wears when she wants to be remembered. You knew it wasn't L'Air du Temps — too bold for that — and it certainly wasn't Chanel, whoever she was, had no taste. You almost pitied her.

You folded the shirt and put it in the basket with the rest.

The roast was resting on the counter when you heard his key in the door. You had set the table the way he liked it — napkins folded, glasses polished, the good place mats — and changed into something presentable, something that didn't look like you'd spent the afternoon unraveling.

"Something smells good," John said, the way he always did, dropping his briefcase by the door without looking at you.

"Pot roast." You smoothed your apron and carried his plate to the table. "Sit down."

He loosened his tie and settled into his chair with the comfortable authority of a man who had never once questioned his place in the world. You poured his drink without being asked.

You always did.

The conversation moved the way it always did over dinner — his day, Henderson's incompetence, the traffic on Millbrook Avenue. You listened with your chin resting lightly in your palm, nodding at the right moments, laughing softly at the right places. Picture perfect wife.

"Carol Danvers called today," you offered, when the silence stretched a little too long.

"Mm." He cut his meat without looking up.

It was somewhere between the second glass of bourbon and the end of dinner that he said it — the way he always eventually said it — casual as a change in weather.

"She is expecting again, isn't she?" He reached for his glass, ignoring anything you had to say. "Third one."

You kept your smile exactly where it was. "Yes, she is."

"Three years younger than you." He swirled his drink. Not looking at you. Never quite looking at you when he said things like this. "Funny how these things work out for some people."

Right on time.

"It is," you agreed pleasantly, and stood to clear his plate.

In the kitchen you ran the water hot — hotter than necessary — and stood over the sink scrubbing a dish that was already clean. Through the small window above the faucet the night had settled dark and still over Waiting Willow Lane. Across the street a light was on in the living room, blue and quiet behind their curtains, you wondered if they ever felt as miserable as you did now.

You knew what perfume it was, you just hadn't wanted to name it yet.

You set the dish in the rack and reached for the next one.

You asked about his secretary on the way to bed — her name, how she was managing with the new filing system — and watched his face for just a fraction of a second twitch before he answered. He was a decent liar. You had married a decent liar and spent five years becoming a better one.

Goodnight, you said.

Goodnight, he said.

The morning came the way mornings do after nights like that — indifferent and bright, the sun spilling through the curtains without permission.

Like muscle memory, despite your anguish you did your hair and makeup quickly, cooked him a delicious breakfast and packed his lunch, all with a graceful smile.

As he shut the door on his way out you just stood there for a moment, as the house settled into its particular morning quiet, and then you moved.

You made coffee you didn't drink, stood at the kitchen window in your robe and watched the sprinkler next door sweep back and forth across a lawn that looked exactly like yours, funny. As hard as you tried to locate something useful inside your chest — anger, resolution, a plan — you came up with nothing.

He gave you everything, you reminded yourself.

The thought felt different than it used to.

When he bell rang you hesitated to answer, despite having your hair and makeup done, you felt as if you were the living dead, so when it rang again you pulled your silk robe tighter and opened the door.

"Fresh milk, straight from the farm!"

Bucky Barnes stood on your doorstep with two glass bottles tucked under one arm and a smile that had no business being that easy this early in the morning. He was already in his whites — sleeves rolled to the elbow despite the hour — and his hair perfectly soft in the morning light.

"Morning," he said, adjusting his tone slightly, the way people do when they realize they've walked into something quieter than they expected.

"Good morning." You held the door open a little wider. An invitation, "You brought me that butter I wanted?"

He tilted his head, just slightly. Something shifted behind his eyes — curiosity, or recognition — and then he smiled again, softer this time, and crossed the threshold, "of course!".

The kitchen felt smaller with him in it, he set the bottles on the counter and stood there with his cap in his hands while you poured two cups of coffee without asking, because it gave you something to do with yours.

"Lovely home," he said, and he meant it — you could tell the difference, he wasn't performing the way some men did, eyes moving around a room cataloguing what things cost. He was just looking, genuinely, the way people look at things they find beautiful.

"Thank you." You set his cup in front of him. "I try to make it feel like one."

He looked at you over the rim of his cup and didn't say anything for a moment. That was unexpected, it wasn't uncomfortable, surprising actually, most men filled silences, Bucky seemed comfortable in it.

"I heard you've been making special deliveries," you said lightly, settling onto a chair. "All over Waiting Willow." You paused, smiling into your cup. "Mrs. Maximoff must go through an awful lot of milk."

Something crossed his face — not guilt exactly, amusement, maybe, edged with something more careful. "You been talking to Carol Danvers."

"Carol Danvers talks to everyone."

He laughed at that — a real one, low and easy — and set his cup down. "And what do you think about it?"

You turned your cup slowly in its saucer. "I think you're a real operator," you said pleasantly, "the kind that practices in mirrors."

He looked at you for a long moment. Then — "And yet here I am in your kitchen."

"And yet," you agreed.

The silence that followed was a different, the dangerous kind that you recognized at a distance, the way you recognize weather changing before you can see it.

"I made ice cream yesterday," you said, standing before it could settle any further. "Strawberry. From the garden." You moved to the freezer and retrieved the metal container, setting it on the counter between you, deliberate. "Have some."

Not even waiting to be asked a second time, Bucky took a spoon and scooped some pink delight. He went very still for a moment, "is it good? I haven't tried it yet".

He looked up at you with an expression that was almost accusatory. "You made it and didn't try it?"

"I got distracted."

"That's a crime." He said it so seriously that you almost laughed. He was already feeding you a spoonful before you could even react. The strawberry hit your tongue cold and sweet and perfectly balanced and you understood immediately why he'd looked at you like that.

"Oh," you said.

"Right? It's so much better than store bought", he took another spoonful but his eyes remained on you, attentive, you felt seen.

You hadn't noticed you'd gotten some on your chin until his thumb was already there — just below the corner of your mouth — catching it with the kind of ease that suggested he hadn't thought about it either. His hand didn't move away immediately, neither did you.

Suddenly the summer heat became suffocating and his eyes dropped, just briefly, to your lips.

The percolator chose that exact moment to let out a sharp hiss from the stove top and you both came back to the kitchen at the same time, the morning light, the two coffee cups, now unfrozen.

Bucky pulled his hand back slowly and cleared his throat, reaching for his cap.

"Best ice cream on Waiting Willow Lane," he said, and his voice was only slightly hoarse.

You smiled as your heart beat in your throat, walked him to the door and stood on the threshold watching him go back down the path to his truck, bottles clinking softly against each other. He didn't look back, but the air felt different, you knew he would be back.

You stood there long after he had turned the corner, your heart doing something unreasonable in your chest, your thumb pressed lightly to your own chin where his had been.

Curiosity, you reminded yourself.

You went back inside and washed both coffee cups, feeling really curious.

Days had passed and for days you couldn't stop thinking about the infamous milkman.

You felt despicable for even thinking how his lips would feel across your skin, if his arms would be strong enough to hold you; over and over you thought of the way you almost took his thumb in your tongue, your mouth watered imagining the saltiness.

Despite your husband's disregard for your marriage, you still hated the thought of betraying your vows, you didn't know if you'd be able to live with the guilt.

But that damn voice, it told you things in the dead of night, you'd find yourself rubbing your legs together imagining Bucky whispering terrible terrible things in your ear.

Would he be a gentle lover, or would he take your virtue like something that belonged to him?

Was it worth destroying your marriage?

Then again, John already had.

You had every intention of keeping your distance, set boundaries…

But this morning you woke up with a particular ache between your legs, too painful to ignore. Staring at the ceiling you tried not to wake your husband, almost praying over and over that you felt nothing.

It wasn't working.

At 4:37 in the morning you gave up entirely, pulled your robe around you, and went downstairs.

The street was the kind of dark that exists only in the hour before the world wakes up— completely still and strangely serene. You sat on the front steps of your porch with your knees pulled up and your glasses on watching the street all the way down the Lane where the road curved out of sight.

You heard his truck before you saw it. That familiar low rumble, unhurried, moving through the dark in peace.

He almost didn't see you.

The truck rolled to a stop in front of the house and Bucky climbed out with two bottles and made it halfway up the path before pulled up short.

He looked at you for a moment. Then at the window behind you. Then back at you.

"You're up early," he said carefully.

"Couldn't sleep."

He nodded slowly, the way people nod when they know that isn't the whole answer. He set the bottles down by the door and instead of going back to his truck like you thought he would he stayed where he was, cap in his hands again,raked his fingers through his hair and waited.

You looked at the end of the street where the sky was beginning — barely, there to consider the color blue. —

"Would it be so wrong?," you asked quietly, shame be damned.

The silence that followed had weight to it.

"No," he answered.

"Then why are you looking at me like that?"

With a huff he walked to the other side of the porch, you followed shortly.

Bucky kept his distance, avoiding your eyes, you had to swallow the urge to grab him and make him look at you, as if he sensed your frustration after looking out the dark street he finally set his eyes on yours.

"Because I actually like you," he said simply. "And I don't want to be something that happens to you."

Your chest did something complicated.

"It wouldn't—"

"Don't tell me it wouldn't hurt you." He said it gently but without apology. "All these other housewives, they don't care about me— and I see the way you look at me."

"You look at me too!" you whispered defensively, feeling your cheeks heat up.

You took your glasses off and cleaned them on the hem of your robe for something to do with your hands.

Put them back on. The street came back into focus — the identical lawns, the sleeping houses, the tulips along your front path standing perfectly still in the windless dark.

"I'm not asking you for anything complicated" you said finally. "I just—" You stopped. "I'm so tired of being careful."

He turned and looked at you then, really looked, the way he had in the kitchen days ago, like he was trying to find uncertainty.

"I won't break," you said.

Something shifted in his expression — something that had been holding itself back — As he moved toward you, you walked back until you hit a wall, the distance between you on that porch became a different kind of distance entirely.

"Your husband is right upstairs," he said. His voice was very low, almost like a warning.

"I know."

As the smell of his cologne overwhelmed you in the most delicious way, he slowly raised his hand towards your face, his rough fingers a stark contrast against your soft cheeks, it made your knees weak.

The sky had gone from black to the deep bruised blue, almost morning. Somewhere down the street you could hear the faint chirp of the birds waking up.

His other hand found the doorframe beside your head and the world narrowed down to the small warm space between you and the thrill of it — the sleeping street, the dark windows, John right upstairs, the whole of Waiting Willow Lane not yet awake — you've never felt more alive.

His mouth found yours slowly, the kiss was sweet and gentle, the kind that you dream when you're a girl, but then there's a spark of guilt that unconsciously makes your head tilt back but he's quick enough to hold you by the back of your head and chin, his tongue asks for more and as easy as breathing, you let him in.

You'd only ever kissed John and this was nothing like it, with him it was proper, painfully slow. This felt like a rush, everything moved so quickly; you could feel your blood pumping and his heart felt like it was your own. Smashed between the wall and him, a small gasp escaped you when your hand grazed the outline of his hard cock.

Logic and all sense went out the window as you unbuckled his belt, the sight of your beautiful hands handling him with such hunger, that alone almost made him come. With the same fervor he worked open your robe to find you completely nude.

"Well, aren't you a firecracker" he grinned, while his fingers found your clit with ease. As you worked on him with quick tugs, his weight dropped on you, the grunts against your neck mixing with your quiet moans.

"We're gonna get caught if you keep singing for me" Bucky nipped your skin, proud of being the one making you like this; the thought of getting caught by John or your neighbors, the scandal, was enough to make you both finish at the same time, you had to bite your tongue to silence your scream while he groaned into your jaw, you could feel his cream between your fingers, you shivered in delight.

"You're dangerous" he whispered to himself.

It started with hushed moans and grunts in his truck.

Parked three streets over on a road that went nowhere in particular, engine off, the early morning sitting quiet around you like it was keeping your secret too. It felt reckless and nothing like the life you had ironed and folded and tucked into neat corners for five years. It felt like something that was entirely yours.

On Wednesdays you met him in the park when John had his lunch meeting with Henderson, coming home late and smelling like cheap perfume. You sat on a blanket under the elm tree, it wasn't just about using each other anymore, Bucky would bring you something from the bakery on Millbrook and you would talk for hours before you did anything else. That part surprised you, that he wanted to talk.

He told you about his route, the way he could see small moments in people's lives that most never saw. It was strange how easy you opened up to each other, you told him things John laughed at, and he marveled at. If you were honest with yourself, he's the first person you've ever been completely honest with, you told him about your life before John, about the affair…

He never judged, listened like it mattered, every word.

Over the next few months it was harder and harder to stay away from Bucky or for him to keep his hands to himself. You got reckless the way you always feared you would.

It started small — a moment too long on the doorstep when he made his deliveries, coffee that stretched past the reasonable hour, Wednesdays in the park that edged too close to afternoon when every mother took their children to play. You told yourselves each time that you would be more careful next time, and next time you were even less careful , you realized somewhere along the way you just stopped caring, the urge to be together was all consuming.

It was Carol Danvers who heard it first, which meant it was everywhere by the next 24 hours.

It's on the days you never expect when horrible things happen, John came home on a Friday. You knew he was angry before he was fully through the door — something about each step he took, the way he put his keys and briefcase down like it insulted him.

Taking a deep breath, your brain already expected the worse, you were at the stove and you kept your eyes there, kept on whisking batter, your face arranged into the pleasant neutral expression like nothing was wrong.

"Heard something interesting today," he said cold and calculating, from somewhere behind you. Looming.

"Oh?" The spoon kept moving.

"About you." A pause. "And the milkman."

The silence was heavy, as you felt your blood run cold, the day you were most afraid of was here.

You turned from the stove with a careful smile. "You know how people talk on this street."

"I do." He loosened his tie with one slow pull. "I also know you could never do that to me" he stated with venom in his voice… "But why would Carol Danvers tell such lies about you?", if you didn't know any better you'd say he was actually confused.

Of course . "Carol Danvers once told Wanda Maximoff she saw a UFO over the Hendersons' roof." You set the spoon down and reached for two glasses. "Dinner is almost ready Hon-."

His hand smashed down against the kitchen counter, rattling the utensils.

"Don't do that." His voice dropped a register. Not loud — John was never loud, that wasn't what made it frightening. He was the kind of man who got quiet when he was angry, he's never laid a hand on you, but deep down you always feared one day he would.

Clearing your throat, you set the glasses on the table and smoothed out place mats that didn't need smoothing.

"I'm not doing anything," you said calmly

"Look at me."

Without hesitation, you did, kept your face open and calm and faintly puzzled, the face of a woman who has nothing whatsoever to hide, and you held his gaze without flinching. If John ever found out what you did, what you have been doing under his roof, you don't know what he would do to Bucky, and you would do anything to keep him safe.

Something moved behind his eyes — rage building up — his fists closed tightly, the silence making your heart beat incessantly, acting on instinct your hand came to rest against your stomach, protectively.

You moved it away before he noticed.

"I am married to you John" you carefully said, "no matter what, that's the only thing that matters", your own words slapped you like a brick to the face.

He looked at you for one more long moment, still not quite convinced, but refusing to push any further, tentatively you took off your apron, revealing your waist perfectly accentuated by your dress, your eyelashes fluttered as you walked up to him, arms slowly wrapping around his neck, his stare remained cold but he couldn't help but grab onto your hips, pulling you closer

"Miriam Patterson had her baby. A boy." He muttered with the particular cruelty of a man who knows exactly where to press, you felt the sting behind your eyes but in a blink you replaced the hurt with a small smile.

"How wonderful for them," you whispered, as you kissed his cheek, then the other, next his neck, "Maybe we'll be just as lucky soon" you purred into his ear, fingernails scraped lightly against the back of his neck.

As his hands wondered your body, you wondered if you'd ever stop feeling sick.

You were on the porch before four.

Sat on the top step in the dark with your robe pulled tight and your glasses on, hands folded in your lap while your fingers nervously nitpicked your skin, despite having made your decision, knowing it was the right thing to do, you felt like a wicked woman, cursed to ruin anyone who cared for you…

You didn't mind waiting for him, the tulips along the path were black in the dark, you enjoyed watching the sun slowly shine on them, slowly turning them red again.

You heard his truck at the end of the lane and felt your heart do the thing it always did — that stupid, inconvenient, involuntary thing — and then he was coming up the path and kneeling down in front of you, worry taking over his face, "Jesus Doll, what are you doing out here? it's freezing", his arms wrapped around yours, rubbing them to warm you up and kissing your cold face with his warm-soft lips —You almost smiled —

Because you didn't respond, Bucky pulled back , his face going soft the way it always did when you were upset. He smelled like the warm bread and something underneath that was just him. You had take a deep breath before you trusted your voice.

"I need to tell you something," you said.

He waited.

"I'm pregnant." You blurted.

Bucky didn't move. You couldn't read his face until you saw the biggest smile break out — still in disbelief a genuine laugh escaped him, the joy that radiated off of him almost made your resolve crack.

"Okay," he said quietly, cupping your face with pure adoration is his eyes. — "Okay."He repeated, like he was already making plans in his head. "Okay, so we—"

"Bucky."

He stopped.

You were going to be sick but you weren't so sure it was morning sickness, swallowing down any hesitation, you sighed.

You turned and looked at him. In the thin grey light just beginning to suggest itself at the edge of the sky his face was very open,

"I'm can't leave him Buck," you whispered.

He looked at you. Something shifted behind his eyes — understanding arriving before he was ready.

"You don't want to leave him… there's a difference."

"I'm sorry."

A long silence.

"You're sorry," he repeated. His voice had changed, not mad, at least you didn't think he was mad, he was good at keeping his feelings at bay.

"We can't see each other anymore" you said in defeat, your throat aching to let yourself cry.

He stood up abruptly and took three steps down the path and stopped with his back to you, one hand pressed to the back of his neck, his shoulders tense in a way you had never seen on him before. Your Bucky who was easy about everything, Bucky who worshiped you and listened like it mattered, his eyes were red, and he could barely keep looking you in the eye.

"Did you sleep with him." It wasn't quite a question. The words came out low and tight. "Once you knew. So he wouldn't suspect," he spat.

You were too stunned to answer. He'd never raised his voice to you like this, you couldn't blame him.

He laughed — a short, broken sound that had nothing of his real laugh in it — and turned around and looked at you from the bottom of the path with something in his face that you would spend a long time trying to forget.

"Bucky—" You cried, quick on your feet, moving down the steps, your voice lower than a whisper. "You have to be quiet, please, he's right—"

"I know where he is." His voice cracked, "Maybe I should go up there, talk to the man who's going to raise my son!"

"Please." You reached him and put your hand against his chest and felt him breathing too fast, he tried to back away from you "our son!" the words caught in his throat, but you wouldn't let him, looking up at him with everything you had left you pleaded "Please."

You took his hand and brought it slowly, carefully, to your stomach.

Held it there.

He went very still.

 His jaw worked, eyes were bright red, you could see his internal fight, his body begged him to push you away and go inside your house to kill the bastard, but then his thumb rubbed your belly, reminding himself that you were carrying the best parts of himself.

You don't know for how long you stood there, the sleeping houses remained quiet, except for the faint sound of their sprinklers. You watched him trying to ground himself .

"Let me go," you whispered, tears falling down both your faces. "Do this for me. Let us go."

The sky from black to blue to the first pale suggestion of morning Waiting Willow Lane was beginning, to wake.

His hand was still on your stomach when he closed his eyes, committing to memory the sound of your laugh, the smell of your hair in the mornings, he imagined a perfect world where he would raise a family with you, a world where he could be enough.

When he opened them again the look on his face told you with a quiet and terrible certainty, he would do as you asked.

He pulled his hand away gently, stepped back. You knew it was selfish but you desperately wanted to kiss him one last time, but before you could even take a step forward his eyes told you it wasn't a good idea.

He might never let you go if he kissed you right now.

Straightening his cap with the careful deliberateness of a man reassembling himself from the outside in, he looked you in the eyes one last time.

"I loved you well", he didn't say it anger or disappointment, just a gentle statement.

You nodded in return.

"Take care of yourself," he said, his voice was even. It hurt more than when he yelled.

You stood on the path and watched him walk back to his truck, you did not call after him, you just held your stomach like your life depended on it.

The truck turned at the end of the lane and was gone.

You stood there until you couldn't hear it anymore.

The baby came on a Tuesday.

Wiping your tears with your sleeve, you went inside and washed your hands at the kitchen sink, started the percolator and began, with care and precision, to make your John's breakfast.

Small, perfect and furious about it, the way all new things are, the moment the nurse had placed him in your arms, you looked down at that small outraged face and felt something so large move through you that you forgot, for just a moment, every single thing that had brought him to this world.

He had his eyes.

Back at home, John held him the way most men held babies — carefully, at a slight distance, as though he were something that might make a sudden movement. He'd been slightly more helpful than you expected after the delivery, he said the right things, fed him when you couldn't, changed one diaper, still you couldn't help but wonder if you'd made the right decision.

"He has my eyes" he said, settling the baby into the crook of your arm.

"He does" you said softly, holding back a laugh.

Looking down on him again. His little face was simply looking now, experiencing the world, his cerulean blues wide and new and completely unimpressed, there was something in his expression that was so familiar and so devastating that you had to press your lips together for a moment and breathe very carefully through your nose.

"He's perfect," John said, and for once you believed he meant it.

You nodded and looked at your son, this way he would be taken care of , you reassured yourself.

Across the street the night was still.

Bucky sat in his truck with the engine off and the lights off , watching the warm yellow square of your bedroom window the way a man watches something he has no right to anymore and cannot look away from.

He had told himself he wouldn't come. He had told himself every night for 9 months he'd respect your wishes and leave you alone, despite his military training, you made him weak.

He could see your shadow behind the curtain. Just the outline of you, soft and warm against the light, and the smaller shape in your arms that you were rocking with the slow, unconscious rhythm of a woman who had been waiting her whole life to do exactly this.

Bucky smiled, despite everything, he wouldn't want any other woman to be the mother of his child, you were happy and he would be happy too, that's all that mattered.

He watched you move. Back and forth, back and forth, the shadow of you against the warm light of that room, that house, that life that had no place for him in it.

The tulips along your front path had come back. Red and perfectly upright in the dark, standing in a row like they didn't know anything had happened, which of course they didn't. Things grew back. The world kept its own schedule, indifferent and bright, the same way mornings came after nights that felt unbearable.

He thought about a Wednesday in the park under the elm tree, a blanket on the grass, paper bag from the bakery on Millbrook. The way you had talked about wanting a family and to be able to care and protect them; the way you had looked at him when you thought he was distracted.

Your shadow stilled at the window. — Just briefly — you stopped rocking and stood there, and in the perfect quiet of the room, with every house dark and every curtain drawn he had the irrational, hopeful feeling that you knew he was there.

He stayed until he couldn't anymore, fingers gripping the wheel until white and then he stayed a little longer, when he finally reached for the ignition his hands started shaking.

The truck moved quietly down the empty street.

At the end of the lane it turned, and was gone, and the night closed back over Waiting Willow Lane like water over a stone, as though nothing had ever been disturbed at all.

In the warm window your shadow rocked on.

The elevator opened onto dim light and stillness. Steve stepped out with his duffel slung over one shoulder, the stale taste of quinjet coffee still sitting on his tongue, and found Sam and Natasha in the common room.

Neither of them looked up at first.

Sam sat forward on the couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tightly the knuckles had gone pale. Natasha sat in one of the armchairs with one leg thrown over the other, but there was nothing relaxed about her posture. Her face looked flat and closed in that particular way it did when anger had cooled into something sharper. The television across from them was on mute. Some late-night news anchor moved her mouth in total silence.

A half-empty glass of water sat on the coffee table. Another lay on its side, a dark crescent soaking into a stack of coasters. No one had bothered to clean it up.

Steve let the duffel slide from his shoulder and land by the elevator with a dull thud.

Neither of them smiled.

His stomach dropped.

He looked from Sam to Natasha and, because instinct always made him reach for humor first when the air turned unbearable, he asked, “Okay. Who died?”

Sam looked up then.

There were jokes a room let survive and jokes it killed on sight. This one did not even make it to the floor.

Something in Sam’s face made Steve straighten.

Natasha finally turned her head toward him. Her expression did not change. “No one.”

Steve waited.

No one said anything.

The silence stretched a second too long, then another.

He felt the fatigue of the mission still in his bones – seven days of bad sleep, worse weather, and the kind of work that left no room for thinking about anything except the next step. He had expected to come back to the usual mess: Stark making some comment about how long they took, Sam complaining about quinjet rations, maybe Bucky lurking at the edge of the room with that watchful half-detached look of his. He had expected normal. Or the closest thing the Tower had ever had to it.

Instead he got this.

Steve’s gaze moved between them again. “What happened?”

Sam exhaled through his nose and leaned back at last, like a man resigning himself to an unpleasant duty. “She left.”

For one second, Steve did not understand the sentence.

The words landed, but not their meaning. There were too many people in the Tower for she to mean anything immediately. Maria had not lived here in years. Pepper barely stayed overnight. Wanda spent more time elsewhere than in. There were women in and out of Avengers Tower all the time.

Then understanding hit.

His head came up sharply. “What?”

Sam did not look away. “She left this morning.”

Something cold moved through Steve’s chest.

He had not seen you when he came in. He had noticed that without truly registering it, the way a mind dismissed small absences when it had not yet been told where to look. Now the omission flashed back at him all at once. Your jacket was not hanging over the back of the dining chair where you sometimes forgot it. There was no mug on the table that looked like yours. No book left face-down on the arm of the couch. None of those ordinary traces that meant you had passed through the room recently.

He frowned. “Left for where?”

Sam rubbed a hand over his jaw. “One of Stark’s old safehouses in Brooklyn. I gave her the keys.”

Steve stared at him. “Why?”

Natasha answered.

“Barnes cheated on her.”

The words fell clean and hard into the room.

Steve looked at her as if he had misheard.

The muted television flickered blue-white across the glass wall behind them. A siren moved somewhere far below in the city and faded. Steve heard all of it with unnatural clarity, as if the world had suddenly become too sharp around the edges.

He said, very carefully, “What?”

Natasha did not soften it. She never did when softness would have been a lie. “She had her suspicions. She confronted him last night.”

Steve just looked at her.

He had come back from battlefields that made more sense than that sentence.

Barnes cheated on her.

Not drifted. Not picked a fight. Not said something careless and unforgivable in anger. Not made a coward of himself in one of the quieter, more ordinary ways men ruined things.

Cheated.

Steve felt something like disbelief and nausea rise together.

He glanced at Sam, maybe because some part of him still expected a correction there, some sign this had been exaggerated in the retelling. Sam only gave a grim, weary nod that confirmed the worst of it.

“She packed this morning,” Sam said. “Didn’t take much. Just a bag.” His mouth tightened. “She was already gone by the time most people were up.”

Steve passed a hand over his face.

The skin around his eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, but the gesture had more to do with buying himself a second than fatigue. He stood there in the middle of the room with mission dust still on his boots and tried to fit the news into any shape that made sense.

It refused.

He had known you and Bucky together long enough to have stopped thinking of you as temporary. The two of you were not easy, not in the glossy, effortless way some couples pretended to be. There had always been edges there. Bucky was Bucky – closed off, haunted, sometimes so deep inside his own head it seemed a miracle he remembered to come back out. And you had never been the kind to smooth yourself down for anyone’s comfort. But Steve had seen the way you looked at each other when you thought no one was paying attention. He had seen Bucky track your movement across a room without seeming to. He had seen you lean into his space like it was the one place in the world that asked nothing false of you.

He had gone away for a week.

He had come back to this.

And worse than that – he had seen nothing coming.

Nothing.

No crack obvious enough to alarm him. No sign in Bucky that screamed betrayal. No whispered argument in the hallway before he left on mission. No strange distance between you two that might have made him stop and ask a question. If anything, the last time he saw you together, it had looked normal enough to let pass without a second thought.

That thought angered him more than he expected.

He looked at Natasha.

“You knew,” he said.

It was not a question.

She held his gaze for a beat before answering. “I saw them. Once.”

Steve felt his jaw harden.

There were a hundred follow-up questions in that sentence. Who. When. Where. How long ago. Did Bucky know she had seen. Did you. Was it really enough to know, or just enough to suspect. But the way Natasha said it told him what mattered most: she had not guessed. She had seen enough to be certain.

His voice came lower. “And you said nothing.”

Natasha’s face did not change, but something colder moved through her eyes. “I saw enough to know something was wrong. I did not have proof of the whole shape of it. By the time I decided I should have dragged him into a room and forced the truth out of him, she already had it.”

There was no apology in the words. Natasha rarely apologized for making a bad call until after she finished surviving it. But there was something else there – disgust, maybe. At Bucky. At herself. At the mess of it.

Steve looked away from her and out toward the windows.

Night lay over Manhattan in a scatter of lights and reflections. The city looked exactly as it always did from up here: bright, impossible, indifferent. He had spent enough years leading people through catastrophe to know how absurdly ordinary the world remained while somebody’s life came apart.

He thought of you leaving that morning while he was still halfway across the Atlantic, probably on a quinjet, probably asleep sitting up with his arms crossed, unaware that you were walking out of the Tower with a bag in one hand and whatever was left of your trust dragging behind you. The image lodged under his ribs with strange force.

He had not seen you.

He had not been here.

The helplessness of that irritated him immediately.

“What did she say?” Steve asked.

Sam answered that one.

“Not much.” He glanced down at his clasped hands before going on. “She didn’t owe me details, and I didn’t push. She opened the door with a bag already packed, and looked like she hadn’t slept.” His expression tightened a little, remembering. “I asked if she wanted to stay. She said no. I asked if she was sure. She said if she started talking, she might stay.”

Steve’s head turned slowly toward him.

Sam met his eyes. “So I handed her the keycard.”

That landed somewhere deep and quiet.

If she started talking, she might stay.

Steve could picture it too easily: you standing there with your face stripped bare by exhaustion and fury, holding yourself together by will alone, knowing that the first real conversation might be the thing that made you weaker instead of stronger. He knew that kind of decision. The ones people made because motion was the only thing keeping them upright.

“Did she say anything else?” Steve asked.

Sam shook his head. “Only that she needed out.”

Natasha let out a low breath through her nose. “Which seemed smart.”

Steve looked at her again.

There was steel in Natasha tonight, but there usually was. What struck him more was the fury she was not bothering to hide beneath it. She had never been sentimental about infidelity. In her experience, betrayal was betrayal. Private treachery and professional treachery shared more DNA than people liked to admit.

He thought again of what she had said I saw them. Once.

That meant at least once there had been a moment clear enough, damning enough, that Natasha Romanoff had taken one look and known what it was.

His stomach turned harder.

“Who?” he asked.

Natasha’s mouth became a thin line. “You really want that answer right now?”

The fact that she did not say she did not know answered him almost as well as a name would have.

Steve did not ask again.

Maybe because the name itself did not matter in this exact second. Not compared to the larger fact of it. Not compared to you leaving. Not compared to Bucky doing something so ugly and ordinary Steve almost had more trouble with the ordinariness than the ugliness. He had seen Bucky as a weapon, a prisoner, a survivor, a ghost trying to become a man again. It did not fit cleanly in Steve’s head – that same man lying to someone who loved him and then doing it again long enough for suspicion to grow teeth.

And yet life was cruelly simple sometimes. A person could survive war and brainwashing and still fail in the oldest, most human way imaginable.

Steve swallowed once and asked the question that had been waiting underneath all the others.

“Where is Bucky?”

Sam leaned back fully now and turned his head toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

“Last I heard? In his room.”

There was a bitter kind of humor in his expression now, the kind that had no real amusement in it at all.

“Doing what?”

“Destroying everything he can get his hands on,” Sam said. “Physically, this time.”

Steve stared.

Sam gave a short, humorless huff. “Because I wouldn’t tell him where she went.”

That, at least, Steve could picture.

He could imagine the shape of Bucky’s rage when it had nowhere useful to go. Furniture splintering under metal fingers. Glass breaking. A wall caving in. The deliberate ugliness of a man who had run out of ways to punish himself internally and needed something in the world to show damage too.

A week ago, Steve might have been halfway down the hall already out of instinct alone, ready to stop him before he tore his hands open on the wreckage.

Now he stayed where he was.

“Good,” Natasha said.

Sam glanced at her, but did not disagree.

Steve stood very still.

It was one thing to hear that Bucky was in pain. It was another to discover that the first feeling that rose in him was not sympathy but anger so immediate and clean it almost steadied him. Anger for you, for Sam being put in the middle of it, for Natasha being left to sit on what she knew, for the entire filthy waste of it. Anger that Bucky had shattered something and then turned destructive only after consequences showed up at his own door.

He let out a slow breath.

“When did you find out?” he asked Natasha.

She uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way, gaze fixed on him. “About the cheating? This morning, officially. About there being something off? Earlier.”

Steve nodded once.

That matched too well with the room. The bad atmosphere. The fact that both of them looked like they had not slept much either. This had not been a clean morning reveal with tidy explanations. It had been a night of fallout. Confrontation. Packing. One person leaving and another breaking apart loudly enough for the Tower to feel it through the walls.

He looked down at the dropped duffel by the elevator and felt suddenly ridiculous for having come home still half inside mission mode. There had been gunfire forty-eight hours ago. Tactical briefings. Satellite feeds. Blood on concrete. All of it already felt easier to process than this living-room silence.

“Tony know?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “By noon.”

“And?”

“And he’s mad enough not to be funny about it.”

That told Steve plenty.

Tony, for all his mockery and noise, had a vicious protective streak once somebody was considered his. You had been around long enough, close enough, to count. Steve could imagine exactly how cold Tony’s anger might look when it turned practical.

For a second no one spoke.

Steve could hear something faint in the hallway now that he stood listening for it. Not voices. Not footsteps. A dull impact, maybe, far off and muffled by distance and expensive walls.

Sam heard it too and tipped his head slightly in that direction. “See?”

Another thud, heavier this time.

Bucky’s room.

Steve shut his eyes briefly.

He remembered all at once a hundred versions of his oldest friend – the skinny reckless boy from Brooklyn who laughed with split lips, the ghost of him in war, the nightmare that followed, the man clawing his way back to himself in fragments. He remembered fighting for him when nobody else thought there was enough left to save. He remembered believing, stubbornly and absolutely, that whatever the world had made of Bucky Barnes, there had still been a line inside him no cruelty could fully erase.

That belief did not vanish now.

But it changed shape.

Because whatever history Bucky carried, whatever damage had been done to him, none of it absolved him here. Steve knew that with a clarity so cold it almost surprised him. Pain explained. It did not excuse. Not this. Not repeated choices. Not lying to someone who loved you and letting them stand there asking themselves what was wrong with them when the wrongness sat with you all along.

A flash of memory came uninvited: you at the kitchen counter some night weeks ago, laughing at something Sam said, head tipped back, shoulders loose. Bucky in the doorway, saying nothing, but watching you with that small private softness he almost never let anyone see.

Steve had seen that look and trusted it.

His hand curled once at his side.

“Did she ask for me?” he heard himself say.

Sam’s expression changed – subtle, but enough.

“No,” he said carefully. “She didn’t know when you were getting back.”

Of course you had not.

The answer still landed harder than it should have.

Steve nodded once, more to himself than to either of them. It was not a wound, exactly. Just another fact. You had left in the narrow space available to you. You had not asked for him because you had not known he could be there, and maybe because this was not the kind of hurt you handed around to be held by committee.

He respected that.

He hated it too.

Natasha watched him with the sharp attention she reserved for dangerous moments – not because anyone had drawn a weapon, but because she knew emotional shock could turn a room volatile faster than a loaded gun sometimes could. “Steve.”

He looked at her.

She lifted one shoulder slightly. “Whatever you’re about to do, pick the useful version.”

He almost laughed, but there was no room for it.

Another crash came faintly from down the hall.

Sam stood up at last. “I already tried talking to him.”

Steve glanced at him. “And?”

Sam gave him a flat look. “And he only wanted to know where she was.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“He said he loved her.” Sam’s mouth twisted. “Which I’m sure was a big comfort.”

Steve looked away again.

That was somehow the worst part. Not because it softened anything, but because it did not. People liked to imagine betrayal coming from absence of feeling, as if the heart worked in clean equations. It never did. Steve had lived too long to believe that. Bucky could love you and still ruin you. The contradiction did not make the damage smaller. It made it uglier.

He drew in a slow breath and let it out.

“Is she safe?” he asked.

Sam answered immediately. “Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Does anybody else know where she is?”

Sam’s gaze held his for a second, measuring. “Only me. Probably Tony. And now you know there’s a place, not which one.”

Steve accepted that without argument. He would have done the same in Sam’s place. Maybe he would have done worse.

Natasha rose from the chair in one fluid motion. “If you’re going to see him, do it before he brings the floor down.”

Steve bent, picked up his duffel, then set it back down again. He was not going to carry luggage into this conversation like a man arriving for an ordinary evening.

He straightened and looked down the darkened hallway.

Part of him wanted to turn around instead. Walk back into the elevator, get in a car, find every safehouse Stark owned if necessary until he found you. Not to make you talk. Not to fix anything. Just to see with his own eyes that you were somewhere quiet, somewhere no one could reach you unless you wanted them to.

But Sam’s earlier words stopped him.

If she started talking, she might stay.

You had chosen distance. He would not be another person trying to take that from you.

So that left Bucky.

His chest tightened with something old and terrible. Loyalty, anger, grief, disbelief – none of it separated cleanly. Bucky was his friend. His brother in every way that mattered. And Steve knew, with the kind of certainty that hurt, that if he opened that bedroom door right now and saw the wreckage inside, he was not going to feel sorry first.

He was going to feel furious.

Maybe Bucky knew that. Maybe that was why he had not come out.

Steve started toward the hallway.

“Steve,” Sam called after him.

He stopped and looked back.

Sam’s expression had gone serious again. “Don’t let him make this about how bad he feels.”

Steve held his gaze for a moment and gave a single nod.

He understood.

Bucky would bleed guilt all over the room if allowed. He would talk about shame and self-hatred and how he had ruined everything, and all of it might be true, and none of it would be the point. The point was you packing a bag in the morning light, too hurt to risk one more conversation. The point was you leaving before anyone could stop you because staying would have cost you too much.

Steve turned back without another word.

The corridor seemed longer than he remembered. Lights came on ahead of him in soft succession as he walked, each step bringing the distant noise into clearer focus. A crack of splintering wood. The metallic ring of something thrown hard enough to hit a wall. Then silence. Then another impact.

By the time he reached Bucky’s door, the hall smelled faintly of plaster dust.

Steve stopped outside it.

For one second he simply stood there, hand at his side, looking at the scarred wood panel and seeing too many years layered over it at once. Brooklyn alleys. Army trains. HYDRA labs. Wakanda. Recovery rooms. Quiet dinners. Missions. Second chances. All of it came down, absurdly, to a closed door in Avengers Tower and the knowledge that the man on the other side had just done something Steve did not know how to forgive.

Inside, something heavy hit the wall.

Steve lifted his hand and opened the door.

The frame missed Steve’s face by inches.

It struck the wall just beside the door with a crack sharp enough to ring through the wrecked room, glass exploding across the floor in a scatter of glittering shards. Steve stopped on instinct, his body turning slightly with the old reflex of a soldier who had spent too many years stepping around violence before his mind properly caught up.

For a second, the only sound came from the piece of wood spinning once across the floorboards before falling still.

Then silence closed back in.

Steve looked up.

Bucky stood in the middle of the room like the last thing left after a fire.

His chest rose and fell too hard. His hair had fallen into his face. The knuckles of his right hand were split open and bloodied, the skin torn raw from repeated impact. It had smeared across his fingers, across the heel of his palm, onto the front of his T-shirt in half-dried rust-colored marks where he must have wiped at his mouth or his face without noticing. His metal arm hung stiffly at his side, flexing once, twice, the plates clicking faintly.

The room itself looked as if somebody had torn through it looking for a body.

A chair lay overturned near the desk with one leg snapped clean off. The lamp on the bedside table had been smashed against the wall hard enough to cave in the plaster. One drawer hung crooked and splintered from the dresser, its contents – shirts, papers, a handful of loose ammunition from some carelessly abandoned tactical pouch – strewn across the floor. The mirror above the bureau had cracked through the middle in a violent white line, spiderwebbing outward into fractured reflections that caught Steve’s shape in broken pieces. One of the closet doors hung open at the wrong angle. The mattress had been shoved partly off the bedframe. There were two distinct holes in the wall that looked roughly the size of Bucky’s fist.

Steve took in all of it in one long sweep, and disbelief moved through him so cold and clean it almost felt like clarity.

Sam had not exaggerated.

If anything, Sam had been charitable.

For one stupid second, Steve remembered the common room downstairs – the tipped-over glass on the coffee table, Natasha’s shut face, Sam’s clasped hands, that terrible hollow quiet – and the memory hit differently now, with context. This was what had waited behind it. This was the noise that had been traveling through the walls.

The thought hardened something already sharp in Steve’s chest.

He stepped fully into the room and nudged the broken frame aside with the heel of his boot.

The photograph inside had split behind the glass. Steve did not stop to see who had been in it.

“Is that it?” he asked.

His voice came flat. Not loud. Not sympathetic. There was no trace in it of the concern he would have shown under other circumstances, if this had been about a mission gone wrong or a nightmare or the aftermath of somebody else’s cruelty.

There was none of that here.

Bucky stared at him with eyes gone dark and raw from sleeplessness. “No.”

The answer did not surprise Steve.

Of course it did not.

This was not an ending. This was only the shape a consequence had taken when it finally stopped being theoretical. Rage had always come easier to Bucky than remorse did; Steve knew that better than most. Rage gave a body something to do. It let a man move. Break. Bleed. It saved him, sometimes, from having to sit still with what he had done.

Steve glanced again at Bucky’s hand. The blood had started to drip steadily now from the split skin over the knuckles, dark drops pattering onto the floorboards.

“You should wrap that.”

Bucky let out something that might have been a laugh if there had been any life in it. “That what you came up here to say?”

Steve closed the door behind him with deliberate calm. The latch clicked into place with absurd neatness in a room that looked bombed out.

“No,” he said.

Bucky looked away first.

That did something ugly to Steve, because it made him think of every version of Bucky he had ever known that could still meet a punch head-on and yet flinch from being seen clearly. It made him think of the boy from Brooklyn with bruised eyes and a grin that hid more than it should have. It made him think of all the years in between. It made him think of what Sam had said downstairs, of Bucky asking where you had gone and then tearing his room apart because Sam had refused to tell him.

It made him furious all over again.

Bucky dragged a hand over his mouth, smearing blood across his skin. When he spoke, his voice sounded scraped raw. “I had ended it.”

Steve said nothing.

Bucky swallowed once. The words seemed to drag against his throat on the way out. “Yesterday. When I came back.” He gave a short, shattered shake of his head, not quite looking at Steve. “I went to her. I told her it was over.”

For one beat, the room held still.

Then Steve heard his own voice answer, colder than even he had expected.

“And you want a medal for that?”

Bucky’s head snapped up.

Steve did not move.

He stood just inside the wreckage with his hands loose at his sides and looked at his oldest friend across the carnage of his own making, and whatever Bucky had expected to find on his face, it was not there. Not patience. Not understanding. Not the old instinctive mercy Steve had spent half a lifetime extending toward him.

Only contempt, clean and bright as a blade.

Bucky stared at him as if the tone itself had struck harder than a fist.

“I’m not asking for that.”

“No?” Steve took one step farther into the room, carefully avoiding the worst of the broken glass. “Because it sounded a lot like you were setting the scene. You know, in case I missed the part where you tried to stop being a bastard at the last possible second.”

A pulse jumped in Bucky’s jaw.

Steve saw it and did not care.

He could still hear Natasha downstairs, I saw them. Once. He could still hear Sam, She packed this morning. Didn’t take much. She said if she started talking, she might stay.

Those words had lodged deep.

He had not seen you before you left. He had not been there for the confrontation, had not watched your face when Bucky failed to deny it, had not stood in the hallway while you walked out. All he had were the fragments Sam and Natasha had given him – and somehow that made the whole thing worse, because his mind kept supplying the rest. You standing in the kitchen after a sleepless night. Bucky saying I love you and meaning it in whatever useless, ugly way a man meant it after betrayal. You taking a bag and choosing distance because it was the only thing that kept you from breaking in front of everyone.

Steve looked at the wrecked lamp, the shattered mirror, the blood on Bucky’s hand, and felt no pity for any of it.

Bucky laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “You think I don’t know what I did?”

“I think you know now,” Steve said.

That landed.

Bucky flinched like he had not meant to, then set his mouth hard.

Steve went on before he could answer. “I think you knew enough to hide it while you were doing it. I think you knew enough to lie. I think you knew enough to come back here yesterday and end it with the other woman only after you’d already spent however long making a wreck out of both sides of this.” His voice stayed level, which somehow made it harsher. “And I think now that she’s gone, you want credit for having a conscience too late.”

Bucky’s breathing roughened. “It wasn’t like that.”

Steve looked around the room again, then back at him. “Then by all means, clear it up.”

For a second Bucky seemed almost unable to speak.

He looked exhausted in a way that went past sleeplessness. He looked gutted. Steve saw it. Steve believed it. It changed nothing.

Bucky turned half away, metal hand rising to grip the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean for it to keep going.”

Steve almost laughed.

That, more than anger, almost made him laugh in disbelief.

“You didn’t mean,” he repeated. “That’s what you’ve got.”

Bucky’s shoulders tightened. “It started and then–”

“And then you kept doing it,” Steve cut in.

Bucky snapped, “I know that.”

The words bounced off the cracked walls and fell dead.

Steve did not raise his voice to match him.

Downstairs, Sam had warned him, Don’t let him make this about how bad he feels.

Steve understood now exactly why he had said it. Guilt came off Bucky in waves. Shame too. The whole room stank of it under the plaster dust and the metallic tang of blood. But Steve had no interest in getting lost inside Bucky’s self-disgust if it meant losing sight of the actual damage.

“You know what I can’t get past?” Steve asked quietly.

Bucky’s eyes lifted to him again.

“That you let her figure it out.”

Something changed in Bucky’s face.

Steve pressed on.

“She suspected something.” Every word came measured, controlled. “Natasha told me that much. She saw enough to know something was wrong. And you still let the woman you claimed to love stand there with that feeling in her gut until she had to drag the truth out of you herself.”

Bucky shut his eyes.

For the first time since Steve entered, he looked less angry than sick.

Steve remembered another line from downstairs with painful precision, She confronted him last night.

He pictured that too easily. You in the kitchen, maybe. Or the hallway. Or somewhere private that had stopped feeling safe the second Bucky lied in it once too often. Your voice gone cold. Bucky going still. The silence after the first direct question. The look on his face when denial failed him.

Steve had not been there, but he knew enough about people to imagine it.

And imagining it made his stomach turn.

“Did you deny it?” Steve asked.

Bucky opened his eyes slowly.

The silence answered before he did.

Steve felt something inside him go hard as stone.

“You did.”

Bucky looked at the floor. “At first.”

Of course he had.

Steve took another step forward.

There were years of memory crowding behind his ribs, all of them trying to complicate this. Every fight he had fought for Bucky. Every grave he had refused to let close over him. Every miracle of survival. Every quiet step back toward personhood. All of it kept trying to stand up between them and say be fair, be patient, remember who he is.

Steve did remember who he was.

That was part of why this cut so deep.

“You had a chance,” Steve said. “Maybe more than one. To tell her. To stop. To confess before she had to come to you already knowing enough to be hurt.” His gaze dropped to the shredded room around them. “Instead you waited until she was gone and started punching walls.”

Bucky looked up fast, anger flashing through the ruin. “You think that’s all this is?”

Steve met it without blinking. “Right now? Pretty close.”

That stung visibly.

Good.

Bucky paced away from him in three quick steps, then stopped because there was nowhere left in the room to go without stepping on something broken. He looked down at his bleeding hand as if noticing it for the first time, then wiped it absently on his shirt again.

“She asked me why I loved her,” he said suddenly.

Steve said nothing.

Bucky laughed once under his breath, the sound cracked straight through with grief. “You should’ve heard how she said it.” He shook his head. “Like it was the ugliest joke in the world.”

Steve felt his jaw tighten so hard it hurt.

He could hear your voice saying it, though he had not been there. Not the exact sound, but the shape of it. Not confusion anymore. Not pleading. Something worse. The moment when love became unbearable because it no longer made sense beside what had been done in its name.

Bucky pressed the heel of his left hand against his eyes for a second. When he lowered it, his expression looked flayed open. “I told her I loved her.”

“And she left anyway,” Steve said.

Bucky stared at him.

Steve did not soften.

That was the truth of it. Whatever words had passed between you in the night, whatever confessions or excuses or shattered apologies Bucky had thrown at the damage, the only thing that mattered now was that you had still walked out in the morning. You had chosen a locked door and a safehouse over one more hour in the Tower with him.

Because you had needed to.

Because staying had cost too much.

Bucky’s mouth twisted. “You think I don’t know she left?”

“I think you still don’t understand why she had to.”

That brought Bucky up short.

For the first time, Steve saw something like uncertainty move beneath the grief. Not ignorance, exactly – Bucky was not stupid – but that more dangerous thing people clung to after doing harm: the belief that if their remorse was large enough, it ought to count for more than it did.

Steve knew better.

“You cheated on her,” he said. “More than once, from the sound of it. You lied until she confronted you. And now you’re upstairs tearing apart furniture because Sam won’t tell you where she ran to get away from you.” His eyes moved over the room one last time. “What part of that are you hoping makes you look less guilty?”

Bucky went still.

Then, very quietly, “I’m not trying to look like anything.”

“No,” Steve said. “You’re trying not to feel it.”

That landed even harder than the rest.

Bucky’s face changed in a way Steve had rarely seen – something almost defenseless moving through it before anger slammed back over the top. “What do you want from me?”

The question came out harsher than it should have, but Steve heard the truth underneath it.

What script was this. What punishment. What was he supposed to say to make the room stop spinning.

Steve knew the answer.

“Nothing,” he said.

Bucky frowned as if he had heard wrong.

Steve held his gaze.

“I don’t want anything from you. She might have wanted honesty. She might have wanted you to stop before it got this far. She might have wanted one conversation where you didn’t let her be the last person to know what was happening to her own life.” His voice lowered. “But me? I don’t want a damn thing from you right now except for you to stop acting like smashing your room changes what you did.”

For a long moment neither man spoke.

Somewhere below them, the Tower hummed on in that expensive, inhuman way it always did, climate systems and hidden engines breathing through the walls like nothing catastrophic had happened inside one of its bedrooms. Steve found the sound obscene.

Bucky finally sank down onto the edge of what remained of the bedframe, not gracefully, not with any real decision, but like his legs had simply given out underneath him. The mattress shifted crookedly under his weight. He bent forward with both forearms braced on his thighs, blood dripping from his knuckles to the floor.

“I didn’t get to tell her it was over,” he said after a while, staring at the boards. “I thought–”

Steve cut him off immediately. “Don’t.”

Bucky’s head lifted.

“I don’t care what you thought that bought you.”

Bucky’s mouth shut.

Steve saw the old instinct there – to explain, to reconstruct the sequence, to lay out the exact order of decisions in a way that might make him feel less monstrous if not innocent. Steve had seen men do it after combat, after failed missions, after friendly fire, after any irreversible thing. They reached for chronology because morality had become too ugly to hold directly.

But there was nothing in the timeline that saved Bucky here.

Yesterday he had gone to end it with the other woman. Last night you had confronted him. This morning you had left.

If anything, the sequence made the whole thing more grotesque. Bucky had come home full of belated intentions, as if he might quietly close one ugly chapter and spare himself the public collapse, and then found out too late that you had already seen enough to know your life had changed under your feet.

Steve thought of Sam giving you the safehouse key. Thought of Natasha seeing enough, once, and keeping it in the sharp silence of herself. Thought of Tony learning it too and going cold with it. Thought of all the ways betrayal rippled outward when people liked to pretend it stayed contained between two bodies in one room.

“You don’t get points for stopping only because you were finally forced to look at yourself,” Steve said.

Bucky did not answer.

Steve stepped farther into the room until he stood close enough that Bucky would have had to look up to meet his eyes.

Slowly, Bucky did.

Steve had known that face in every age of its ruin. He knew the set of pain in the mouth, the stubbornness in the jaw, the devastation stripped naked in the eyes. He loved Bucky. Maybe that was why the anger felt so merciless. Stranger fury burned fast. This had roots.

“She left with one bag,” Steve said. “Sam told me that. She got the key for a safehouse and she left with one bag. That’s what your grief looks like on her side of the door.”

Bucky’s throat worked once.

Steve kept going.

“She didn’t wait for me to get back. Didn’t wait for Tony to weigh in. Didn’t turn it into some Tower-wide spectacle. She just got out.” The words sharpened. “Do you understand what that means?”

Bucky looked away.

Steve did not let him. “Look at me.”

It was not loud, but it carried command the way only Steve’s voice could when he let that part of himself show.

Bucky’s gaze snapped back.

“It means she didn’t trust herself to stay,” Steve said. “It means whatever happened last night left her thinking distance was the only thing that would save her from taking you back too soon or letting you talk over the damage. It means she had to protect herself from you.”

The last word hung there.

From you.

Bucky took it like a blow.

For a second, Steve thought he might lunge up out of the bedframe and hit something again, maybe him this time. There was enough wildness in the room for that. Enough shame. Enough blood in the air.

Instead Bucky sat very still.

When he finally spoke, his voice had gone low and ragged. “Where is she?”

Steve almost smiled, but there was no humor in it.

“I dunno. And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

Bucky’s face closed on itself. “Steve–”

“No.”

Just that.

Bucky stared at him, breathing hard.

Steve held the line without effort now. Downstairs, Sam had already made the right call. Steve would not undo it. Not for history. Not for loyalty. Not because Bucky looked half-dead with regret. The minute Bucky made this about finding you rather than facing what he had done, Steve knew exactly how dangerous that could become – not physically, not necessarily, but emotionally. Bucky had a way of taking up all the air in a room when he wanted absolution. You deserved at least one place where he could not get to you with that face and that voice and all the old gravity between you.

“You don’t get to chase her because you panicked,” Steve said.

“That’s not what this is.”

“It’s part of what this is.”

Bucky stood again too fast, the bedframe groaning behind him. “You think I’d hurt her?”

Steve did not answer right away.

That silence gutted the room.

Because of course Steve did not think Bucky would lay a hand on you. That was not the injury here and they both knew it. But there were other ways to hurt someone. Bucky knew that now better than anyone.

Finally Steve said, “I think you already did.”

Bucky recoiled.

Good, Steve thought again, and hated how easy that kept becoming.

The room fell quiet except for the faint drip of blood onto wood.

Steve drew a slow breath and felt the rage settle into something colder, steadier. This, more than shouting, was the dangerous version of his anger – the one that stopped performing and started deciding.

“You need to clean this up,” he said.

Bucky stared, uncomprehending.

“The room. Your hand. Yourself.” Steve glanced once more at the destruction. “Then you need to sit down somewhere and think very hard about whether any sentence coming out of your mouth is going to be about her pain or only your own.”

Bucky’s brows pulled together. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Steve looked at him for a long moment.

“It means that if the first thing you say, every time, is some version of I love her or I ended it or I feel sick or I didn’t mean it to keep going, then all you’re doing is putting yourself back in the center of a wound you created.”

Bucky opened his mouth.

Steve did not let him speak.

“You’re sorry,” he said. “I believe that. You’re ashamed. I believe that too. But don’t confuse those things with having done right by her even once in this.”

Bucky shut his mouth again.

Steve had no idea whether the words were getting through. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not while the adrenaline still burned too hot and the room still looked like an impact site. But he said them anyway because somebody had to, and because Sam had already done the decent thing by protecting your whereabouts. That left Steve with the uglier task.

To stand here. To look directly at Bucky. To refuse to make him feel cleaner than he was.

At last Bucky spoke, barely above a whisper. “You think she’s never coming back.”

Steve thought of the Tower downstairs with your absence already worked into it like a missing step. Thought of the kitchen you would not want to see. Thought of the hallways Sam said you had left behind with one bag and a face that had not slept. Thought of the safehouse in Brooklyn, small and quiet and away from all of this.

“I think,” Steve said carefully, “that whether she comes back to this building and whether she ever comes back to you are two very different questions.”

Bucky looked like he had been punched all over again.

Maybe he had. Only now the blows were landing where they belonged.

Steve moved toward the door.

Behind him, Bucky said, “Are you done?”

Steve stopped with one hand on the frame.

He did not turn immediately.

He looked instead at the smear of blood Bucky had left on the wall near the broken lamp, at the glass on the floor, at the wreckage of a room that had not asked to be made the stage for one man’s collapse. He thought of everything downstairs still waiting – the silence, the questions, the fact that he had come home from a week-long mission and stepped straight into the aftermath of a private disaster he had been nowhere near in time to stop.

Then he looked back over his shoulder.

“No,” he said. “But she was the one you should’ve been listening to last night.”

A sound broke behind him before Steve could open the door.

It was laughter.

Not real laughter. Nothing with life in it. Nothing that belonged in a human throat without setting every instinct on edge. It came out of Bucky low and cracked and wrong, like something rusted through at the hinges had finally given way. There was no humor in it. No amusement. Only the ugly edge of a man standing too close to the center of his own ruin and trying to make it uglier still.

Steve stopped with his hand on the handle.

For one brief second, he did not turn around. He only stood there in the wreck of the room, jaw locked, the cold metal of the handle pressed into his palm, and listened to that horrible half-laugh die into silence.

Then Bucky said, “I was going to ask her to marry me.”

The words dropped into the room like another piece of furniture thrown hard enough to splinter.

Steve shut his eyes.

He did not move. Did not speak. Did not even breathe properly for a second or two.

He had thought the worst of the night had already arranged itself in plain enough terms: the cheating, the confrontation, you leaving with a single bag, Bucky upstairs smashing holes into the walls because remorse had finally found him with nowhere left to run. That had already been ugly enough. More than ugly enough.

But that… That was something else.

Steve’s hand tightened on the door handle until the tendons in his wrist stood out hard beneath the skin. He felt the pressure in his jaw first, then in the back of his neck, every muscle in him drawing taut with the effort of not saying the first thing that came to mind.

Because the first thing that came to mind was not fit to say to his oldest friend. Not if he wanted to walk out of this room without making the wreckage worse.

He opened his eyes slowly and stared at the door in front of him instead of the man behind him.

For one impossible, involuntary instant, the image rose anyway: a ring box hidden somewhere in this room before Bucky tore it apart. A proposal imagined in whatever private hopeful shape Bucky had given it. Maybe a dinner. Maybe a quiet night. Maybe the same kitchen where you had confronted him, where whatever remained of your trust had finally broken open in your hands. Steve did not want the image, but it came all the same, obscene in its timing.

A proposal.

As if betrayal could be outrun by a bigger promise made afterward. As if a future tense could erase what had already been done in the past.

Steve still said nothing.

He knew silence could wound harder than words sometimes. Right now it was the only thing stopping him from turning around and saying something so vicious it would stick between them for years.

Behind him, Bucky let out another of those broken, mirthless sounds and shifted against the ruined wall. Steve could hear the fabric of his shirt drag over plaster. Could hear the faint wet tack of blood on his knuckles.

“And now what, Stevie?” Bucky asked. “You gonna take your shot, finally?”

That did it.

Steve turned.

Slowly at first. Too slowly, maybe. The kind of controlled movement that was more dangerous than any sudden outburst because it meant the anger had passed through heat and settled into something dense, cold, and deliberate.

Bucky was still where Steve had left him, standing amid the devastation of his room, one hand bloodied, hair hanging half into his eyes, mouth twisted into something cruel and exhausted and self-destructive. But there was a new look on his face now, something meaner than grief. Meaner than shame. As if he had reached the point where if he could not drag the night backward, he could at least poison whatever was left in the room.

Steve had seen that look before too, on men cornered by their own guilt. The moment when pain stopped turning inward and started looking for another target.

His gaze fixed on Bucky’s face. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

Bucky’s laugh this time came shorter, rawer. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”

Steve did not blink. “Say it.”

There was danger in the room now, plain and hard-edged. Not the kind that came from weapons. Something older. Two men with too much history and too little patience left between them.

Bucky tipped his head back against the wall for a second, then looked at Steve through lashes heavy with sleeplessness and contempt – contempt for himself first, maybe, but no longer only that. “I know you always had a thing for her.”

The sentence hung there.

Steve felt it hit somewhere low and violent in his chest.

Not because it was wholly unrecognizable. He was honest enough with himself, if with no one else, to know that whatever he had felt for you had long since moved beyond simple fondness. He had buried that knowledge deep, given it no room to breathe, refused to examine it with any real care because you had been with Bucky and that should have been the end of it. Steve was not a boy anymore, whatever Bucky chose to imply with Stevie. He did not build secret hopes out of other people’s relationships. He did not stand around waiting for collapse.

But hearing it spoken like that – dragged into the light now, in this room, from Bucky’s mouth, with all the filth of the night on it – made it feel contaminated.

Made it feel like accusation.

Made it feel like the ugliest possible version of something Steve had spent months, maybe longer, making sure remained harmless.

The distance between them vanished in three strides.

By the time Bucky seemed to register that Steve had moved, Steve’s fist had already fisted itself in the front of his T-shirt.

The fabric bunched hard in Steve’s hand. He drove Bucky backward with enough force to send him slamming into the nearest intact section of wall. The impact knocked a dull thud through the room, rattling what remained of the cracked mirror. Plaster dust sifted down in a pale drift from the damage already done.

Bucky’s head struck first, then his shoulders. He made a rough sound in the back of his throat but did not fight the grip.

If anything, he leaned into it.

That was almost worse.

Steve got right up into his space, holding him there with one hand locked in his collar, his face close enough to see every sign of sleeplessness, every burst capillary in his eyes, every twitch of strain around his mouth. He could smell blood, sweat, broken plaster, and underneath it the bitter metallic scent of adrenaline long since gone sour.

“Do not,” Steve said.

His voice was low enough that Bucky had to listen for it.

“Do not ever make me into some opportunistic bastard standing around waiting for my best friend to screw up.”

Each word came out clipped and controlled, but rage ran beneath them like live current.

Bucky stared back at him. For a second something like surprise flickered over his face – not at the force, maybe, but at the sheer naked disgust in Steve’s voice. Then even that disappeared, and what remained was a darker, uglier expression than before. Something needling. Something almost hungry.

He wanted this.

Steve saw it all at once.

Not the accusation itself. Not the fight in any real sense. The punishment.

There was something in Bucky’s eyes now that looked almost relieved to have finally drawn a clean target. As if he had spent the last hours drowning in emotions too large and shapeless to bear – shame, panic, grief, self-hatred – and had reached the point where a fist across the mouth would be easier. Simpler. A wound he could understand. A pain with edges.

He wanted Steve to hit him.

Wanted the physical blow, the proof, the release of it.

Maybe because broken knuckles and split lips hurt less cleanly than whatever image kept replaying in his head of you leaving the Tower without looking back.

Maybe because being struck by Steve would give him a punishment he could survive instead of the one he had earned and could not control.

Steve saw all of that in a single brutal flash, and it disgusted him more than the accusation had.

His lip curled very slightly. “You’re pathetic.”

The word landed harder than a punch.

Bucky’s expression changed.

For the first time, the viciousness faltered. Not gone, but pierced.

Steve held him pinned a heartbeat longer, staring at him with absolutely no effort to disguise what he felt. Disgust. Anger. A profound, cold contempt for the way Bucky was trying to drag everyone else into the mud with him now that he had finally sunk deep enough to feel it.

Then Steve released him.

Bucky hit the wall once more on the rebound and straightened too fast, jaw tightening, chest heaving. Steve took one step back, then another, forcing space between them before instinct overrode restraint. He turned away sharply and headed for the door.

He got two steps before Bucky spoke again.

“So it won’t bother you, then,” he said, voice rough and poisonous, “to pick up what’s left.”

Steve stopped dead.

There were some lines a man crossed in ignorance, and some he crossed because he wanted blood.

This was the second kind.

For one second the entire room seemed to contract around Steve’s spine. Every muscle in his back drew tight. His hand flexed once at his side so hard the fingers ached. He could feel his pulse in his throat now, hard and heavy, the old dangerous urge rising fast – the one that did not care about regret until later.

He turned so abruptly the broken glass near his boot crunched underfoot.

“Shut up, Bucky.”

His voice cracked across the room like a shot.

Bucky’s head lifted.

Steve took one step toward him, then stopped himself there by sheer force. His face had gone hard in a way very few people ever saw. Not righteous. Not noble. Just furious.

“Shut your goddamn mouth.”

The silence after that was enormous.

Bucky looked at him, breathing hard, but he did not speak.

Maybe he saw something in Steve’s expression then that finally registered as real danger. Not because Steve was Captain America. Not because he was stronger, steadier, more controlled. But because they had known each other too long for Bucky to mistake the difference between anger and the brink.

Steve stood there for one heartbeat longer, maybe two, and felt every possible next move line up in front of him.

He could hit him. He could say the cruelest thing he knew. He could drag this into some older, bloodier shape of brotherhood where men broke each other open because they had run out of language.

He wanted, with a suddenness that shocked him, to do at least one of those things.

And that was exactly why he had to leave.

So he did.

He turned on his heel and strode to the door before Bucky could force one more word into the room. His hand closed on the handle, yanked it open hard enough that it slammed against the outer wall, and for one second the cool, quiet hallway lay before him like another world entirely.

He stepped through without looking back.

Behind him, the wrecked room remained silent.

Steve pulled the door shut with more force than necessary. The latch clicked, then settled. It was a small sound after everything else, absurdly neat.

He stood there in the hallway for a second with his breathing too high in his chest and his fists clenched so tight his own nails bit into his palms. The controlled mask he wore so easily for everyone else felt thin as paper right then. He could still hear Bucky’s voice. I was going to ask her to marry me. You gonna take your shot, finally? Pick up what’s left.

The last one stayed.

It stayed because of what it implied. Because of the way it reduced you – your pain, your choice, your dignity – to debris. To aftermath. To something broken another man might claim.

The thought made Steve feel physically sick.

He pushed a hand over his face and kept walking before he could change his mind and go back in there.

The hallway seemed too bright after the room. Too polished. The Tower’s hidden systems hummed softly through the walls, indifferent as ever. Somewhere below, a lift moved between floors. Somewhere farther off, a door opened and shut. The world had resumed its shape while Steve’s pulse still pounded like he had just stepped off a battlefield.

He kept going.

Not because he was calm. Not because the anger had passed. But because he knew himself well enough to understand the difference between restraint and weakness, and tonight leaving was the only thing keeping those two from being confused.

By the time he reached the end of the corridor, his jaw hurt from how hard he had been clenching it.

He did not look back once.

GENERAL taglist: @mellowfurynight | @castielscaplan | @whatisanniedoin

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You didn’t even hear him enter the room.

You were so focused on hyping yourself up, on trying to momentarily suppress your terror and muster the courage to just do the thing—use the heavy antique lamp to break the window so you could escape—that you hadn’t the faintest idea you were no longer alone in your makeshift prison.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The sound of the soft, deep voice behind you, tinged with amusement, made you shriek as you whirled around, hugging the heavy metal lamp base to your chest as your heart raced and your eyes went big, round, and guilty.

The man standing a few feet away looked familiar, and it took a moment for you to place his handsome, boyish face and the bright blue eyes that twinkled at you from behind his glasses.

He was the mobster’s brother, and tech guru, from what you had gathered since the coup on your boss. Which had resulted in you waking up in this unfamiliar room, handcuffed to the bed, and scared out of your mind.

“I’m Jake,” he introduced himself, casually tucking his hands into his pockets as he rocked forward on his feet, his eyes warm and eager as they took a moment to trail over you.

You shivered as his gaze lingered on your chest before zeroing in on the way you shifted your hold on the lamp still clutched in your grip, so it was more like a potential weapon instead of a houseware.

Cocking his head, Jake’s lips curled into a smile. “You’re smarter than that. I mean, let’s say you did somehow manage to get a good swing in and take me out, what next? You’re not getting out of this room, and even if you did, the manor’s crawling with my brother’s men, all armed and much scarier than me. You probably wouldn’t make it to the end of the hallway before they recaptured you, or worse.”

Your breath hitched at his threat that was spoken so lightly, almost playfully.

Because you knew he was right.

You may have only been on the very outside periphery of the mob world, but you still knew of Curtis Everett—of his reputation and the diligence, and deadliness, with which he trained and oversaw his men.

Shuddering out a broken breath, you carefully set the lamp down on the desk where it belonged.

“Good girl,” Jake purred, giving you a megawatt smile that you would have found beautiful in any other circumstance.

“I don’t know anything,” you quavered, shrinking back against the wall as Jake moved closer. “I’m just Mr. Hansen’s personal chef. I’m invisible to him and stayed out of his way as much as possible. I really don’t know anything, I swear!”

“Why do you think you’re up here instead of down in the basement, where much more… unpleasant conversations tend to take place?”

You whimpered as Jake reached for you, but all he did was gently touch your arm and raise your hand so he could see your injured wrist from where you had wrenched yourself free from the handcuffs.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever slipped our cuffs before,” Jake chuckled, his touch so soft as he turned over your hand and caressed along the bruised and bloody underside of your wrist. “Impressive.”

When you inhaled sharply at the pain of his slight touch, he tutted, his smile dimming as he stared at your mangled wrist before his eyes slowly lifted to meet yours.

“You know, my brother wouldn’t take too kindly to this kind of misbehavior, but lucky for you, I’m much more easy going than him.”

All you could do was watch as Jake slowly raised your arm so he could place a gentle kiss along your scraped and aching flesh.

“But I still don’t like that you hurt yourself.”

There was this tone to Jake’s voice as he spoke those words—emphasized his utter disappointment—that made your insides skitter with a different kind of fear. One that didn’t make sense given his calm demeanor, but it was a primal thing—an inner warning that had you quaking out your response quicker than your brain could process it.

“I’m sorry.”

His reply came just as swiftly as your apology. “I forgive you,” he smiled easily. Continuing to hold your wrist between his much bigger hands, his smile brightened as he said, “And I’m gonna take such good care of you, too. My very own sweet, pretty wife.“

At your stunned and disbelieving look, Jake winked.

“Curtis may not have a sense of humor, but he’s very good at rewarding loyalty and exceptional work.“

You gasped as Jake suddenly yanked you flush against him. His eyes darkened as your squirming body pressed to his, his free hand rounding your hip and sliding indecently low, gripping you in a way far too bold and possessive for having just met.

"I am sorry, Mother." You lower your face, cheeks burning.

"Just because you seem to be doing well with the Duke doesn't mean you can take it easy! Not until after the wedding, at least," Father huffs.

"While I agree with you, some rumors have reached me that make me think we've got the wedding locked in," Mother hums. "The details aren't known, but people are talking about Duke Barber making a fool of himself for our girl. Clearly he is smitten!"

Father considers this before countering, "he could also simply be acting the gentleman. We don't know." He turns to you, "in either case, do not start slacking off!"

"Yes, Father."

Franklin, the butler of your family's estate, politely coughs to get Father's attention. "The Earl of Estetor, Napoleon Solo, has arrived, asking after you, Sir," he informs Father with a small bow.

"I wasn't expecting a visitor," Father replies grumpily. "Show him to my study while I make myself presentable."

Franklin bows and heads back to the front of the house.

"Earl of Estetor?" Mother muses. "I believe he's from another kingdom. He would be on an equal level with us if he were from Bellin. Do be respectful. Perhaps we have another contender for our daughter's hand!"

Father grumbles, "I will, of course, be polite. But do not presume he will want our daughter. We were lucky enough to find a single suitor, we are unlikely to find another."

You hide your wince as best as you can. His words should not hurt you so much anymore, but they still seem to find their target.

With word from Father, a lunch for the Earl is quickly assembled. Clearly the man is here for a good purpose. Mother picks out your clothes and tells your servant how to style your hair and makeup so all you are able to do is sit there.

You should be focused on your posture, sitting still, keeping your smile in place. But your thoughts keep returning to that night with Andy. It was the closest you've ever truly felt to...something. You're not even sure what the feeling is, but it felt good for being so different.

As you and Mother enter the dining area, the Earl stands. You've heard of a custom in other kingdoms where men, as a sign of respect, rise when I woman enters the room. It throws you for but a moment before you remember to curtsy. Though it was only a moment, Mother and Father give you looks that say they noticed.

"Ladies," the Earl begins, remaining standing as you and Mother find your seat. "Please, allow me to introduce myself. I am Napoleon Solo, Earl of Estetor, and I am here on behalf of Andy, Duke Barber as you call him. As you know, he can be a bit of a stickler for the rules, even the ones you might consider...out-of-date."

Keeping yourself still, you fight the urge to defend Andy, especially as Mother and Father are smiling and nodding in agreement.

"One of the rules for courtship is that the man's friend or family be the go-between for gifting. That way none can cast doubt on the lady's reputation upon being showered with gifts."

You catch yourself before you can slip up, remembering the implicit accusations levied at you at the dinner.

"Duke Barber and I attended the same college for a while, studying abroad and all that, and became fast friends. As such, I am here to make sure the beautiful lady receives her gift," Napoleon finishes, taking a small box out of his jacket pocket.

He sets the box on the table, eyes never leaving yours. He's clearly expecting you to be the one to open it but you know better. As you expected, Mother snatches the box and opens it up, cooing over the gift and showing Father, not you.

"Oh, look at all of those sapphires! The Duke is known for his frugality, but this gift is belies that!" Mother exclaims.

"Indeed, it is a very pleasing gift," Father smiles.

Mother turns to you. "Here, let me pin it on you. It'll look so good with this dress!"

As she sets the box down, your smile grows when you see the beautiful, sapphire laden, silver harp brooch Andy had gotten you. If you had any say, you'd wear it with every dress.

"Please be sure to give my thanks to A-- to Duke Barber," you inform the Earl, holding back tears.

"Of course they bought it, Your Grace," Napoleon scoffs at Andy before taking a sip of his drink. "I'm very good at what I do. Why else would you hire me?"

"Fair enough," Andy nods. "What did you learn?"

Napoleon sets down his glass of brandy and sighs. "Short answer, your girl is not in a good place. The slightest mistake is met with a parental glare promising consequences. And I've been hit with enough rules to recognize the marks left on her poor, delicate hands."

Andy stiffens at the thought of you being hurt, his jaw tensing as he thinks of your hands being bruised.

"They've definitely got her trained, though, I'll give them that," Napoleon huffs. "She didn't even try to look at the gift before her parents snatched it up."

"So, chances are, she's just following her parents' orders in the courtship and doesn't actually want it," Andy concludes.

"Mmmm..." Napoleon chuckles. "That might not be the case. She's very good at masking, but I've got an eye for those cracks. She went rigid when you were insulted, even slightly. She became doe-eyed at the gift. I'm thinking there might be something there."

Eyes softening, Andy breathes a little easier.

"I'm going to need to book you for a second appearance for the wedding," he tells Napoleon.

"You're thorough in your deceptions. I admire that," the other man grins.

"Can't have them suspecting foul play," Andy replies. Not until she's safe.