C’s Corner

The apartment's quiet when you step inside.

John's boots are by the door. His jacket is over the back of the couch. A mug sits in the sink, rinsed but not washed. The blanket on the couch is folded with near-aggressive precision, one corner tucked under like it personally offended him.

You stand in the entryway for a second and listen. The shower's running. Relief hits first. Then guilt, ugly and immediate. You shut the door behind you. The lock clicks into place. The sound feels final in a way you don't like.

John comes out ten minutes later with damp hair, a clean shirt, and a towel looped around the back of his neck. He stops when he sees you.

For one breath, his whole face opens. Then something shutters. Not all the way. John has never been as good at hiding from you as he thinks he is.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey."

His eyes sweep over you. "You're back."

"I said I would be."

"I know."

But the words don't sit right. They land too flat.

You set your keys on the counter. "You okay?"

John huffs once, not quite a laugh. "That feels like my line."

"I'm stealing it."

"Bold."

"I've had a day."

His eyes flick over your face again. "Yeah."

There it is. That careful distance.

John moves into the kitchen, takes a glass from the cabinet, and fills it at the sink. He doesn't ask about the lake. He doesn't ask what Bucky said. He doesn't ask if you cried, if you touched him, if you came close to kissing him, if the old life reached out of the ground and wrapped fingers around your ankles.

He asks none of it.

He drinks half the water, sets the glass down, and wipes a thumb over the condensation.

You watch him. "Are you mad?"

His hand stills. "No."

"John."

He turns around, leaning back against the counter. "I'm not mad."

"You feel far away."

That gets him. His jaw tightens, and for a second, he looks tired down to the bone. "I'm trying not to make this harder."

A laugh leaves you, small and humorless. "That usually makes it harder."

"Yeah." He looks down. "I'm noticing."

You take one step closer. "If this is because of Bucky..."

"It's not just because of Barnes." The words land between you. John's face changes like he didn't mean for them to come out that sharp.

You absorb the hit. Nod once. "Okay."

"Em."

"No, it's okay." You fold your arms carefully, your shoulder pulling just enough to remind you it's still angry. "You can say his name. You can be hurt. You can be jealous. You can be angry."

"I'm not angry."

"John."

"I'm not angry at you," he says.

That's worse. The quiet after it fills the kitchen. You stare at him.

His eyes lift to yours. "I'm angry at everything else."

Your chest tightens.

"I'm angry he was gone," John says, voice controlled in a way that tells you he's rehearsed every word and still hates them. "I'm angry you lost him. I'm angry you had to keep living after it. I'm angry I met you because of the worst thing that ever happened to you."

You go still.

John's throat works. "And I'm angry because some selfish part of me is grateful I met you at all."

The words hit softly. That makes them worse.

"Oh, John."

He shakes his head once. "Don't. I know how ugly it sounds."

"It doesn't."

"It does to me."

You cross the rest of the kitchen slowly, giving him time to move away. You stop in front of him. Close enough to touch. "You can be grateful you met me without being grateful for what happened."

His mouth presses into a hard line.

"You know that, right?"

He looks at you, and the answer's all over his face.

No. Not really.

You lift your hand and touch his chest, right over his heart. His breathing shifts beneath your palm. "I came back," you say.

His eyes close for half a second.

You understand then, this isn't only Bucky. This is the apartment empty after battle. The calls that didn't connect. The voicemail he left like a flare shot into a dead sky. This is John standing in a world full of returned people while the woman he loved was missing from the one place he thought he could find her.

You step closer. "I'm here."

His hand lifts to your wrist, fingers wrapping carefully around bone and pulse. "I know."

"You keep saying that like it fixes the part where you didn't."

John's face shifts.

You didn't mean to say it like that.

He looks at you for a long moment, and then something in him breaks quietly. "I came home," he says. "I came home and you were gone."

Your throat tightens. "I know."

"No." His voice drops. "I don't think you do."

You flinch, but you stay.

John sees it. His grip loosens immediately, guilt flashing across his face.

You catch his hand before he can pull away. "Tell me."

He laughs under his breath, but there's no humor in it. "You want the ugly part again?"

"I want you."

His eyes snap to yours.

"All of you," you say. "Not just the parts that know how to fold towels and check my meds."

A faint, broken twitch touches his mouth.

John looks down at your joined hands. "I thought I'd lost you," he says. "And then you came back, and Barnes came back too, and everything became this thing I can't touch without cutting my hands open."

Your fingers tighten around his.

He swallows. "I can fight people. I can take orders. I can stand in the middle of an active evacuation zone and figure out where to move bodies and supplies and crying kids and people who came back to lives that don't exist anymore."

His eyes rise to yours. "But I don't know how to compete with a ghost who came back breathing."

Your breath catches. "You're not competing."

"Aren't I?"

"No." You step into him fully now, your hand sliding up to his jaw. "You're not him. He's not you. I don't love you because you're easier. I don't love him because he's older. I don't love either of you in a way that cancels the other out."

John closes his eyes like the words hurt.

"They don't fit in neat little rooms," you whisper. "I know. I hate it too."

His hand comes to your waist. Careful. Always careful.

"I looked at him today," you say, voice breaking, "and it hurt so badly I thought I was going to come apart. And then Sam brought me here, and I saw your boots by the door, and I thought, home."

John's eyes open.

You let him see it. All of it. As much as you can stand. "Not instead of him," you say. "Not because of him. You. This. Us."

His fingers flex at your waist.

"I don't know how to do this," you whisper.

"Neither do I."

"Then we do it badly."

He breathes out. "We're good at that," he says.

A laugh shakes out of you, cracked and wet.

John's hand moves to the back of your neck. His thumb brushes under your hair, familiar enough to make your knees want to give. "I'm scared," he admits.

You nod. "Me too."

"I don't want to lose you."

"You haven't."

"Not yet."

"John."

"I know." He shuts his eyes again. "I know. I'm trying. I swear to God, I'm trying."

The word echoes between you. The one promise either of you seems brave enough to make anymore.

You lean forward and press your forehead to his chest. His arms close around you. Not immediately. Not in one smooth motion. He hesitates first, like he's afraid to take too much, afraid to need too visibly.

Then he gives in.

You stand there in the kitchen, held against him while his heartbeat moves under your cheek and the apartment settles around you.

Outside, the world keeps coming apart and putting itself back together with shaking hands.

Inside, John kisses the top of your head.

"I love you, Mara," he says.

Your eyes sting. "I love you too."

He holds you tighter. Tight enough to believe.

By morning, the light is soft. Strange, almost. Like the day doesn't know yet what it's going to take.

You wake slowly, not in pieces this time but all at once, held under the weight of John's body curled around yours. His face is tucked against your shoulder, his breathing low and even, his hand beneath your shirt, palm flat against your ribs where the bruises have yellowed at the edges.

For a moment, you don't move. You let yourself have it. The bed. The quiet. His warmth. The private world before phones begin their cruel little buzzing songs.

Then John's fingers move, not much. Just a slow drag along your side, careful over the tender places, pausing when your breath catches.

"Morning," he murmurs, voice is rough with sleep.

Your eyes close. "Morning."

His mouth touches your shoulder. A soft kiss. Then another. Not asking for more at first. Just memorizing skin through cotton, breath through silence, the shape of you in his bed while the world waits outside with its clipboard and knife.

You turn carefully to face him.

John's eyes are open now. There's something in them that makes your chest ache.

Not hunger first. Fear. Tenderness. A goodbye he hasn't been told to say yet.

"You're staring again," you whisper.

"Yeah."

"No medical excuse this time?"

His thumb moves over your waist. "No."

You lift your hand to his face. His stubble scratches softly beneath your palm. He leans into it before he can stop himself. "What is it?" you ask.

He shakes his head.

"John."

His mouth brushes your wrist. "I just want to remember you like this."

Your throat closes.

Like this. Not bleeding. Not leaving. Not crying between two versions of love. Just here. Warm. Sleepy. Alive. His for however long the morning lets you pretend possession is possible.

You kiss him first, softly.

John goes still for half a heartbeat, then answers like the kiss has been waiting in him all night. His hand cups your face, his body shifting closer with exquisite care, like even wanting you has to pass through a checkpoint.

You make a small sound against his mouth.

He pulls back immediately. "Shoulder?"

"No."

"Ribs?"

"No."

"Then what?"

You look at him.

His face changes. "Oh."

A laugh trembles out of you. "Yeah. Oh."

His eyes darken, but not sharply. Not with the rough edge he sometimes gets when wanting catches him off guard. This is slower, sadder. His thumb brushes your cheek. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"I don't want you hurting yourself."

"I'm not."

"Love."

"John," you say softly. "I'm sure."

His breath shakes. Then he kisses you again. This time, there's no rush. No grabbing, no desperate attempt to outrun everything waiting outside the room. His mouth moves over yours like he's reading a language he's afraid someone will take from him before he becomes fluent.

His hands are careful everywhere. You have to catch one and press it harder against your waist before he understands that you're not made of glass.

His eyes search yours.

You nod.

Whatever happens after that happens quietly.

Clothes shifted with patience. Breath caught and released. His mouth at your neck, your hands in his hair, your body learning how to trust the places that still ache. John keeps checking your face. Your shoulder. Your breathing. Each time, you bring him back with a touch, with his name, with your fingers at the sensitive place near his ear that makes him go still and shudder.

He whispers love like an apology. You whisper it back like an anchor. There's nothing frantic in it.

That almost makes it worse.

The gentleness feels like a room being emptied one cherished thing at a time.

John kisses your wrist. Your shoulder. The inside of your elbow. The faint bruising near your ribs. Places no one else would think to mourn.

He tries to memorize you with his hands. You feel it. The awful tenderness of it.

The way he pauses sometimes like he's taking inventory. Like he's packing you away somewhere behind his ribs because he doesn't know when the next call will come, only that it will.

Your eyes burn. "John."

He stills above you, face close to yours. "Did I hurt you?"

"No."

His forehead touches yours.

You wrap your arms around him as much as your shoulder allows.

"Stay here," you whisper.

His eyes close.

The words were unfair before you even finished saying them. You know that. He knows that. Neither of you calls them back.

"I wish I could," he says.

And that's when the goodbye enters the room fully. Just that sentence, soft and ruined against your mouth.

You hold him tighter.

After, John doesn't move away.

He stays tucked against you, careful not to put weight where you're tender, his face pressed into the curve of your neck. His breathing takes a long time to settle. Yours does too.

The room smells like sweat, sleep, and the laundry detergent John buys in bulk because he has opinions about "inefficient shopping."

You stare at the ceiling and feel his hand moving slowly over your side.

Up.

Down.

Careful over the ribs.

Back up again.

The same rhythm as the night before.

Only now it feels like he's counting.

"You're doing it again," you whisper.

"What?"

"Trying to memorize me."

His hand stops.

You turn your head and look at him. John doesn't deny it. That scares you more than if he had.

"Did something happen?" you ask.

"No."

"You sure?"

His eyes hold yours for half a second too long.

Then he kisses your forehead. "Nothing I can tell you."

Ice slips into your chest. "John."

"Nothing is concrete yet."

"Yet."

His jaw tightens.

You spend the rest of the morning pretending not to hear it.

You make coffee. John makes breakfast. You burn one piece of toast because he distracts you by standing too close and looking too handsome for a man who believes eggs need to be timed with military precision.

"You're a menace," he says, scraping blackened toast into the trash.

"I survived Thanos. I can survive toast criticism."

"You say that, but this toast didn't."

You gasp. "Too soon."

"Too charred."

You throw a dish towel at him. He catches it one-handed and points at you with it.

"Limited mobility and still attacking an officer."

"You're off duty."

"Technically."

"Then technically, shut up."

His smile appears before he can stop it.

There he is, just for one bright second.

Then his phone rings. The sound cuts through the apartment like a blade through thread.

John looks at it.

You already know.

His face doesn't change enough for anyone else to see. But you're not anyone else.

You watch him turn the phone over, read the name on the screen, and answer.

"Walker."

His voice is different.

Not yours. Not the kitchen's. Not the man who kissed your bruises like he could apologize to them personally.

Captain Walker.

The call is short. Mostly listening. A few clipped answers.

"Yes, sir."

"When?"

His eyes close briefly.

Your hand tightens around the edge of the counter.

"Understood."

He hangs up.

The apartment goes silent.

John keeps the phone in his hand, staring down at the dark screen.

You can't breathe right. "How long?" you ask.

He doesn't look at you immediately. That is answer enough.

"John."

He sets the phone on the counter with careful precision. The kind of careful that means something inside him is trying very hard not to break any furniture.

"They're pulling me tonight."

The word slips out of you before you can stop it. "Tonight?"

"Yeah."

"For how long?"

His jaw works.

You step closer. "For how long?"

"I don't know."

The room tilts.

You brace a hand on the counter.

John reaches for you immediately, then stops himself halfway like he doesn't know whether comfort is cruel when he's the reason you need it.

You close the distance and take his hand. His fingers close around yours hard enough to show fear.

"Indefinitely?" you ask.

He nods once.

Your throat burns. "Where?"

"I can't say."

"Can you say if it's dangerous?"

A hollow almost-laugh leaves him. "Love."

You hate that answer. You hate it so much you want to throw something. Instead, you hold his hand tighter. "When do you leave?"

"Report by twenty-two hundred."

You stare at him.

The whole morning shifts in your memory.

His mouth on your skin. His hands. The way he looked at you like he was packing away light for winter. "You knew this might happen."

"I suspected."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I didn't know."

"But you suspected."

His face tightens. "I didn't want to ruin the time before I had to."

The anger rises fast. Then collapses under grief before it can stand upright.

Because you understand. Because you hate that you understand. Because this is what all of you do. You put tenderness in a room, lock the door, and hope war doesn't have a key.

You turn away, pressing a hand over your mouth.

John's voice comes quieter. "Em."

"Give me a second." You breathe through it. Once. Twice. Badly. Then you turn back around. "Okay," you say.

John flinches.

You understand why. That word again. That cursed little blade.

"No," you whisper. "Not like that. I mean... okay. We do tonight."

His eyes burn.

"We do tonight," you repeat. "And then you call me when you can."

"I don't know when that'll be."

"When you can."

"I might not be able to say much."

"Then say what you can."

His mouth trembles once before he forces it still.

You step closer, grabbing the front of his shirt with your good hand. "And you try."

His face crumples just enough to hurt. "I can promise I'll try," he whispers.

You close your eyes. There it is again. The only promise left standing.

John calls Lemar twenty minutes later.

He does it from the bedroom, but the apartment is small and his voice carries when it gets rough around the edges.

"No, tonight."

A pause.

"Yeah. I know."

Another pause.

"I need a favor."

You stop folding the same shirt for the fourth time.

John lowers his voice, not enough. "Keep an eye on her."

Your chest tightens.

"Don't make it a thing," he says.

A pause.

"I know she'll hate it."

Another pause, longer.

"Yeah."

His voice changes then.

Softer. Worse.

"Please."

You sit down on the edge of the couch because your knees don't like that.

John appears in the doorway a moment later, phone still in his hand.

You look at him.

"He said he'll come by later."

"I'm not a houseplant."

"No."

"I don't need watering."

John's mouth twitches faintly. "That's not what I asked him to do."

"You asked him to babysit me."

"I asked him to make sure you don't disappear into a grief-powered vigilante spiral while I'm gone."

You stare at him.

He stares back.

"That was very specific," you say.

"I know you."

That lands. You look away first.

John crosses the room and crouches in front of you. Not because you need him lower, but because he likes to meet your eyes when he's asking for something that costs him pride.

"I need to know someone's here," he says.

Your throat tightens.

"I need to know if you stop answering texts, someone can knock on the door. I need to know if you get hurt, someone will know before three days pass." His voice roughens. "I need that, Em."

You close your eyes.

The apartment after the battle. The empty room. The voicemail.

"Okay," you whisper.

His hands settle on your knees. "Okay?"

You open your eyes. "But tell him if he calls me fragile, I'll stab him with a citrus peel."

John's mouth curves faintly. "I'll warn him."

"Good."

Lemar arrives before sunset with takeout, coffee, and one grocery bag full of oranges.

You open the door and stare at him.

"Don't say it," he says.

"You've got a problem."

"I've got nutritional concerns."

"You've got a citrus-based coping mechanism."

He steps inside. "And yet, no one here has scurvy. You're welcome."

John comes out from the bedroom with a packed duffel in his hand.

The room changes.

Lemar sees it. His humor doesn't disappear, but it lowers its voice.

"Hey," he says.

John nods. "Hey."

You look at the duffel. Military green. Zipped. Heavy with things you don't get to know about. It sits by John's leg like a third person in the room.

Lemar sets the takeout on the counter. "You hungry, Trouble?"

"No."

"Wrong answer."

"Lemar."

"Nope. We're all eating something with a vegetable in it before the emotional destruction resumes."

John huffs under his breath.

You look at him. "Did he bring vegetables?"

"Technically," John says.

Lemar points at him. "Onions count."

"They don't."

"They grow from the ground. Case closed."

You almost laugh.

That's his gift. Lemar can walk into a room full of knives and start juggling oranges until everyone forgets which blade was meant for their throat.

Dinner is terrible. Not the food. The food is fine. The sitting is terrible. The chewing. The looking across the table at John and knowing he's counting hours now. Maybe minutes. Maybe the number of times you touch your necklace. Maybe the number of breaths left before the door closes behind him.

Lemar talks enough for all three of you.

His mom wants John to stop insulting chicken.

His sister cried when she saw him, then stole his jacket.

His uncle is convinced the Blip was somehow the government's fault, which Lemar says with an exhausted look that makes John snort into his water.

For little seconds, the apartment stays standing.

Then John's phone buzzes.

Not a call.

A reminder.

Time has teeth again.

John disappears into the bedroom to make one last check of his bag.

Lemar stays in the kitchen with you. He leans back against the counter, arms folded, eyes gentler than his posture. "You doing okay, little sister?"

You look at the bedroom door. "No."

"Good. We're telling the truth now. Horrible trend. Very brave."

You huff a laugh. It doesn't last. "He asked you to keep an eye on me."

"He did."

"You going to?"

"Obviously."

"Lemar."

He pushes away from the counter and comes closer, stopping in front of you. "I'm not here to run your life. I'm not here to report every move you make back to him. I'm not here to tell you how to grieve or who to love or where to put all the broken pieces."

Your throat tightens.

"I'm here because he loves you," Lemar says. "And because I do too."

Your face crumples.

He points at you. "Don't get weird."

"I'm not."

"You're getting weird."

"You just said something emotional."

"I know. I hated it."

You laugh, and this time it breaks into a sob halfway through.

Lemar steps in and hugs you carefully. Not like John. Not like Bucky. Like Lemar. Solid. Warm. Annoying enough to survive.

"I've got you, Trouble," he says quietly. "When he can't. I've got you."

You hold on with your good arm. "Thank you."

"Always."

John leaves at 9:12 pm.

He stands by the door with the duffel over his shoulder and looks at you like the apartment is already becoming a memory.

Lemar waits in the hallway, giving you privacy without going too far.

John touches your face. His thumb moves over your cheek, then your jaw, then pauses near your mouth.

You don't cry. Not yet. "Call me when you can," you say.

"I will."

"Don't be stupid."

His mouth twitches. "No promises."

"John."

"I'll try."

You nod once.

He leans in and kisses you. Not like the morning. This kiss is restrained because if it isn't, neither of you will survive it. His mouth stays soft. His hand stays steady on your face. His breath shakes only at the end, when he pulls back and rests his forehead against yours.

"I love you," he whispers.

"I love you too."

His eyes close.

For a second, you think he might say something else. Something desperate. Something ugly. Something honest enough to leave scars.

Instead, he kisses your forehead and steps away.

Because John Walker knows how to go where he's ordered. Even when every part of him stays behind.

The door closes followed by the lock turn.

You stand there and listen to his footsteps fade down the hall.

Lemar appears in the doorway after a minute.

He doesn't speak. He just stands beside you. The two of you stare at the door together until the quiet grows teeth again.

The next day, John calls at 2:36 pm. You know because you've spent the entire day staring at your phone like hatred might make it ring.

When it finally does, you almost drop it.

"John?"

"Hey, love."

His voice is distant. Not emotionally. Literally. A bad connection dragging static around the edges of every syllable.

Your chest caves in around the sound of him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm safe."

The answer is too practiced. Too limited.

You sit down on the couch because your knees go strange. "That's not what I asked."

"I know."

"John."

"I can't say much."

You close your eyes.

Of course the world gives you his voice and then puts a wall of classified silence between every word.

"But you're safe?"

"I can promise I'm safe right now."

Right now. You hear it. He probably meant you to.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

Your hand tightens around the phone. "Are you alone?"

A pause.

"Not in the way you're asking."

That's worse. Somehow, it's worse.

You press a hand to your mouth. "I don't like this."

"I know."

"I really don't like this."

"I know, love."

You hate how calm he sounds. You hate that you understand why. He's not calm. He's standing somewhere he can't name, giving you what he can through a line that could die any second.

"When will you call again?"

"When I can."

"That's a terrible answer."

"It's the only one I've got."

A voice sounds faintly on his end. Not close enough for words. Enough to make John go quiet.

"I have to go."

Your hand tightens around the phone. "Already?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't."

He exhales.

For a second, neither of you speaks.

Then he says, softer, "You eating?"

You laugh because if you don't, something worse will happen. "That's what you're asking me right now?"

"Yes."

"Lemar brought enough oranges to insult Florida."

"Good."

"I hate both of you."

"No, you don't."

"No," you whisper. "I don't."

The static shifts.

John's voice lowers. "I love you."

Your eyes burn. "I love you."

"I'll call when I can."

Then he's gone. The line goes dead.

You keep the phone pressed to your ear long after there's nothing left to hear.

By the second day, the apartment becomes unbearable.

Not because it's empty. Because it isn't. John is everywhere.

His boots are gone from the door, but the space where they belong is still there. His mug is in the cabinet. His shirt is in the laundry hamper. His note is still tucked in the drawer with your keys like a relic from a softer religion.

Lemar checks in twice.

In the morning:

You alive?

You send back a picture of your coffee.

He replies, Coffee is not proof of life. It's proof of poor choices.

In the afternoon:

Eat.

You send a picture of toast.

He replies, I see no orange. Concerning.

You laugh.

Then you stare at the wall for twenty minutes and think about John somewhere you can't name, Bucky in the city somewhere, Natasha gone, Yelena missing, and the whole world rearranging itself while you sit still like a pinned insect.

By evening, stillness becomes impossible.

You open your laptop. The old machine hums like it resents being alive.

You start with what Natasha left behind which isn't much. Nat was careful. She could disappear from inside a locked room and leave nothing behind but the sense that the room had been judged and found lacking.

But grief makes you patient in ugly ways.

You search old contacts first. Dead drops. Church names. Safehouse coordinates buried in messages that look like grocery lists. Flight manifests from years before the snap. Rumors from people who owe you favors and people who owe Nat more.

Yelena Belova.

The name sits in the search bar like a pulse.

You promised Steve.

No.

You promised Nat, before there were words for it.

You promised the dead the way survivors always do. Quietly. Stupidly. With no plan and too much guilt.

By midnight, you've got twelve dead ends, three possible aliases, two addresses that are probably traps, and one grainy security image from an airport six months before the snap that may or may not be Yelena depending on how generous despair feels.

You don't sleep.

By morning, your eyes ache.

Lemar knocks at 8:03.

You open the door with your laptop tucked under your arm and three pens stuck in your hair.

He takes one look at you and says, "Absolutely not."

"Good morning to you too."

"Whatever this is, no."

"You don't know what this is."

"You look like a conspiracy board became a person."

"Rude."

"Accurate." His eyes narrow. "Did you sleep?"

"Define sleep."

"Horizontal. Unconscious. Not committing felonies with Wi-Fi."

You blink. "Then no."

"Trouble."

"Lemar."

He steps inside with breakfast and more judgment than any one man should be able to carry before coffee.

"You talked to him?" he asks.

"Yesterday."

"Good."

"You?"

"This morning."

You look at him too quickly. "He's okay?"

"He's okay."

You breathe out.

Lemar watches you carefully. "He said he'd call when he can."

You nod.

"He also said to tell you not to climb the walls."

"I wasn't climbing walls."

Lemar looks at the laptop.

You hug it closer. "I was researching."

"That is wall-climbing with a keyboard."

You set your jaw. "I'm looking for Yelena."

The humor fades from his face. Not completely. Lemar's humor never dies. It just learns when to sit down.

"Romanoff's sister?" he asks.

You nod.

He is quiet for a moment. "Does John know?"

"No."

Lemar watches you for another second.

He doesn't say what he could say. That you're reaching for a mission because John is gone. That grief hates a vacuum. That when one tether gets pulled out of your hand, you'll grab the next before you can fall.

He doesn't say it. That might be worse.

Instead, he sets breakfast on the table and says, "Eat while you commit emotional cybercrime."

You blink at him. "What?"

"That was supportive."

"That was judgment in a hat."

"It was supportive judgment. Sit down."

You sit. You eat because he watches you until you do.

Sam calls three hours later.

"Hey," he says. "Checking in before Barnes starts asking me if I've checked in."

You lean back in the chair, laptop open in front of you. "Tell him I'm alive."

"That answer is getting less reassuring the more you use it."

"Then tell him I'm upright."

"Terrible upgrade."

You rub at your eyes. "How is he?"

"Better than he was."

Your hand stills. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. He got a place."

You blink. "A place?"

"Apartment."

You sit up slowly. "Where?"

Sam is quiet for half a second too long.

"Sam."

He sighs. "Brooklyn."

Of course. The word lands in the apartment with a thud. Brooklyn.

John's borough. Bucky's borough. Your life folding itself into impossible geography. The universe has no subtlety. It's all cymbals and falling furniture.

"Brooklyn," you repeat.

"Yeah."

"That's..."

"Yeah," Sam says. "I know."

You stare at the messy notes beside your laptop. Yelena's name. Natasha's old aliases. A half-sketched map of safehouses and dead ends.

"What're you doing?" Sam asks.

You look at the screen. "Looking for Yelena."

The line goes quiet.

Then Sam's voice softens. "Nat's sister."

"Yeah."

"You got anything?"

"Not enough."

"You sleeping?"

"Why is everyone obsessed with that?"

"Because we all have eyes and ears and a basic understanding of spirals."

You look toward the kitchen, where Lemar left a note taped to a bag of oranges.

EAT ONE OR I WILL KNOW.

"I need to find her, Sam."

"I know."

"No, I need to." Your voice tightens. "Nat died, and Yelena doesn't know. Or maybe she does. Or maybe she came back and nobody told her, or maybe she didn't come back, or maybe she's out there thinking Nat never looked for her, and I can't..." Your voice breaks.

Sam lets the silence hold you for a second. Then he says, "Maybe Bucky can help."

You close your eyes. Of course he says it carefully. Like he's placing a match beside gasoline and praying no one breathes too hard. "Bucky?"

"He knows people," Sam says. "Old networks. Old safehouses. The kind of places Nat might've known too. And he's..." A pause. "He's trying to have something to do."

Your throat tightens.

Bucky in Brooklyn. Bucky with an apartment. Bucky trying to exist inside walls again.

"I don't want to use him."

"Then don't," Sam says. "Ask him."

You stare at the phone.

"You said you weren't going to disappear from him," Sam adds, gentler now.

Steve's voice moves under your skin.

Don't disappear from each other just because it hurts.

Damn him. Damn all of them.

You swallow. "What if this is a bad idea?"

"It probably is."

"Helpful."

"But maybe it's the useful kind of bad idea."

You huff a tired laugh. "Another candle?"

"Nah. That one was mine."

You glance toward the bedroom, toward the empty side of the bed, toward the folded note hidden away in the drawer.

John is gone. Lemar is watching. Sam is nudging. Bucky is waiting somewhere in Brooklyn. Yelena is a ghost with a name you owe the truth.

"Can you send me his number?" you ask.

"Yeah," he says. "I'll send it."

The text comes through a minute later.

Bucky Barnes.

As if the name hasn't been living under your ribs for years.

You stare at it for so long the screen dims.

Then you call before cowardice can build a house in your throat.

He answers on the second ring.

"Em?"

Your eyes close at the sound of him. "Hey."

"Hey." A shift, maybe him sitting up. Maybe him stilling. "You okay?"

You almost laugh. Apparently everyone has one script and keeps passing it around.

"No," you say honestly.

Bucky goes quiet.

"But I'm not hurt," you add quickly. "It's not that."

"Okay."

There it is. Softer this time. Not a blade. A door held open.

You look at the laptop. At Yelena's name. "I need help."

Bucky inhales once. Quiet. Sharp. Like those words have touched some part of him that's been waiting to be useful.

"Anything."

Your throat tightens. "Bucky..."

"I mean it."

"I know." You press your fingers to your eyes. "That's why I'm trying to be careful."

His voice gentles. "Tell me."

You do.

Not all of it at first.

Just enough.

Natasha. Vormir. The sister you've never met. The name. The promise that isn't a promise because no one asked you to make it, but it lives in you anyway.

Bucky doesn't interrupt.

He doesn't tell you to rest. He doesn't tell you this isn't your responsibility. He doesn't try to make grief smaller by calling it noble.

When you finish, the line is quiet for a long moment.

Then he says, "Yelena Belova."

You open your eyes. "You know the name?"

"I know of her."

Something in your chest tightens. "From where?"

"Red Room whispers. Old files. Things HYDRA had pieces of but never the whole picture." His voice roughens. "Natasha knew more."

"Nat's not here."

"I know."

The grief in his voice is quiet. Different from yours. Bucky and Nat had their own history, their own sharp-edged understanding. You feel it pass through the line and vanish before either of you can touch it directly.

"I can help," he says.

You grip the phone tighter. "I've got notes," you say. "It's a mess."

"I've seen messes."

"This one has color coding."

"Terrifying."

A laugh slips out of you.

Bucky's breath catches faintly, like he wasn't prepared for the sound but is glad it survived.

You close your eyes.

Dangerous.

Not because of him. Because of how easy it is to remember how to breathe around him.

"Can I come by tomorrow?" you ask.

The question hangs between you.

Tomorrow.

Two days after John left. Two days after the goodbye that still lives warm and aching under your skin.

Bucky doesn't answer immediately.

You appreciate that. You hate that too.

"Yeah," he says finally. "You can come by."

"Sam said Brooklyn."

"He told you?"

"He hesitated first."

"That sounds like Sam."

You look toward John's empty side of the bed. "Text me the address?"

"I will."

Another pause.

Then Bucky says, "Em."

Your throat tightens. "Yeah?"

"You don't have to come because you feel guilty."

Your eyes burn. "I know."

"And you don't have to stay away because you feel guilty either."

That one gets under your ribs. You sit very still.

Bucky's voice stays soft. "Just come if you want to."

You look at Yelena's name. At John's note. At the wolf charm resting under your shirt.

"I want to," you whisper.

The line is quiet.

Then Bucky says, "Okay."

This time, the word doesn't hurt as much.

Lemar comes by that night with soup. Not oranges pretending to be emotional infrastructure.

He finds you at the table surrounded by printouts, maps, handwritten notes, and one old knife that you only realize is there when his eyebrows climb toward his hairline.

"Is the knife part of the research process?"

"It helps me think."

"That's alarming."

"It's sheathed."

"That didn't make it less alarming."

You slide the knife under a notebook.

He stares at you.

You stare back.

Finally, he says, "I brought bread."

"You're very domestic today."

"I'm multidimensional."

"You once ate cereal out of a measuring cup."

"It had measurement lines. Built-in portion control."

You smile despite yourself.

Lemar sets the soup down, then looks at the notes. "Still looking for her?"

"Yeah."

"Any luck?"

"Not enough."

He nods once. "You got help?"

You hesitate.

He notices.

You decide on the truth with the sharp edges tucked in. "I might."

Lemar holds your gaze for a second. Then he nods again.

No questions. No names. No poking at the bruise unless you hand it to him first.

"Good," he says.

That surprises you.

"Good?"

"You needed help. Help is good."

You study him carefully. "You're not going to say anything else?"

"Oh, I'm thinking several things."

"That sounds more like you."

"But John asked me to keep an eye on you, not turn into a suspicious little bridge troll every time you make a decision."

You huff a laugh.

Lemar's expression softens. "And you called someone instead of disappearing. That's the thing, right?"

Your throat tightens. "Yeah."

"So good."

You look down at your notes. "I'm going somewhere tomorrow," you say.

Lemar is quiet.

Your hand stills on the edge of a paper. "It's safe," you add.

"I didn't ask."

You look up.

He leans back in his chair. "I mean, I'm going to ask for the bare minimum proof of life because I enjoy not being murdered by John when he gets back, but I'm not asking for details you don't want to give me."

Your chest loosens and tightens at the same time.

"I'm not lying to him," Lemar says. "If he asks me directly whether you're safe, I'll tell him you're safe. If he asks whether I've seen you, I'll tell him I have. But I'm not reporting your movements like you're a mission asset."

You nod slowly.

Lemar points at you. "That said, if you do something spectacularly stupid, all bets are off."

"Define spectacularly."

"If I have to ask whether you committed a felony, we're in trouble."

You look at the laptop.

Lemar groans. "Trouble."

"What?"

"Why did you look at the laptop?"

"No reason."

He rubs a hand over his face. "I miss John already."

"So do I," you say quietly.

The room softens.

Lemar lowers his hand.

You hadn't meant to say it like that. Simple. Bare. A truth without armor.

He pulls out the chair across from you and sits. "Me too," he says.

The two of you eat soup in the middle of your paper storm. For a while, neither of you performs being fine.

The next morning, Bucky texts you his address. It is, absurdly, not that far from John's. A few train stops. A handful of streets. Another life tucked too close to the first.

You stare at the map until the lines blur.

You take the train because you need the movement. Because sitting in the back of a car would make you feel delivered. Because you need to prove to yourself that you're choosing this with your own feet, your own hands, your own mess of a heart.

Lemar texts while you're waiting on the platform.

Alive?

You send back, Physically.

He replies, Emotionally was not expected.

You almost laugh.

Then the train arrives, and the doors open, and you step inside before you can talk yourself out of it.

Brooklyn moves past the windows in flashes.

Brick. Graffiti. Laundry in windows. People carrying grocery bags and grief like both weigh the same.

You keep one hand around the pole and the other over your phone.

John doesn't call.

Bucky's address stays glowing on the screen.

When you reach his building, you stand outside for almost a full minute.

It's old brick and black railings. Nothing dramatic. Nothing haunted from the outside. Just another Brooklyn apartment building with chipped steps and a buzzer that probably only works when Mercury is in a generous mood.

Your chest tightens.

Bucky buzzes you in before you can press the button twice.

You climb the stairs because the elevator has an Out of Order sign taped to it, and because apparently the universe enjoys little jokes.

By the third floor, your ribs are making rude comments.

By the fourth, you're considering writing a strongly worded letter to architecture.

Bucky's door opens before you knock.

He takes one look at you and frowns. "You took the stairs."

"The building took the elevator from me."

His mouth twitches. "Come in."

You step inside.

Bucky's apartment is almost empty.

Not empty in the way John's apartment was when you first learned it. John's had been military neat in places, neglected in others, evidence of a man trying to live around the parts of himself he couldn't unpack.

Bucky's is different.

A mattress on a frame. A couch that looks barely used. One small kitchen table. Two chairs. No photographs. No clutter. No proof of preference beyond a blue blanket folded over the arm of the couch and a stack of notebooks near the window.

A life issued, not chosen.

Your chest aches.

Bucky watches you see it.

You try not to make your face sad. You fail.

"It's new," he says.

"I didn't say anything."

"You've got loud eyes."

Despite yourself, you smile.

His mouth softens.

Then both of you remember why you're here, and the air finds its weight again. You set your bag on the table and start pulling out notes.

Bucky comes closer. Just close enough to help.

For the next few hours, the two of you work.

It's awkward at first.

Your hands brush over a map and both of you go still. You say sorry. He says don't. Neither of you knows what to do with that, so you go back to pretending Yelena's old aliases are the only thing worth looking at.

But Bucky is good at this.

He sees patterns where you saw noise. He recognizes old routes out of Eastern Europe. He points to a name you dismissed and says it might be a handler's shell identity. He asks where Nat kept things hidden, and you almost tell him everywhere before realizing that isn't helpful.

Then you tell him anyway.

He almost smiles.

You sit across from him at the small table, papers between you, the afternoon light moving across the floor. Outside, Brooklyn makes its ordinary noises. Honking. Voices. A dog barking like it's been personally wronged by existence.

Inside, Bucky circles three names in red pen.

"These," he says.

You lean forward. "Why?"

"They repeat too much not to matter."

You look at the names.

Your shoulder brushes his. Neither of you moves away. The contact is small. Ridiculous. Barely anything. It still changes the air.

Bucky's hand tightens around the pen.

You look at him.

He looks at you.

For one breath, there's the lake again. The almost-kiss. The mercy of him pulling away.

Then your phone buzzes.

Both of you look down.

Lemar: Still alive?

You exhale shakily and flip the phone over without answering right away.

Bucky looks away first.

You text back: Unfortunately for your peace of mind, yes.

Lemar replies immediately.

Eat something.

You stare at the message.

Bucky doesn't ask who it is.

That feels like another small mercy. Another room kept separate because if all the walls come down at once, you won't survive the collapse.

Bucky stands. "You hungry?"

"No."

"That's not an answer."

"You sound like everyone else."

"Maybe everyone else has a point."

You narrow your eyes.

He lifts both hands. "Sandwich?"

You sigh. "Fine."

He makes two sandwiches with the seriousness of someone defusing an explosive.

The bread is slightly stale. The mustard is aggressive. The turkey is fine. The whole thing tastes like effort.

You sit on his couch because the table's covered in Yelena, and Bucky sits on the other end. A careful distance with a pulse.

You eat half the sandwich before your throat tightens too much.

Bucky notices. He always notices. "You don't have to finish."

"John would argue."

The words leave your mouth before you can stop them.

Bucky stills.

You close your eyes. "Sorry."

"Don't."

You look at him.

His face is quiet. Not untouched by it, but steady.

"Don't apologize every time he exists," Bucky says.

Your chest aches. "I don't know how not to make everything hurt."

His expression softens. "I don't think that's all on you."

You look down at the sandwich. "He got pulled," you say.

Bucky doesn't move.

"Indefinitely. Night before last."

His jaw tightens faintly. "I'm sorry."

"I talked to him yesterday. He couldn't say where he was. Couldn't say when he'd call again." Your fingers curl around the paper towel in your lap. "There's someone checking on me, so I'm not alone. Not really. But it still feels..."

You stop.

Bucky waits.

You look around his apartment, at the bare walls, at the life he hasn't figured out how to fill yet.

"It still feels like everyone keeps leaving."

Bucky's face shifts. Something old. Something wounded. "I know," he says.

And you believe him. Of course you do.

You sit there with the bad sandwiches and all the names of lost women between you.

Bucky looks at your hand on the cushion. After a moment, he places his beside it.

Not touching. Just there.

You stare at the space between your fingers. Then you move first. Your pinky brushes his.

Bucky inhales slowly.

His hand turns. Your fingers lace together.

No one says anything. Nothing is solved. Nothing is clean. But something shifts closer.

The week that follows does not become easier. It becomes structured.

John calls twice.

The first time, the connection fails after forty seconds. He says your name, asks if you're okay, starts to say something else, and then the line dies. You spend the next hour sitting on the bathroom floor with your phone in both hands because the tile is cold and cold is easier than panic.

The second time, he calls at 3:11 in the morning.

You answer before the first ring ends. "John?"

"I'm here."

Your eyes close. Two words. A whole prayer.

He can't say much. Again. He never can. But he tells you he's safe. He tells you to lock the door and eat something that isn't coffee.

You tell him you love him.

He goes quiet. Then he says, "I know, love."

The words sound tired. That somehow hurts more.

You don't tell him you're working with Bucky.

Not over the phone. Not through static. Not while he's somewhere dangerous with half his answers locked behind orders.

You hate yourself a little for it.

Then you remind yourself that some truths deserve to be spoken face-to-face, not smuggled through bad reception like contraband.

Lemar keeps checking on you.

Sometimes in person. Sometimes by text. Sometimes by leaving food outside the door and knocking like an overgrown raccoon with military training.

You and Bucky keep working at his apartment.

You don't invite him to John's. You can't.

That space is too full of John, and Bucky is too full of the before, and you don't know how to let those worlds breathe the same air without choking.

So you go to him. Again and again.

Each time, you tell yourself it's for Yelena. Each time, that's true. Each time, it's not the whole truth.

Bucky never asks for more than you give.

He learns the shape of your silences with infuriating gentleness. When your phone lights up and you turn it over, he doesn't look. When you say John called and he's safe, Bucky only nods and says good, like the word costs him and he still means it.

That almost ruins you every time.

One afternoon, you're sitting on Bucky's floor because the table's too covered in paper and the couch feels too formal. Your shoulder is better now. Your ribs only ache if you move too fast or laugh too hard, which means the world remains a medical threat.

Bucky's knee brushes yours. He doesn't move away. Neither do you.

Later, your hand ends up over his wrist while you're leaning across him for a file. Neither of you mentions that there was plenty of room to reach without touching him.

Later still, he walks you to the door and pauses with his hand on the frame.

"Call me when you get home," he says.

You raise a brow. "It's six blocks and a train."

"Call me anyway."

"You sound like everyone else."

His mouth softens. "Good."

You roll your eyes, but you call, of course you call.

He answers with, "You home?"

"Yes, Dad."

The silence that follows is so complete you clap a hand over your mouth.

"Bucky," you say, horrified and laughing at once. "No. I'm sorry. That was awful."

But he's laughing. Quietly. Rusty. Surprised out of him. The sound catches you in the chest.

You sit down on John's couch with your phone pressed to your ear and listen to Bucky Barnes laugh.

It feels impossible. It feels dangerous. It feels like something green pushing through cracked concrete.

Then, one week after John leaves, Lemar knocks on your door at dawn. You know before you open it. Maybe because the knock is different.

Not his usual rhythmic annoyance. Not the shave-and-a-haircut pattern he used once just to make John yell through the door. This knock is short. Quiet. Barely there.

You open the door.

Lemar stands in the hall wearing his uniform. A bag is slung over his shoulder.

Your stomach drops. "No."

His face softens. "Morning to you too, Trouble."

"No."

"That's becoming your brand."

"They're pulling you."

"Yeah."

The hallway tilts. You grab the doorframe.

Lemar steps forward immediately. "Hey."

"I'm fine."

"That is a historical lie."

You try to breathe. It doesn't work the first time.

"Where?" you ask.

"Can't say."

"How long?"

"Don't know."

You laugh once. Sharp. Ugly. "Of course."

"I'm sorry."

You look at him.

Lemar's face is tired. Not the old tired. Not the joking tired he carries like armor. This is something else.

He knows what this does.

John gone. Now him. Another tether cut.

"You talked to John?" you ask.

"Briefly."

Your whole body goes still. "He's okay?"

"He's okay."

You close your eyes. Relief hits hard enough to hurt.

"He told me to tell you he loves you," Lemar says.

Your eyes open.

"And to eat."

A broken laugh slips out of you. "Of course he did."

"Man has priorities."

"Terrible ones."

"Debatable."

You wipe at your face before the tears can fall properly.

Lemar steps closer.

"I hate this," you whisper.

"I know."

"I can't just sit here."

"I know that too."

"Then don't tell me to."

"I wasn't going to."

You look at him.

Lemar's gaze holds yours, steady and warm. "I'm going to tell you to be smart."

"That's worse."

"Much worse," he agrees. "Terrible burden. Very unpopular."

Your mouth trembles.

He sets his bag down and pulls you into a hug. Carefully, though you don't need as much careful anymore.

You grip the back of his jacket and shut your eyes. He smells like laundry soap, coffee, and outside air.

Like the apartment. Like John. Like the part of your life that kept showing up with oranges and lists and ridiculous jokes until you started believing maybe you were allowed to be loved without earning it in blood first.

"You're not alone," Lemar says quietly.

Your fingers tighten. "John's gone," you whisper. "You're leaving."

"You're still not alone."

You pull back enough to look at him.

Lemar's eyes search yours.

"You've got Sam," he says. "You've got me when I can call. You've got John when he can call."

Then, gentler, "And you've got whoever you called when you needed help."

Your throat tightens.

He doesn't ask. Doesn't name Bucky. Doesn't pry a door open just because he can see light under it.

"I don't know what any of this is," you say.

"Nobody does." His mouth twitches faintly. "The universe got snapped in half and then glued back together by a giant green guy. I think we can allow some relational confusion."

You laugh through the tears.

Lemar smiles. Then his face sobers. "Promise me something."

You stiffen. "I hate that sentence."

"Yeah, well, I hated saying it."

"What?"

He looks at you carefully. "Don't vanish."

The words punch the air from your lungs. Steve's voice. Sam's. Bucky's. John's hands on your face. Lemar in the doorway.

Don't disappear from each other just because it hurts.

"You call someone," Lemar says. "Me if I can answer. Sam. Whoever. Hell, call my mom if you need to be aggressively fed and emotionally interrogated."

A laugh breaks out of you.

"I'm serious," he says.

"I know."

"If you start climbing the walls, you call."

"I will."

His brow lifts.

You sigh, tears slipping down your face now. "I will call if I need anything."

"Good."

He pulls you in again, kissing the top of your head like a brother, like a promise, like someone leaving who hates every step away. "Always, little sister," he says. Then he picks up his bag.

You walk him to the elevator even though both of you know you shouldn't, even though he tells you not to, even though you glare at him until he wisely stops trying.

The elevator doors open. Lemar steps inside. For one second, he looks like he might make another joke. He doesn't. "Keep your head on straight," he says instead.

Your chest tightens. "Excuse me?"

Lemar points at you as the doors begin to close. "That was the nice version."

You let out a broken laugh.

Then the doors shut. You stand there in the hallway long after the elevator descends.

John is gone. Lemar is gone. Nat is gone. Steve is gone.

The apartment waits behind you, full of notes and ghosts and John's folded blanket. Your phone sits heavy in your hand. No missed calls. No new messages. No promise except try.

For a moment, you think about sitting on the floor and letting the whole day crush you. Instead, you open your contacts.

Bucky answers on the first ring. "Em?"

You close your eyes.

His voice is soft and awake, like maybe he's been awake for hours too.

"My friend got pulled," you say.

Silence, then Bucky breathes out. "I'm sorry."

Your mouth trembles. "John's still safe. He got a message through."

"Good."

"Yeah."

You press your palm to your chest, over the wolf charm, over the heartbeat that keeps betraying you by continuing. "I don't want to be alone today," you whisper.

Bucky doesn't hesitate. "Come over."

Your eyes burn. "I haven't had coffee."

"I have coffee."

"Is it terrible?"

"Probably."

A laugh slips out of you, fragile and real. "I'll bring better coffee," you say.

"Okay."

There is that word again. Only this time, it sounds like a place to go.

You hang up and stand in the hallway for one more breath. Then you go back into John's apartment and start gathering your notes.

The world is still splitting. The fault lines are still opening under your feet. But for once, when the ground breaks, you don't let yourself fall alone.

You're halfway through rinsing a mug in the sink when the sound cuts through the apartment, sharp and sudden. You glance over your shoulder toward the counter where your phone sits buzzing against the wood, screen lighting up with his name.

Bucky.

You dry one hand on the side of your shirt before picking it up, already fighting the smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. You answer and press the phone to your ear. "You know texting exists, right?"

There's a beat of silence on the other end. Then his voice comes through, low and entirely unimpressed. "Yeah."

"Okay." You lean your hip against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other as you wait for him to elaborate.

Another pause. Then, "You gonna let me finish?"

You bite back a smile and tip your head toward the ceiling like you're summoning patience from whatever saint handles emotionally constipated super soldiers. "Please. Continue."

"I'm downstairs."

Your smile freezes. You slowly pull the phone away from your ear and stare at it, as if the device itself might explain him. Then you look toward your apartment door. Then back at the phone.

You bring it to your ear again. "Bucky..."

"What?"

"You called me to tell me you're downstairs?"

"Yeah."

You push away from the counter and start toward the hall, already slipping your feet into the nearest shoes. "You could've texted me."

"I could've called you."

"You did call me."

"Worked, didn't it?"

You stop with your hand on the doorknob, blinking once, then you hang up.

By the time you reach the lobby, he's standing beside the front doors like he has absolutely not committed a crime against basic phone etiquette. His hands are shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, shoulders relaxed, one boot crossed lazily over the other. Morning light catches in his hair where it falls loose around his face, and the faintest trace of smugness pulls at the corner of his mouth when he sees you.

The look says he knows exactly what he did.

You slow your steps just enough to glare at him properly.

His eyes flick over you, softening for half a second before the smugness creeps back in.

"You hung up on me," he says.

"You were twelve feet away."

"Still rude."

"You called me from downstairs."

He lifts the drink tray a little. "I brought coffee."

"That does not erase the crime."

"I brought breakfast too."

You glance at the bag despite yourself.

He notices, of course. His mouth twitches. "Still mad?"

"Yes."

"You sure?"

"No."

He steps closer and offers you one of the coffees. You take it because you have principles, but none of them are strong enough to refuse caffeine from Bucky Barnes.

You point at him, finger landing lightly against the center of his chest. "Text me."

His eyebrows pull together. It isn't confusion exactly, it's offense. Like you've asked him to negotiate with a toaster.

"Text you," he repeats.

"Just once," you plead, stepping closer before he can retreat behind that stubborn little wall he likes to pretend is a personality trait. "Please. I am begging you. Start small."

"I know how to text."

You give him a look.

He gives you one right back, blue eyes narrowing like he can somehow glare his way into being correct.

"You called me yesterday to ask what kind of cereal I wanted."

"You wanted cereal."

"You were standing in the cereal aisle."

"Exactly."

"Bucky."

"What?"

"You called me from the grocery store six times."

His shoulders lift in a small, unapologetic shrug. "There were questions."

You stare at him.

He stares back, completely serious.

A laugh slips out of you before you can stop it, and that does something to his face. The stubborn line of his mouth eases. His eyes soften at the edges, the smugness fading into something warmer.

You reach for him before he can say anything else, fingers curling into the front of his jacket. The fabric bunches beneath your grip as you tug him closer, not hard, just enough to make him stop pretending he is immune to you.

He lets himself be pulled.

"Bucky."

That does it, his expression softens immediately.

It always does when you say his name like that, low and fond and threaded with just enough pleading to get under his skin. His gaze drops to your hand fisted in his jacket, then lifts back to your face.

"Just try," you say, quieter this time. "Little messages. You don't have to write me a novel. Tell me you're on your way. Ask if I need anything. Send me a picture."

His brow creases again, but the argument has less bite now. "A picture of what?"

"I don't know." You loosen your grip on his jacket and smooth your fingers over the wrinkled spot you made. "Something you see."

He glances toward the glass lobby doors, then back at you. "Something I see."

"Yes."

"You want me to take pictures of random things?"

"Not random things. Bucky things."

His mouth twitches. "That doesn't mean anything."

"It absolutely does."

"No, it doesn't."

"Yes, it does. A weird bird. A sad sandwich. A motorcycle that looks like it has emotional damage. A cat judging someone through a window. That's a Bucky thing."

He blinks at you.

You smile.

He looks away first, which is a victory, even if he tries to hide it by scratching at the corner of his jaw. "This feels unnecessary."

"So did putting a man on the moon, but humanity persevered."

His mouth twitches again, more obvious this time. "That's not the same thing."

"It is emotionally the same thing."

"It's really not."

"Text me, Grandpa."

His face goes flat so fast you nearly laugh again. "Don't call me that."

"Then text me."

"You know," he says, dipping his head a little, voice lowering with that familiar dry edge, "you're real demanding."

"And yet you adore me."

The words hang there between you.

His gaze drops briefly to your mouth, quick enough that he probably thinks you won't catch it.

You absolutely catch it.

His thumb brushes once against your wrist where your hand still rests near his chest, the touch so light it almost feels accidental. It isn't. Not with the way his eyes come back to yours after, softer than before.

"Unfortunately," he murmurs.

Your grin blooms before you can stop it.

"There it is."

"What?"

"The part where you pretend suffering through me isn't the highlight of your day."

He huffs, but there's no real annoyance in it. His hand slides from your wrist to your fingers, giving them a brief squeeze before he lets go. Then he leans down and kisses your forehead, slow and warm, like he has all the time in the world to be difficult and tender about this.

When he pulls back, his mouth is still close enough that you feel the ghost of his breath against your skin. "Don't make this a whole thing," he says.

"I would never."

"You're already making it a whole thing."

"I'm making it a medium thing."

His eyes narrow. "Texting lessons are not happening."

"Texting encouragement."

"No."

"Thumb training."

"No."

"Fine," you say, taking the paper bag from his hand before he can stop you. "Breakfast first. Thumb training later."

"That sounds worse."

"It's not."

"It really is."

You turn toward the elevators, holding his breakfast hostage against your chest. "Come on, Barnes."

He follows with a sigh so dramatic it belongs onstage, but you hear the soft laugh caught underneath it.

It takes three whole days.

You don't bring it up again, mostly because you have dignity. Also because Bucky keeps looking at you like he knows you're waiting, and you refuse to give him the satisfaction.

So you suffer quietly.

Then, while you're making coffee one morning, your phone buzzes against the counter. You glance down without thinking much of it, one hand still wrapped around the handle of your mug.

Bucky: On my way.

You freeze. For a second, you just stare at the screen. Then you snatch the phone off the counter so fast your mug wobbles dangerously beside the coffee maker.

"No," you whisper.

You blink and read it again.

Bucky: On my way.

Your mouth falls open. You nearly drop the phone this time.

Immediately, you type back.

You: OH MY GOD

Three dots appear.

Disappear.

Appear again.

You stand there in your kitchen, holding your breath like the little gray bubbles are a live sporting event.

Bucky: What

You grin so hard your cheeks hurt.

You: YOU TEXTED ME

The dots appear again, this time, they linger.

You can picture him perfectly. Standing somewhere with his phone in one hand, brows pulled together, thumb hovering over the screen like the letters have personally offended him.

Bucky: Don't make it weird.

You slap one hand over your mouth to hold in a laugh.

You: I'M SO PROUD OF YOU

There's a much longer pause.

Long enough for you to take one victorious sip of coffee.

Long enough for you to imagine him sighing with his whole chest.

Then:

Bucky: I'm calling you.

Your phone rings immediately.

You answer already laughing. "Hello, modern man."

"I hate you," he says.

"No, you don't."

A beat.

"No," he admits, quieter. "I don't."

Your smile softens before you can help it.

For a second, neither of you says anything. You lean your hip against the counter, mug warm in your hand, listening to the faint sound of traffic on his end of the line.

Then he clears his throat. "I'll be there in ten."

"You already texted me that."

"I'm saying it too."

"Redundant."

"Reliable."

"You're impossible."

"You knew that."

You grin into your coffee. "See you in ten."

"Yeah," he says, and you can hear the smile hiding in his voice. "See you."

And that should've been the end of it. A tiny victory, a miracle in one sentence, atechnological baby step.

Except something happens, something terrible, something beautiful, something nobody could've predicted.

Bucky discovers he likes texting you. Not texting in general.

Sam sends him something? Ignored.

Yelena texts him a meme? Read, no response.

Someone drops something into the team group chat? Bucky mysteriously becomes illiterate.

But you? You get messages, constantly.

It starts practical.

Bucky: Need anything from the store?

You're curled up on your couch when it comes through, one leg tucked beneath you, a blanket sliding off your shoulder.

You smile at the screen.

You: chocolate

A second passes.

Bucky: What kind

You bite your lip.

You: surprise me

A pause.

Bucky: That's not helpful doll.

You stare at the word, doll. Small. Casual. Tacked onto the end like punctuation.

Your heart does something stupid behind your ribs. You immediately decide to ignore that.

You: use your instincts

Bucky: My instincts say you're annoying.

You: your instincts are rude

Bucky: They're accurate doll.

You press your phone to your chest and make a tiny sound into your empty apartment.

Then, because you have pride and refuse to let him know he's melted you into soup, you text back:

You: get the caramel one

Bucky: Knew it.

After that, the texts keep coming.

Bucky: Be there in ten doll.

Bucky: You eat yet doll?

Bucky: Take an umbrella. It's supposed to rain doll.

Sometimes the messages arrive while you're half-asleep. Sometimes when you're working. Sometimes when you're in the middle of doing absolutely nothing, and suddenly your phone buzzes with proof that Bucky Barnes saw one small, ordinary thing in the world and decided it belonged to you somehow.

Then one afternoon,

Bucky: Saw this and thought of you doll.

Attached is a photograph of a tiny ceramic frog wearing a cowboy hat.

You stop in the middle of your living room. For a solid thirty seconds, you just stare at it. The frog stares back.

Its little painted mouth looks deeply unqualified to represent you.

You type with great offense.

You: EXCUSE ME WHY DID THAT MAKE YOU THINK OF ME

His reply comes almost immediately.

Bucky: Little. Loud. Weird hat.

Your jaw drops.

You: I'm blocking you.

Bucky: No you're not.

You obviously aren't. In fact, you save the picture.

You have created a monster.

Because apparently Bucky Barnes, once properly introduced to texting, becomes somebody's seventy-year-old husband trapped inside the body of an annoyingly attractive super soldier.

He sends weather warnings.

He reminds you to eat.

He sends pictures of things he thinks you'll like, including a bakery window, an old motorcycle, a bookstore cat asleep on a stack of hardcovers, and one extremely blurry picture of what might be a bird.

When you ask, he replies:

Bucky: It moved.

He texts you good morning even when he's lying beside you, because sometimes he wakes up before you, goes for a run, and wants the message waiting when you open your eyes.

The first time it happens, you wake to cold sheets on his side of the bed and sunlight slipping through the curtains.

Your phone buzzes on the nightstand.

You reach for it, still half buried in the pillow.

Bucky: Morning doll. Coffee's on the counter. Don't drink mine unless you want to complain again.

You smile sleepily at the screen, turning onto your back.

You: your coffee tastes like punishment

A minute later:

Bucky: Builds character.

You laugh into the quiet room.

And almost every message has one thing in common.

Doll.

Doll this.

Doll that.

Morning, doll.

Sleep well, doll.

Miss you, doll.

Love you, doll.

You tease him about it constantly. You make a face when he says it in person. You pretend it doesn't make your entire chest go soft when it appears on your screen.

Secretly? You love it. Which is precisely why you have to destroy it.

The opportunity presents itself on a Saturday morning.

Bucky's in the shower.

Steam curls beneath the bathroom door. Water beats steadily against the tile, loud enough to cover the tiny creak of the mattress when you shift onto your elbow.

His phone is sitting on the dresser.

Unlocked. Just sitting there, alone, vulnerable. Practically begging to be humbled.

You stare at it.

Water runs behind the bathroom door.

You shouldn't. You absolutely shouldn't. You sit up slowly, eyes flicking toward the bathroom.

Still showering, good.

You slide off the bed, careful and quiet, bare feet touching the floor. The room feels too still around you, like even the furniture knows you're about to become a problem.

"This is for science," you whisper.

You cross the room and pick up his phone.

For one second, guilt nips at you.

Then you remember he sent you a photo of a cowboy frog and said it reminded him of you.

Guilt dies immediately.

It takes you thirty seconds.

Your thumb moves fast, practiced and sneaky, while your ears stay tuned to the sound of running water.

You change one tiny setting. One harmless little adjustment. A microscopic act of chaos.

Whenever Bucky types

doll

His phone will now autocorrect it to

duck

You stare at the screen. Then press your lips together so hard your cheeks hurt.

Perfect.

You carefully return the phone exactly where you found it, angling it the same way on the dresser, because Bucky Barnes notices things. He notices everything. He could probably tell if a dust particle had been moved three inches to the left.

Then you hurry back to the bed and fling yourself onto the mattress with the subtlety of a raccoon committing tax fraud.

You grab your own phone and pretend to scroll. Innocently, naturally, normally.

The bathroom door opens.

Bucky steps out with a towel low around his waist, another rubbing through his wet hair. Steam follows him into the room, softening the edges of him for half a second before he looks over at you.

You keep your eyes locked on your phone.

This is difficult for several reasons.

"You hungry?" he asks.

"Mhm."

"You want pancakes?"

"Mhm."

He pauses.

You feel his attention sharpen. Slowly, you glance up.

He's watching you, towel still in his hand, damp hair sticking up in places where he's rubbed it too hard. His eyes narrow with immediate suspicion.

"What?"

"Nothing," you say too quickly.

His suspicion deepens. "You look guilty."

"I'm literally lying here."

"Yeah," he says. "Guiltily."

You gasp, offended on principle. "That is not a thing."

"It is when you do it."

"I'm relaxing."

"You're scheming."

"I contain multitudes."

He points at you. "That."

"What?"

"Whatever that was."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

His eyes narrow further. For one horrifying second, you think he knows.

Your heartbeat kicks once.

Then his gaze drops to your phone, lifts back to your face, and he tosses the towel at you.

It lands over your head.

"Get dressed."

You pull it off your face. "Rude!"

"Breakfast in ten."

He disappears into the hallway like he hasn't just narrowly escaped digital sabotage.

You sit there for half a second, towel in your lap, listening to his footsteps fade toward the kitchen.

Then you look toward the dresser. At his phone. At the trap waiting inside it.

Your grin spreads slowly. Now you wait.

The first one arrives that afternoon.

You’re wandering through a bookstore, dragging your fingers lazily over the spines in the romance section, when your phone buzzes in your back pocket.

You pull it out with one hand, a paperback tucked against your chest with the other.

Bucky: I’m outside duck.

You stop walking.

Someone behind you nearly bumps into your shoulder and mutters an apology, but you barely hear it.

You stare at the screen. Your lips press together.

Don’t laugh. Do not laugh in the middle of this very quiet bookstore like a gremlin with secrets.

You inhale through your nose and type back with trembling restraint.

You: Okay 🩷

No questions. No emotional fireworks. You need this to continue.

You slide the phone back into your pocket, clutch the books tighter against your chest, and walk toward the register with the calm, dignified posture of a woman actively committing treason.

By the time you get outside, Bucky’s leaning against his motorcycle at the curb.

One boot is planted on the pavement, the other hooked back against the bike. His sunglasses are pushed up into his hair, his jacket half-zipped, his attention already fixed on the bookstore door before you even step through it.

He straightens when he sees you. "You find anything?”

“Couple books.”

His gaze drops to the bag in your hand. “Couple?”

“Don’t judge me.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

His mouth twitches.

Before you can shift the bag to your other hand, he takes it automatically, careful fingers closing around the handles. Then he reaches for your helmet, holding it out like this is normal, like he didn’t just call you a waterfowl via text twenty seconds ago.

“Ready, doll?”

Your composure nearly cracks.

You turn away under the excuse of putting on the helmet, because if he sees your face right now, it’s over. Your mouth trembles. Your shoulders twitch once.

Bucky tilts his head. "You okay?”

“Yep.”

“You sure?”

“Mhm.”

He watches you for another second, eyes narrowing just slightly, but then he swings one leg over the bike and starts it up.

He doesn’t notice.

Perfect.

The second one comes Monday.

You’re still tangled in the sheets, face mashed into your pillow, when your phone buzzes on the nightstand.

You reach for it blindly, knocking over a hair tie and almost shoving the charger onto the floor before your fingers close around it.

You squint at the screen.

Bucky: Morning duck.

You bury your face back into the pillow immediately.

A sound leaves you. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a squeal. Something humiliating and deeply private.

You roll onto your back and hold the phone over your face, grinning at it like an idiot.

You: morning 🩷

His reply comes a minute later.

Bucky: Sleep okay?

You stretch beneath the blankets, toes curling, the morning still soft around you.

You: like a baby

Bucky: Good. Got coffee waiting for you duck.

You make a strangled noise into the mattress. This is so much better than you imagined.

Because the thing is, Bucky isn’t joking.

He isn’t being cute on purpose. He has no idea he’s doing it.

Somewhere in the city, James Buchanan Barnes has willingly typed out what he believes is a perfectly normal affectionate message, hit send, and continued with his day while your phone sits in your hand holding evidence of the crime.

You press the screen to your chest and laugh silently until your stomach hurts.

Tuesday is worse.

You’re standing in front of your closet, debating whether the weather looks cold enough to justify a jacket, when your phone buzzes.

Bucky: Don’t forget your jacket duck.

You stare at it. Then out the window. Then back at the text.

Of course he somehow knows.

You: 🫡

A moment later:

Bucky: Don’t know what that means.

You snort.

You: yes sir

Bucky: Smartass.

You’re still smiling when another message pops up thirty seconds later.

Bucky: Love you duck.

You stop.

The teasing little laugh already building in your throat melts into something softer. You have to physically put your phone down on the dresser.

Because suddenly it isn’t just funny.

It’s adorable.

Completely ridiculous but adorable.

You glance back at the screen.

Duck... stupid, ridiculous duck. Your stupid, ridiculous heart does not care.

Wednesday is where things become dangerous.

You’re having a bad day, nothing catastrophic. Just one of those days where everything seems determined to irritate you with surgical precision.

Your coffee spills across your counter before you even leave home.

Someone steals the parking spot you were waiting for after you had your blinker on for a full minute.

Your umbrella flips inside out in the rain like it has chosen betrayal.

By the time you tell Bucky you’re going home, you’re exhausted, damp, and cranky enough to glare at the concept of weather itself.

Your phone buzzes while you’re sitting at a red light. You pick it up carefully, thumb dragging across the screen.

Bucky: I’m coming over.

Then,

Bucky: Don’t worry about dinner. I’ll bring something.

Then, 

Bucky: Get home safe duck.

Your grip on the phone loosens.

The rain moves in silver streaks down your windshield. Your wipers drag back and forth with a tired squeak. The light ahead stays stubbornly red.

You stare at the little word, stupid ridiculous duck. 

Your heart squeezes anyway.

You type back, 

You: thank you 🩷

His response comes almost immediately.

Bucky: Anything for you duck.

That does it, you start laughing alone in your car.

A breathless, helpless laugh that turns watery at the edges because you’ve had a terrible day, and somehow the thing that finally cracks it open is Bucky Barnes accidentally calling you duck with the sincerity of a man writing vows.

You laugh so hard you have to wipe under your eyes.

Because this man genuinely has no idea. None, not one feathered clue.

Thursday morning, Bucky finally notices.

Not because of you. Because of Sam.

You’re in the kitchen at the Tower, sitting on the counter with a mug in your hands while Bucky leans against the island across from you. He’s pretending not to watch you over the rim of his coffee.

You’re pretending not to notice. It’s a delicate ecosystem.

Then his phone buzzes. Bucky pulls it from his pocket and glances down.

His face changes.

It’s small at first, just the slightest crease between his brows.

Then his mouth flattens. Then his eyes narrow.

You immediately become interested. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Bucky’s thumb hovers over the screen. Slowly, he looks up at you.

There is something deeply suspicious in his expression now, something sharp and assessing, like his brain has finally started sniffing smoke from a fire you lit five days ago.

Your stomach flips. “What?”

He looks back down at the phone. His thumbs move over the screen. Then stop. His brow furrows harder.

He deletes something. Types again. Stops. Deletes it again.

You bite the inside of your cheek so hard it should count as a medical emergency.

Bucky looks at the screen. Then at you. Then back at the screen.

His eyes narrow into slits. "What’d you do?”

You widen your eyes. “Me?”

He points the phone at you like it’s evidence in a trial. “What. Did. You. Do?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He doesn’t look away from you as he starts typing again.

You can practically see the moment it happens.

His face goes perfectly blank. No expression. No movement. Nothing.

Then, slowly, dangerously, he raises his eyes.

“Doll.”

You lose it completely.

The sound rips out of you before you can stop it. You fold forward over your mug, nearly spilling coffee down your own shirt as laughter takes over.

Bucky stares at you. “You.”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“You changed my phone.”

“I did not!”

“Doll.”

He turns the screen around.

It says duck

You wheeze. “Oh my God.”

“How long?”

You can’t answer, you’re laughing too hard.

“How long has it been doing this?”

“Buck…”

“Don’t Buck me.” He steps closer, phone still in hand, betrayal carved all over his face. “How. Long.”

You wipe at the corner of your eye. “Saturday.”

His jaw drops. “Saturday?”

You nod, absolutely wrecked. “You didn’t notice!”

“I don’t stare at every damn text after I send it!”

“You’ve been calling me duck for five days!”

His face goes through several stages of grief. Confusion. Horror. Realization. Then something much worse.

“Sam.”

You freeze. “What?”

His eyes narrow. “Sam just asked why I keep calling you duck.”

That finishes you.

Your laugh bursts out so hard you have to set your mug down before you drop it. You slide off the counter and immediately fold over against it, one hand braced on the edge, the other pressed to your stomach.

Bucky looks personally betrayed by technology. “I knew texting was bullshit.”

“Bucky!”

“I knew it.”

He starts tapping angrily at the phone, shoulders tense, jaw set like he’s trying to disarm a bomb instead of fix an autocorrect setting.

You manage to drag yourself upright. "Wait, wait, what are you doing?”

“Fixing it.”

“No!”

His head snaps toward you. “No?”

You grab his wrist before he can keep typing. “Keep it.”

His eyebrows lift.

You suddenly become fascinated by his shirt. “It’s kinda cute.”

Silence.

Big silence.

Horrifying silence.

Slowly, you look up.

His irritation is completely gone. Now he looks unbearably pleased with himself.

Not smug, worse, delighted. “You think it’s cute?”

“No.”

“You just said it.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“Too late.”

“Bucky.”

He steps in, crowding you gently back against the counter. His vibranium hand settles beside your hip while his other arm slides around your waist and pulls you against him.

“So you like being my duck?”

You shove at his chest. “Absolutely not.”

“My little duck.”

“James Buchanan Barnes.”

He kisses your temple. "Sweet little duck.”

“I will change your autocorrect so ‘Bucky’ becomes ‘Booboo.’”

His expression immediately sobers. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

His eyes narrow.

Yours narrow back.

A technological Cold War passes silently between you. The kitchen feels very still around it.

Finally, Bucky leans down and kisses you. Slow and warm. Still smiling against your mouth.

You try very hard not to smile back, but you fail almost immediately, because he kisses like he knows exactly when he’s won.

When he pulls away, his thumb brushes your cheek.

“Love you, doll.”

Your smile softens. “Love you too.”

His phone buzzes.

Both of you look down.

Sam.

Bucky checks it.

His entire face drops.

You lean around his arm before he can stop you.

Sam: 🦆

For one perfect second, neither of you moves.

Then you make the fatal mistake of laughing again.

Bucky looks at you. Then at his phone. Then back at you.

“Run.”

You barely make it three steps before he’s after you.

Later that night, you’re curled against Bucky’s side, the room warm and quiet around you.

The sheets are a mess. His shirt is somewhere on the floor.

Your legs are tangled with his beneath the blankets, your cheek resting against his chest while his fingers trace lazy patterns along your bare shoulder like he has nowhere else in the world to be.

For once, neither of you is saying anything. The silence is soft, satisfied, still holding the shape of what happened between you.

Then your phone buzzes on the nightstand.

You groan.

Bucky’s chest moves beneath your cheek with the smallest laugh. "Ignore it.”

“It might be important.”

“It isn’t.”

You reach for it anyway, mostly because he’s being smug and you refuse to reward that kind of behavior.

The screen lights up.

Bucky: Night duck.

You stare at the message. Then, slowly, you look up.

He’s lying six inches away from you, phone in hand, hair wrecked, mouth tilted into the most insufferably satisfied little smile you’ve ever seen.

“You fixed the autocorrect.”

“Yep.”

“So you typed that yourself.”

“Yep.”

You try not to smile and Flfail miserably.

Your thumbs move across the screen.

You: night grandpa

His phone buzzes. Bucky reads your message. His eyes lift. “You’re sleeping on the couch.”

You glance pointedly at his arm still hooked around your waist. “Bold threat from a man who hasn’t let me move in twenty minutes.”

His grip tightens immediately. “You’re warm.”

“You’d miss your duck.”

A pause.

His thumb drags over your hip beneath the blanket, slow and absent and entirely unfair. “Unfortunately.”

You grin into his chest.

He huffs, but his mouth brushes the top of your head a second later.

Five minutes pass, maybe ten.

Long enough for his breathing to even out beneath your ear. Long enough for the room to settle back into that lazy quiet, the kind that feels like skin and blankets and the last sparks of laughter still hiding in the dark.

When he thinks you’re asleep, your phone buzzes one last time.

You don’t check it until morning.

Bucky: Love you duck.

Morning arrives like it has to force its way through the blinds.

There is no gentleness to it at first. No slow gold spilling over the floor. No birdsong, no soft promise that the world has survived itself.

Just gray light pressing against the curtains and the sound of John's phone vibrating across the nightstand.

Once.

Twice.

Then again.

You wake in pieces.

Pain first. A dull, ugly ache along your ribs. A sharper pulse in your shoulder. Your head heavy against the pillow, hair still faintly damp near the ends from the shower John helped you through the night before.

Then warmth.

John is behind you, one arm draped carefully over your waist, his palm spread over your stomach like he fell asleep trying to hold you in place without trapping you there. His breath is slow against the back of your neck.

For a second, you don't move. You let yourself have it.

The bed. His body behind yours. The quiet. The apartment around you. The illusion that if neither of you opens your eyes, nothing else can be asked of you.

His phone vibrates again.

John wakes with a sharp inhale. His arm tightens around you before he catches himself. "Sorry," he rasps.

"S'okay."

He reaches over you for the phone, careful not to jostle your shoulder. The screen lights his face in the dim room, cutting blue under his eyes, across the stubble on his jaw.

You know before he says anything.

His mouth goes flat.

"Orders?" you ask.

He doesn't answer right away. That is answer enough. John sits up slowly, scrubbing a hand over his face. "They're pulling us back out."

Your chest tightens, but you nod. "Okay."

"It's mostly transport today," he says, like he can make leaving easier if he explains the shape of it. "Displaced civilians. Family reunification. Hospital overflow. They're trying to get military personnel in and out of areas local responders can't handle yet."

"You and Lemar?"

"Yeah." He looks down at you. "He's already on his way."

You nod again.

John hates it.

You can tell by the way his jaw tightens, by the way he looks at your face like he's trying to memorize every bruise so he can recognize if one gets worse while he's gone.

"I don't like leaving you."

"I know."

"You shouldn't be alone."

"I'm not helpless."

"I didn't say you were."

"You thought it very loudly."

His mouth almost twitches.

Then the phone vibrates in his hand again, and whatever faint softness tried to rise between you gets dragged under by the day waiting outside.

John exhales. "I have to get ready."

"Okay."

He doesn't move.

You look up at him from the pillow. "John."

"I'm going."

"You're sitting."

"I'm considering going."

"You're glaring at your phone."

"It deserves it."

A small laugh slips out of you. It hurts your ribs, but not enough to regret it.

John's eyes soften. That makes it worse somehow. He leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead, close to your hairline, away from the bruised place. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"I know."

"And you'll call if you need anything."

"Yes."

"Not almost call. Not think about calling. Not decide it's too much trouble because I'm busy."

You blink up at him. "That was a very specific accusation."

"It was a very specific request."

You sigh. "I'll call if I need anything."

His thumb brushes your cheek. "Thank you."

You catch his wrist before he can pull away. "John."

He stills.

You don't know what to say.

Be careful feels useless. Come back feels too desperate. I love you feels too small for the way fear sits on your chest with its boots on.

So you squeeze his wrist and whisper, "Try."

His face shifts. He remembers. The balcony. The duffel bag. The world ending and beginning again around you.

John turns his hand in yours and laces your fingers together. "I can promise I'll try."

Your throat tightens.

The words don't fix anything. But they give you something to hold.

A knock comes at the bedroom door a few minutes later, after John has changed and you have managed to sit up against the pillows without making a sound that worries him into hovering.

"Is everyone decent?" Lemar calls.

John looks toward the door. "No."

Lemar opens it anyway. "That was clearly a lie meant to protect me from emotional intimacy, and I reject it."

He steps in wearing his jacket, exhaustion tucked into every line of his face. His eyes move to you immediately. "How're we doing, Trouble?"

"We are pretending to be durable."

"Terrible strategy. Very on brand."

You manage a weak smile.

Lemar's gaze flicks to John, then back to you. He softens, but not too much. Lemar never makes pity feel like a room you can't escape.

"We'll be gone most of the day," he says. "Maybe longer, depending on how bad things are once we get there."

You nod. "You saw your family?"

His face changes, brightening in a way that punches something tender through the room. "Yeah. My mom cried for exactly five seconds, then smacked me in the arm for not calling faster."

John snorts quietly. "Your mom's terrifying," he says.

"My mom is a patriot."

"Your mom once threatened me with a wooden spoon."

"You deserved it."

"I said the chicken was dry."

"It was a funeral-level offense."

The banter should feel too normal. Instead, it feels like a chair being pulled out for grief to sit somewhere less painful.

Lemar looks at you again. "She asked about you."

Your eyebrows pull together. "Me?"

"You're Trouble," he says, like that explains everything. "She knows about you."

Something inside your chest goes very still. "You told your mom about me?"

"Obviously." He shrugs. "She likes to know who's making my life harder."

You look down, blinking fast.

John notices, his hand settles carefully at the back of your neck, thumb brushing once beneath your hair.

Lemar pretends not to see it. "Okay," he says, clearing his throat. "Rules while we're gone. Eat something that isn't coffee. Take your meds. Don't attempt stairs unless the building is on fire, and even then, consider whether the fire is actually your problem."

"I'm starting to think you and John rehearsed this."

"We did. Full choreography. Very moving."

John grabs his jacket from the chair. "We didn't rehearse."

"We emotionally rehearsed."

"You made a list."

"And you contributed seven bullet points."

For one breath, the apartment almost feels alive again.

Then John's phone buzzes, and Lemar's face returns to something sharper.

Time moves.

John kneels beside the bed before he leaves. He checks your water, your pain medication, the phone charging on the nightstand, the blanket tucked around your legs. It should annoy you. It doesn't.

Not today.

Today, care is not a cage.

Today, it is proof.

Lemar pauses at the bedroom doorway while John lingers over you. "Call if you need anything."

You nod.

He raises one brow.

You sigh. "I'll call if I need anything."

"Good."

"Thank you," you say.

Lemar's expression gentles. "Always, little sister." Then he leaves.

John watches him go before turning back to you.

For a second, neither of you says anything. You reach for him with your good hand. He comes willingly.

His mouth meets yours softly, so softly it almost hurts more than if he kissed you like he was angry. His hand cups the side of your face, careful of the bruise. He kisses you once, then rests his forehead against yours.

"I love you," he whispers.

Your fingers curl into his jacket.

"I love you too."

His breath catches like he needed to hear it more than he wanted to admit. Then he stands, because the world is greedy and people are waiting to be found.

You listen to the front door close. You listen to the lock turn from the outside.

You sit in John Walker's bed, wearing his shirt, your shoulder in a sling, your ribs wrapped, your phone beside your hand, and you stare at the room until the quiet grows teeth.

You last twenty-three minutes before you call Sam. He answers on the fourth ring.

"Hey," he says, and you can hear wind in the background. "You okay?"

You look at the water John left on the nightstand. "Define okay."

Sam sighs. "I hate that I laughed."

"Then don't."

"Too late."

You let your head rest back against the pillows. "How's Bucky?"

There is a pause on the line. Not a long one, but long enough.

"He's... here," Sam says carefully.

"Where's here?"

"The compound."

You close your eyes. Of course. The place with ghosts in the walls. The place where Steve left. The place where half your life has kept breaking open in new and inventive ways.

"Is he eating?"

Another pause.

"Not really."

Your throat tightens. "Sam."

"I know."

"Is he sleeping?"

Sam makes a sound that is not quite a laugh. "You know I don't have access to the haunted-soldier sleep report."

"You know what I mean."

"I do." His voice softens. "He's quiet."

"That's not new."

"No," Sam says. "But this is different."

You press your thumb against the edge of the blanket.

Different, everything is different.

"Has he asked about me?" The question comes out quieter than you mean it to.

Sam doesn't hesitate. "Yeah. He asked if you were safe."

Your fingers tighten around the edge of the blanket. "What did you tell him?"

"That you were."

A pause settles between you.

Then Sam's voice changes, the teasing edge disappearing. "You are safe, right?"

"Yeah," you whisper. "I'm safe."

Sam breathes out slowly. "Good." You both are quiet for a second and then Sam says "He worries,"

"I know."

"And I'm guessing you're calling me because you're worrying too."

You stare toward the bedroom door, toward the apartment John left to go help reunite other people with lives they thought were gone.

"I don't know how not to."

Sam is quiet for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice is gentler. "Then we'll do it like this."

"Like what?"

"You check in with me. I'll tell you if he's breathing and brooding."

"That's not a medical category."

"It is with Barnes."

Despite yourself, you smile.

"And I'll tell him you're resting," Sam continues. "Or at least pretending to."

"Thank you."

"Yeah." His voice shifts, almost cautious. "And whatever's in Brooklyn?"

You go still.

Sam doesn't say more. He doesn't ask. He doesn't push. That might be why you trust him.

"I'm safe," you repeat quietly.

Sam exhales. "That's what matters."

You close your eyes. "He doesn't know, Sam."

Another pause.

"Barnes?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

It isn't judgment. It isn't approval. It is simply Sam accepting the shape of a boundary you're too exhausted to explain.

Finally, he says, "You don't have to solve your whole life today."

You open your eyes. "That sounds fake."

"It is fake. I read it off a candle."

You laugh, and it hurts, and it helps. "Call me tomorrow?" you ask.

"Yeah," Sam says. "I'll call."

And he does.

The days after the return blur into something strange and fragile.

The world does not go back to normal because half of it came home. If anything, normal becomes a myth people whisper about while standing in lines outside government buildings, hospitals, schools, shelters, churches, train stations, apartment complexes, grocery stores, morgues.

Everywhere, people try to prove they belong to lives that moved on without them. Everywhere, people sob into the arms of ghosts.

John comes home when he can.

Some nights, it's after midnight. Some nights, closer to dawn. Some nights, he doesn't make it home at all, and you get a text instead.

Still out. Don't wait up, love.

As if you could sleep deeply while he's out there in a world still splitting at the seams.

The first night he comes back after being gone almost twenty hours, he nearly falls into the apartment.

His boots drag. His hair is a mess. There is dust on his jaw and a bruise blooming along his forearm. He closes the door behind him and stands there for a second with his eyes shut, like he has to remember how to be a person indoors.

You are on the couch with a blanket over your lap, pretending you were not watching the clock.

"Hi," you say softly.

His eyes open. The exhaustion in him rearranges itself around relief.

"Hi."

"Bad day?"

He huffs, then drops his keys into the bowl by the door. "We found a guy in a grocery store freezer."

You sit up too fast and wince.

John points at you. "Slow."

"I'm slow. Why was he in a freezer?"

"He'd been snapped while doing inventory." John starts untying his boots. "Came back locked inside. Lucky the power was still unstable or he would've been in worse shape. We got him out."

"Was he okay?"

"Cold. Furious. Kept yelling that someone owed him five years of pay."

"That's fair."

"That's what Lemar said." John's mouth twitches. "His sister showed up while we were loading him into the ambulance. She'd been looking for him since the return started."

You pull the blanket higher around yourself. "They found each other?"

"Yeah."

His voice changes on the word.

You hear the whole story in it.

The shouting. The disbelief. The way relief can sound violent when it finally has somewhere to go.

John walks to the couch and sits beside you carefully. His hand finds your knee beneath the blanket.

"She hit him," he says.

You blink. "His sister?"

"Open palm. Right to the chest. Then she hugged him so hard both of them almost fell over."

A smile trembles onto your mouth.

John watches it like it is something he helped rescue too.

"Good," you whisper.

"Yeah."

He leans his head back against the couch and closes his eyes.

You reach over and touch his hand. He turns his palm up immediately.

That is how most nights go.

John brings pieces of the returned world home to you in his tired voice.

A mother found outside a high school, screaming because her daughter was grown now and teaching in the same building where she had vanished.

A husband sitting on the steps of a burned-down apartment complex, clutching an old lease and refusing to move until someone could tell him where his wife had gone.

A teenage boy who came back in the middle of a highway and would not let go of John's vest until his aunt arrived.

A soldier who reappeared in a barracks that had been converted into offices and punched a printer before anyone could explain.

John tells you about them while sitting on the edge of the bed, while eating cold leftovers at the kitchen counter, while standing in the bathroom as you brush your teeth with one hand and glare at your sling. His stories come out in fragments, too tired to be neat.

But he tells you. And you listen.

In return, you tell him safe things.

That your shoulder aches less.

That you managed to shower alone, though not well enough to earn his approval.

That Lemar's oranges are going soft because he keeps buying more of them like citrus is a structural support beam.

You don't tell him about every call with Sam.

Not because John does not know Bucky exists. His silence around Bucky has a shape now.

But you keep Sam's name out of the room. You keep the lake out of the room. You keep Bucky's quiet questions tucked inside your phone.

Not forever. Just until you can breathe without every truth turning into a blade.

Sam texts you in the mornings.

He ate half a sandwich. This is progress by Barnes standards.

You text back from John's couch with a heating pad pressed to your ribs.

Did he sleep?

A few hours.

Don't tell him I told you.

He asks about you?

Every time.

You stare at that one for so long the screen dims.

Then you type, erase it, type again.

Tell him I'm healing.

Sam replies almost immediately.

You want me to use those exact words or translate from emotionally constipated?

You laugh so hard your ribs object.

Use the translation.

A minute later, another text comes through.

Told him you're still too stubborn to die.

You press your phone to your chest and close your eyes.

Later that afternoon, Sam calls.

"You sound better," he says.

"I'm sitting upright without wanting to fight God, so yes."

"That's a milestone."

"How's he?"

Sam lets out a tired sighs. "Quiet. He walks a lot. Sits by the lake sometimes."

Your fingers tighten around the phone. "The bench?"

"Yeah."

Your heart folds in on itself.

"Does he know I ask?"

Sam is silent for a breath. "Yeah."

"What does he say?"

"That you should rest."

Your mouth trembles.

Bucky Barnes, freshly returned from dust and war, sitting by the lake where Steve left, telling you to rest through Sam Wilson like the two of you are children passing notes through a cracked classroom wall.

The absurdity of it should make you laugh. Instead, you cry silently into John's pillow while Sam pretends not to hear.

By the end of the first week, the sling comes off for small stretches.

By the tenth day, you can lift your arm without wanting to crawl out of your skin.

By the twelfth, John comes home before sunset.

You are so startled by the sound of his key in the lock that you almost drop the mug in your hand.

He steps inside and looks just as surprised to be there.

"No way," you say.

He shuts the door behind him. "That's the warm welcome I get?"

"You're home before the sun died."

"Barely."

"Still counts."

He crosses the room, takes the mug from your hand, sets it on the counter, and kisses you.

It's not rushed. That's the first thing you notice.

For almost two weeks, every kiss has been tucked between alarms, pain medication, exhaustion, and half-finished sentences. This one has room to breathe.

His hands settle at your waist. Yours lift to his shoulders.

Your shoulder protests. You make the smallest sound, and John pulls back instantly.

"Too much?"

"No." You chase his mouth. "Come back."

He studies you.

You hate how good he is at reading pain now.

"I'm serious," you whisper.

"So am I."

"John."

"Em."

"You're annoying."

"You're injured."

"You're beautiful."

That stops him.

It slips out before you can make it sound casual.

John's face changes. His grip tightens, enough to tell you it landed.

"Yeah?" he asks, low.

You nod. "Exhausted. Stubborn. Slightly haunted. But beautiful."

His mouth twitches. "Slightly?"

"Moderately."

"Generous."

You touch his jaw. "Come to bed."

His eyes flick over your face, searching for all the things you're not saying.

Then he nods.

That night, he sleeps through six uninterrupted hours.

You know because you wake twice and check.

He doesn't let go of you either time.

By two weeks, the world is still not normal, but it has stopped screaming at full volume.

John is home more nights than he is gone.

Lemar still checks in, but he stops appearing at the door every day like he is monitoring a potentially explosive hostage negotiation. He sends pictures instead. His mom's cooking. A blurry selfie with his family. A bag of oranges outside the apartment door with a note that says, For structural integrity.

You leave the note on the fridge.

John pretends not to like it.

You know better.

The second Friday after Tony's service, rain taps against the windows.

Not a storm. Not like the basement. Just soft rain threading down the glass, turning the city lights blurry.

You and John are in bed, the room dark except for the glow from the street outside. Your shoulder is free of the sling now, though still stiff. Your ribs ache if you move too quickly, but the pain has become manageable. A background note instead of the whole song.

John lies behind you, arm curved around your waist. His hand moves slowly up and down your side, over the soft fabric of his shirt you are wearing. His touch is absent at first, a sleepy rhythm meant to soothe both of you.

Up.

Down.

Careful over the ribs.

Back up again.

You should be asleep.

Instead, you stare at the dark wall and listen to the rain.

Sam texted an hour ago.

He'll be at the lake tomorrow morning.

Your chest has not loosened since.

John's fingers slow. "You're thinking loud."

You let out a breath. "Sorry."

"Didn't say stop."

His palm moves up your side again. Warm. Familiar. Yours, in the strange, impossible way anything can belong to anyone after the world has already taken so much.

You roll carefully to face him.

John shifts immediately to give you room, one hand hovering near your shoulder until he's sure you're settled.

His face is soft in the dark. Sleepy. Open. Younger when he's not trying to hold himself like a wall.

Your hand lifts before you decide to move.

Your fingers trace along his jaw first, then higher, skimming the line of his ear.

He goes still.

You touch the tiny freckle on his left earlobe.

A soft sound catches in his throat.

Barely there. More breath than voice, but you feel it vibrate beneath your fingertips. His jaw tightens, and his eyes flutter shut for half a second before fixing on you again.

Sensitive.

You remember that too.

A ridiculous little thing. A mark so small the world should have no right to make it matter.

But it does.

It has mattered since the first time you noticed it and realized you were learning John Walker in pieces.

His routines. His silences. The way he folded towels. The way his left shoulder tightened before a nightmare. The way he looked away when he was hurt and angry because he was trying not to become cruel with it.

The freckle under your fingertip. The life that found you after.

John watches you watch him.

"What?" he asks quietly.

Your finger rests against the freckle.

"I'm going to see Bucky tomorrow."

The air changes.

John only blinks once. Then his hand stills on your waist.

You wait.

He looks at you for a long moment before he says, "Okay."

The word is flat enough to hurt.

Your hand drops from his ear. "That's all you're going to say?"

His jaw shifts.

You know that look now. The careful one. The soldier's face. The face he uses when he is trying to lock every ugly thing in a room before it can get out and leave marks.

"What do you want me to say?" he asks.

"I want you to say what you're actually thinking."

A humorless breath leaves him. "No, you don't."

"Yes, I do."

"Em."

"John."

He looks away. There it is. The thing he has been swallowing for two weeks.

You sit with it because he deserves the space to hate this. He deserves to feel the ugly shape of it, even if it scares you.

Finally, he says, "I think I knew this was coming."

Your throat tightens.

"I think every time your phone lights up and you turn it over before I see it, I know." His voice is controlled, but not cold. That might be worse. "I think every time you go quiet when I say his name, I know."

"I'm sorry."

He shakes his head. "Don't do that yet."

You close your mouth.

John stares at the ceiling now, one arm still around you because even jealous, even hurt, he has not moved away. "I'm trying to be good about this," he says.

"You don't have to be good."

A bitter little smile pulls at his mouth. "Yeah, I do."

"No, you don't."

His eyes cut back to yours. "I do with you."

The words land somewhere deep.

John breathes in slowly, then lets it out.

"I know he matters," he says. "I knew that before he came back. I knew that when you said his name in your sleep. I knew it when you told me about Wakanda. I knew it when you took the charm off and looked like it was costing you blood."

Your fingers curl against the sheet. He saw too much, he always did.

"And now he's back," John continues. "And I'm lying here with you, touching you like I get to keep you, while knowing there's a man out there who loved you first."

"John."

"I'm not done."

You go still.

He swallows, throat working around the words. "I'm jealous. There. That's the honest thing. I'm jealous of a man who got dusted, which makes me feel like a real asshole."

"It doesn't make you that."

"It feels like it does."

You reach for him, but he catches your hand before it touches his face. Not rejecting you. Holding on.

"I hate that he knew you before all of this," John says. "I hate that there are parts of you he remembers that I'll never meet. I hate that when you talk about him, I can hear the person you were before the five years got their hands on you."

Tears burn at the corners of your eyes.

"And I hate," he says, softer now, rougher, "that some part of me is scared you'll look at him and realize I was just where you landed because he was gone."

The sentence knocks the breath out of you.

You push yourself closer despite the ache in your ribs.

"No."

"Em."

"No." Your voice breaks. "You don't get to decide that for me."

John's eyes flash, but he says nothing.

"You weren't a place I landed because he was gone," you tell him. "You were someone who found me when I was trying very hard not to be found."

His face tightens.

"You were annoying about it."

That gets the faintest twitch.

"You kept showing up," you continue. "At the docks. At the church. At the worst possible times. You kept standing between me and every bad decision I wanted to make like you had been personally assigned by the universe to ruin my spiral."

"I was very good at it."

"You were infuriating."

"I was also very good at that."

A tear slips down your temple into your hair. John reaches up and wipes it away before he can stop himself.

You lean into his hand. "I love him," you whisper.

His expression fractures.

You keep going because he asked for truth, and you will not insult him with anything smaller. "I do. I love him. I never stopped. But I love you too. That isn't me being confused. That isn't me using you. That isn't me trying to replace him."

John closes his eyes.

You touch his wrist. "I don't know what this becomes. I don't know how any of it works. I just know I owe him the truth, and I owe you the truth, and I'm so tired of surviving by hiding pieces of myself in different rooms."

His eyes open.

The rain keeps tapping softly against the window.

For a while, John says nothing.

Then his thumb moves against your cheek. "You're coming back here after?"

Your chest hurts. "Yes."

His jaw tightens. "Don't say it because I need it."

"I'm saying it because it's true."

He searches your face, and you let him. Finally, he nods once. "Okay."

This time, the word is not empty. It's bruised. It's scared. It's trying.

You turn your face and kiss his palm.

John exhales, the sound shaking out of him. "I don't like this," he whispers.

"I know."

"I'm probably going to be unbearable about it."

"You're already unbearable about most things."

His mouth twitches.

"I need you to not ask me to pretend it doesn't hurt," he says.

"I won't."

"And I need you to come back."

Your voice goes soft. "I will."

John pulls you closer then, careful but firm, tucking you beneath his chin.

You let him hold you. You let yourself be held.

In the dark, with his heartbeat beneath your ear and the rain against the glass, you touch the freckle on his earlobe again. A tiny star on skin. A place to find your way back.

The next morning, John is gone before the sun is fully up. He leaves a note on the counter beside your medication and a mug waiting under the coffee maker.

Had to go in early. Eat something. Call me after. I love you.

No mention of where you're going or who you're seeing. Just the words he can give without bleeding on the paper.

You fold the note and tuck it into the drawer with your keys.

Then you get dressed slowly.

Jeans, because you are tired of feeling breakable. A black shirt soft enough not to irritate your shoulder. Boots. The wolf charm beneath your collar. You stare at it in the mirror for a long time. Then you let it stay.

Sam texts when he is downstairs.

Here. No rush.

You almost laugh. No rush, he says, while your entire past is waiting by a lake.

You take the elevator down.

The lobby is quieter than it was two weeks ago, but still not normal. A woman stands by the mailboxes crying softly into her phone. Two kids sit on the floor sharing a bag of chips. Someone has taped a list of missing and found residents near the front door, names written in different handwriting, ink smudged in places.

You don't look too closely.

Outside, Sam's car idles at the curb. He steps out when he sees you, eyes scanning your face, your shoulder, the way you move.

"Don't start," you say.

"I haven't said anything."

"You looked."

"I have eyes."

"You used them judgmentally."

He opens the passenger door. "Get in the car, Hart."

You do.

Sam waits until you're settled before shutting the door. He doesn't look toward the building. Doesn't ask if anyone is upstairs. Doesn't ask who left the faint mark at your jaw from a goodbye kiss that lasted longer than it should've when both of you were trying not to act afraid.

He gets behind the wheel and pulls into traffic.

For several minutes, neither of you speaks.

The city moves around you in a wounded kind of rhythm. Buses packed too full. Posters taped to poles. People standing outside phone stores, government offices, hospitals. Every block looks like it's trying to remember what it used to be.

Sam glances at you once. "You're walking better."

"Thanks."

"Shoulder?"

"Stiff. Better."

"Ribs?"

"Annoying."

"That tracks."

You look out the window. "How's he?"

Sam keeps his eyes on the road. "Nervous."

"Bucky doesn't get nervous."

Sam snorts. "That man has been staring at a lake for two weeks. He's nervous."

Your fingers tighten in your lap. "Did you tell him I was coming?"

"Yeah."

"What did he say?"

"He said okay."

You close your eyes. "Of course he did."

"Yeah," Sam says. "I'm starting to hate that word."

A small laugh leaves you. Then your mouth trembles.

Sam notices, but he keeps driving.

You love him a little for that.

When the lake comes into view, your stomach turns. Not violently, quietly. The way grief opens one eye when it hears familiar footsteps.

Sam parks near the path.

For a moment, you don't move.

Through the windshield, you can see the water. The trees. The bench in the distance. The same bench where Steve sat with silver hair and old eyes. The same bench where he placed one more impossible thing into your hands and asked you not to disappear from the people it hurt to love.

And there, sitting on that bench, is Bucky.

Your breath catches.

He's hunched slightly forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands folded together. His hair moves in the breeze. His profile is turned toward the lake.

Still alive.

Still impossible.

Sam turns the engine off. "You sure?" he asks.

"No."

"Good answer."

You look at him.

His expression softens. "I'm glad you're doing better."

The kindness almost breaks you before the conversation can. You nod, swallowing hard. "Thank you, Sam."

"For the ride?"

"For all of it."

He looks away first, clearing his throat. "Yeah, well. Somebody's got to supervise this emotional disaster."

"You're terrible at accepting gratitude."

"I'm excellent at it. I'm just humble."

A weak smile pulls at your mouth.

Sam points toward the lake. "I'll be around. Not hovering."

"Your version of not hovering?"

"Distantly judgmental."

"Comforting."

"I thought so."

You get out of the car before your courage can leak through the floorboards.

The walk to the bench feels longer than it is. Every step measures the last five years.

The first year, when you couldn't say his name without tasting dust. The second, when killing started to feel easier than sleeping.

The third, when you fought Steve every step of the way, refusing to admit you needed help from the support group he kept trying to drag you into.

The fourth, when John Walker found you at the docks and you hated him on sight.

Hated his posture. Hated his authority. Hated the way he looked at you like he saw too much blood under your fingernails. Hated the way he kept showing up anyway.

Then the fifth year ended and Bucky came back. Now he sits on a bench by the lake, and you have to explain that your heart didn't stay preserved in amber while he was gone.

Bucky hears you before you reach him. His shoulders shift. He turns his head.

For one second, neither of you moves.

His eyes sweep over you, slower than John's had. Not less worried. Just different. Bucky looks like he's trying to reconcile your body with every version of you he remembers.

The woman in Wakanda. The woman on the battlefield. The woman standing in front of him now with healing bruises, tired eyes, and five years he wasn't there to witness.

"Hey," you say.

His mouth softens. "Hey."

You stop beside the bench.

He starts to stand.

"Don't," you say quickly.

He freezes.

"I mean..." You close your eyes for half a second. "Please don't. I think if you stand, I'll lose my nerve."

Bucky stays seated. You sit beside him.

The lake moves gently in front of you, sunlight breaking across the surface in thin pieces. For a while, the two of you say nothing. You used to know how to be quiet with him.

In Wakanda, silence had been a room you built together. Warm nights. Soft grass. His shoulder against yours. The distant sound of goats. Ayo's voice. The fire burning low.

Now silence has teeth.

Bucky's hand rests on the bench between you. You stare at it until your vision blurs. Then you reach for him. Slowly, carefully. You place your hand over his, giving him time to pull away.

He doesn't. His fingers turn beneath yours and close around your hand.

The first contact knocks something loose in your chest.

Bucky breathes in sharply. Then he pulls you into him. Careful of your shoulder. Careful of your ribs. Careful of every visible wound and completely helpless against all the invisible ones.

You fold into his arms. The sound that leaves you doesn't feel human.

Bucky holds you tighter. His face turns into your hair, and you feel him breathe you in like proof. "Sweetheart," he whispers.

The word breaks open every locked door inside you. You clutch at his jacket with your good hand and cry against him. Not like you cried with John in the shower. That grief had been fresh blood and exhaustion.

This grief is old. This grief waited five years to be held by the person it belonged to.

"I'm sorry," you whisper.

Bucky's arm tightens around you. "No."

"I'm sorry."

"No, sweetheart."

You shake against him. "I missed you."

His breath stutters near your hair. "I know."

"I missed you so much."

His voice breaks. "I know."

You don't know how long he holds you.

Long enough for the wind to move through the trees. Long enough for the lake to keep shining like nothing terrible has ever happened beside it. Long enough for your body to remember him and not know what to do with that memory.

When you finally pull back, Bucky lets you. He always did. That might be the worst part. You wipe your face with the heel of your hand. Bucky watches you like it costs him not to touch you again.

"I love you," you say.

His eyes close.

You say it again because he deserves to hear it without fear hiding behind it. "I love you, Bucky."

His face crumples just enough to show you the wound beneath. When his eyes open, they're bright. "Sweetheart," he says, voice rough. "I love you."

The words land warm and devastating.

For one impossible second, you're back in the hut. The world is quiet. His body is warm beside yours. Your head is on his chest. The future is frightening, but not cruel yet.

Then the lake wind touches your face, and you're here. Two weeks after the world came back. Five years after you lost him. In love with someone else too.

You take a shaking breath. "I never stopped."

Bucky goes very still.

"All the years you were gone," you say. "I never stopped loving you. Not for a day. Not even when I wanted to. Not even when it hurt so badly I thought it was going to hollow me out completely."

His fingers flex around yours.

"But things are complicated," you whisper.

The words sit between you.

Bucky looks down at your joined hands. "I know."

Your stomach drops. "You know?"

His jaw tightens. "I know there's something you haven't told me."

You look away toward the water.

"You were leaving that day," he says. "After Steve. You had somewhere to go. Someone you needed to call." His voice stays quiet, but every word has weight. "When you hugged me, it felt like goodbye and not goodbye at the same time."

Your eyes burn.

"And Sam said you were safe," Bucky continues. "He didn't say where. Didn't say with who. He wouldn't." A faint, humorless smile touches his mouth. "He's loyal like that."

"He doesn't know everything."

Bucky looks at you.

You force yourself to meet his eyes. "I chose it that way," you say. "I kept everyone separate. Not because I wanted to lie. Not because I'm ashamed." Your voice trembles. "Because I didn't know how to let one life touch the other without losing both."

Bucky's face tightens, but he nods once.

It hurts more that he lets you speak. It'd almost be easier if he interrupted. If he got angry. If he gave you something to push against. Instead, he sits beside you, alive and heartbroken, and waits.

You draw in a breath. "Please let me explain."

His gaze holds yours. "Okay."

There it is again, that word. Mercy as a blade turned sideways.

You look down at his hand wrapped around yours. "After the snap, I wasn't..." You stop, searching for the right door into a house that burned down years ago. "I wasn't good, Bucky."

His brow pulls together. "Em."

"No, I need you to hear me." Your grip tightens. "I wasn't good."

He goes quiet.

You stare at the lake because it's easier than looking at his face.

"At first, I just stopped. I don't know how else to explain it. I kept moving because people told me to move. Steve would talk, and I'd nod. Nat would put food in front of me, and sometimes I'd eat it. Sometimes I wouldn't. There were days I don't remember except for the parts where I woke up and had to remember you were gone all over again."

Bucky's hand tightens.

You keep going. "Then the grief changed. Or I changed. I started going out. Finding people. Bad people. People who were hurting others because half the world was gone and they thought nobody was left to stop them."

Bucky's eyes sharpen, but he doesn't pull away.

"I told myself I was helping," you say. "And sometimes I was. I got people out. I saved a few. But sometimes..." Your throat works. "Sometimes I didn't stop when I should've."

The silence between you shifts.

Bucky understands violence. He understands better than almost anyone what it means to have blood on your hands and not know which stains belong to survival and which belong to something darker.

"How many?" he asks quietly.

You flinch. Not because he asked, because you don't know.

His face changes as he realizes.

You look down. "I stopped counting."

Bucky inhales slowly.

"I'm not proud of it," you whisper. "But I won't lie to you and pretend grief made me noble. It didn't. It made me mean. It made me reckless. It made me good at finding people worse than me and using them as an excuse."

"Steve knew?"

You nod.

"Nat?"

"She knew too."

His jaw tightens.

"They helped," you say quickly. "Both of them. Steve got me to the support group. Nat dragged me back when I wanted to run. They didn't fix me. Nobody could. But they kept me from disappearing completely."

You stop. The next name rises in your throat.

Along with John.

The apartment. The basement. The hand on your back. Love.

You swallow it down too late.

Bucky hears the missing piece. His eyes lift to yours. "And?" he asks.

You look at him.

He already knows, he knows there's someone standing in the gap you tried to step around.

You shake your head, tears rising again. "Bucky."

"I need to hear it from you."

The words are soft. That makes them harder.

You nod once, even though your whole body wants to run. "I met someone."

Bucky's face doesn't change at first. Then something in his eyes goes still. You feel the moment land in him. You'd give anything to make it hurt less.

"I didn't mean to," you say, and immediately hate how weak that sounds. "No. That's not fair. I don't want to make it sound like it just happened to me. I made choices. I know that."

Bucky looks back toward the lake.

You let him. You owe him that too.

"He's army," you say. "Captain. Too polished. Too stubborn. The first time I met him, I hated him."

Bucky's mouth flickers faintly, the ghost of a reaction.

"I mean it," you say. "I hated him. He showed up at the docks while I was working a case. He looked at me like I was a problem to solve, and I wanted to punch him in his government-approved face."

That almost gets him.

Your chest aches with it.

"He kept showing up," you continue. "At first, it made me furious. He kept getting in the way. Stopping me. Calling me out when I went too far. He didn't know what he was stepping into, not really. But he saw enough to know I wasn't okay."

You blink hard.

"And I tried to keep him away. I did. I was awful sometimes. Sharp. Mean. I gave him every reason to leave me alone."

"But he didn't," Bucky says.

You shake your head. "No. He didn't."

The wind moves across the lake.

Your hand is still in Bucky's. You don't deserve that, but he hasn't let go.

"He made the grief quieter," you whisper. "Not gone. Never gone. But lighter. He made room around it somehow."

Bucky's eyes close briefly.

Your voice breaks. "And then we kissed."

There, the truth steps out into the open and waits to be hated.

Bucky's hand goes very still beneath yours.

You don't move. You barely breathe.

"The kiss just happened," you say. "But everything after that didn't. I chose to stay. I chose him. Not instead of you. I didn't know instead of you was going to be a choice I'd have to survive."

Bucky's voice is rough when he speaks. "Do you love him?"

You close your eyes. A tear slips down your cheek. "Yes." The word is barely sound, but it's enough.

Bucky pulls his hand from yours. Not cruelly, just enough to stand up inside the hurt.

Your palm feels cold without him. You look down at it, fingers curling against the empty air. "I'm sorry," you whisper.

Bucky's jaw works. "I know you are."

"I never wanted to hurt you."

His laugh is small and broken and not really a laugh at all. "That doesn't make it not hurt."

"No."

For a while, he says nothing. He stares at the lake with wet eyes and a face so still it makes you feel sick.

"I was gone," he says finally.

You look at him.

His voice is low. Controlled. Strained at the edges. "For me, it was seconds. I was in Wakanda. Then I was on a battlefield. Then you were there, hurt, and everything was different." His eyes flick to yours. "For you, it was five years."

You nod, unable to speak.

"I know that," he says. "I keep telling myself I know that. Steve told me. Sam tries to get it through my skull without saying too much. I see it every time someone looks at a person who came back and doesn't know whether to hug them or grieve them." His breath shudders. "But knowing it and hearing you say you fell in love with someone else aren't the same thing."

"I know."

His eyes shine. "I hate that I wasn't there," he says.

Your chest cracks. "Bucky."

"I hate that you were hurting like that and I wasn't there. I hate that Steve and Nat had to hold you up, and then this man had to find you in the wreckage, and I was just..." He stops, throat working. "I was gone."

"You didn't choose that."

"No," he says. "But I still wasn't there."

The words hit too close to the thing you won't tell him yet.

The secret beneath every other secret. The test. The false negative. The void in your abdomen when he dusted in front of you. The daughter who never had a chance to become real outside your body.

You feel the truth rise like blood in your mouth but you swallow it down. Not now, not with him already standing in one wound. You can't hand him another and ask him not to bleed.

So you only say, "I survived."

Bucky looks at you. His expression softens into something ruined. "You shouldn't have had to just survive."

The tears fall before you can stop them. "No," you whisper. "I shouldn't have."

Bucky steps closer slowly, giving you room to refuse.

His hands lift to your face. He cups your cheeks with a gentleness that makes your knees feel weak, thumbs brushing away tears as if he has the right to still know how.

And he does. That's the terrible thing. He does.

Your hands rise to his wrists. His forehead touches yours.

The whole world goes quiet. Just hushed, like even the lake is holding its breath.

Bucky's breath trembles against your mouth.

Your eyes close.

He's so close. Close enough for memory to become heat. Close enough for your body to remember the shape of wanting him before grief learned how to sharpen every tender thing.

His nose brushes yours. Your lips almost touch. You feel the moment tilt. You feel yourself lean.

Bucky shudders. Then he pulls back only an inch. But it's enough for the air to rush in between you.

Your eyes open.

His are still closed. Pain moves across his face, naked and brutal. "I can't," he whispers.

Your fingers tighten around his wrists. "I know."

"If I kiss you right now..." He opens his eyes, and they're full of you. Full of five years. Full of Wakanda and dust and everything neither of you got to finish. "I won't be doing it for the right reasons."

Your mouth trembles.

He's right. You hate that he's right.

"I miss you," you whisper.

Bucky's thumbs still against your cheeks. "I'm right here."

The answer breaks something small and vital inside you. "No," you say softly. "You're not. Not the way you were."

His face crumples. "I know."

"And I'm not either."

"I know that too."

He lowers his hands from your face, but he doesn't step away completely.

You both sit back down because standing feels too hard.

This time, you sit closer. Shoulder near his arm, not touching at first. Then Bucky shifts, and the side of his hand brushes yours. An offering. Not a claim. You take it, your fingers lace together again.

The lake keeps moving.

Behind you, somewhere near the parking lot, Sam isn't hovering with the aggressive dedication of a man absolutely hovering.

You almost smile.

Bucky notices. "What?"

"Sam's pretending he's not watching."

Bucky huffs. A real almost-laugh this time. "He's bad at it."

"He thinks he's subtle."

"He isn't."

"No."

The tiny piece of normalcy lands between you like a match struck in a cold room.

Bucky looks down at your joined hands. "What happens now?"

You stare at the lake. "I don't know."

He nods slowly. "I'm not asking you to choose today," he says.

Your throat tightens.

He keeps his gaze on the water. "I don't think any of us survive that."

"Bucky."

"I'm not saying it doesn't hurt." He looks at you then. "It does. It hurts like hell."

"I know."

"But you're here," he says. "You came back to talk to me. You told me the truth even though it would've been easier not to."

"Not all of it," you whisper before you can stop yourself.

His eyes sharpen.

You go still.

Bucky watches you carefully.

The secret presses against your ribs, against your tongue, against every place grief has ever lived inside you.

Then his face softens. "Okay," he says.

You look at him through tears.

"That's another conversation," he says.

A sob catches in your throat.

He doesn't know what he's giving you. Or maybe he does.

Maybe Bucky Barnes knows better than anyone that some truths have to be approached like wounded animals. Slowly. With both hands visible. With no sudden movements.

You squeeze his hand. "Thank you."

He looks back at the lake. "Don't thank me yet."

"Why?"

"Because I'm probably going to be terrible at this."

A broken laugh slips out of you.

He glances at you, and for a second, you see him. Not just the grief. Not just the hurt. Him.

Bucky.

Your Bucky.

Changed, alive, hurting, still trying to make room for you in the wreckage.

"I'm probably going to be terrible too," you say.

His mouth lifts faintly. "Yeah, sweetheart. I figured."

You bump his shoulder gently with yours. He lets out a soft breath. Neither of you speaks for a while after that.

There are too many words and not enough. Too many versions of love sitting between you, all of them bruised. Too many people missing from the bench.

Steve. Nat. The person you were before the snap. The person Bucky was before the dust.

You sit beside him anyway.

Because Steve asked you not to disappear from each other just because it hurt. Because you promised you'd try. Because love, you're learning, isn't a clean line.

Sometimes it's a fault line.

A crack in the earth where pressure has nowhere else to go. A place where everything breaks. A place where something hidden finally reaches the surface.

Bucky's thumb moves once over your knuckles.

You close your eyes.

For today, that's enough.

You stare down at the box. "Why is Bob fighting Bob?"

Alexei leans over your shoulder. "He must defeat greatest opponent."

"Which is himself?"

"Yes."

Bob looks genuinely concerned. "How do I win?"

"You must believe."

"That doesn't answer the question."

Alexei claps a heavy hand against his shoulder. "It answers all questions."

Bob looks at you for help.

You shake your head. There is no help, not anymore. The committee stopped operating within the boundaries of reason the moment Alexei drew his own name in gold marker.

"This isn't a bracket," John says. He rotates the pizza box on the dining table. "This is nonsense."

"It is official sporting document."

"You put Yelena against Ava, but neither of them agreed to compete."

Yelena glances up from her phone. "I agreed when I saw trophy."

Everyone turns toward the object sitting in the center of the table. Bob made it. He was given twelve minutes, a roll of aluminum foil, an empty protein powder container, and very few instructions.

The result is a lopsided silver cup with two plastic forks taped to the sides as handles. Someone has written CHAMPION OF ARM across the base. A tiny plastic alligator sits on top.

Ava studies it. "I'm not touching that."

"You fear defeat," Alexei says.

"I fear whatever bacteria are living under the foil."

"I sanitized it."

"With what?"

Alexei doesn't answer.

John pushes the trophy farther away.

You look at Alexei. He's wearing a red tracksuit, a whistle around his neck, and the expression of a man about to host the Olympics in someone's garage.

The alligator magnet is hidden in his pocket. Or, at least, it's supposed to be hidden. The outline is clearly visible through the fabric. Its little green tail sticks out every time Alexei sits down.

Bucky is going to notice, he probably already did. He's been watching Alexei with open suspicion since breakfast.

Alexei had entered the kitchen carrying the pizza box beneath one arm and announced that everyone needed to preserve their strength.

Bucky took one look at him.

Then at you.

You'd smiled innocently.

Bucky had looked even more suspicious.

The rest of the morning has done nothing to reassure him.

Now he stands near the counter, drinking coffee and pretending he isn't listening while Alexei explains the rules.

"You grip hand," Alexei says, demonstrating with Bob. "Elbow stays on table. Other hand cannot assist. No weapons, no biting, no phasing, no void powers."

Ava, leaning against the counter, frowns. "Why would biting even be a concern?"

Alexei ignores her.

"And," he continues, lifting one finger, "Barnes must remove metal arm."

Bucky lowers his mug.

There it is. The actual plan. Alexei's sabotage is almost elegant in its stupidity.

Bucky stares at him. "I'm sorry?"

"You heard rule."

"I heard you." Bucky sets his mug down. "I'm giving you a chance to realize how stupid it sounded."

Alexei's chest expands. "Metal arm must come off."

"We're arm wrestling with our right arms."

"Yes."

Bucky slowly lifts his right hand. Then points at his left arm. "So this one isn't involved."

"It is attached."

Bucky blinks.

You press your lips together.

Across the kitchen, Yelena suddenly becomes deeply fascinated by the nutrition label on a bag of chips.

Bucky's eyes narrow. "That's generally how arms work."

"It gives advantage."

"How?"

Alexei gestures broadly at him. "Balance."

"Balance."

"Yes."

"My left arm is going to give me an unfair advantage while I'm arm wrestling you with my right arm."

"Correct."

"Explain that."

Alexei hesitates.

You can practically see the gears turning. Unfortunately, they're turning toward disaster.

"Weight distribution."

Bucky just looks at him.

Bob coughs into his fist.

Ava looks at the ceiling.

John mutters, "Jesus Christ."

But Alexei commits. "Vibranium is very heavy."

"It isn't."

"It is heavier than flesh arm."

"That's not how this works."

"How do you know?"

Bucky's eyebrows climb. "Because it's my arm?"

"You could secretly use metal arm to anchor yourself."

"Anchor myself to what?"

"Table."

"Without touching it?"

Alexei points at him triumphantly. "Exactly."

Bucky's face goes blank.

You have to turn away. You absolutely cannot let him see you laughing.

"I don't even know what you're accusing me of anymore," Bucky says.

"Cheating."

"I haven't agreed to compete."

"You are afraid."

Bucky's jaw ticks.

There it is.

Alexei sees it too, his eyes light up.

"The Winter Soldier is afraid to arm wrestle Red Guardian."

Bucky goes very still.

John whispers, "Got him."

You elbow him without looking.

Bucky steps away from the counter. "I beat him last month."

"Casual sporting."

"You cracked the table demanding rematches."

"Table was weak."

"You blamed my breathing."

Alexei points accusingly. "You breathe aggressively."

A tiny, strangled sound escapes Bob.

Bucky points at Alexei. "And now you want me to take my arm off because you're worried I'm going to somehow use it to cheat without actually using it?"

Alexei folds his arms over his chest, planting his feet like he is about to defend a border. "Official tournament requires fairness."

Bucky stares at him for a long second.

Then his eyes drop to the pizza box sitting on the counter.

The rules are written across the greasy cardboard lid in black marker, uneven and aggressive, several words squeezed around dark spots of oil and one suspicious smear of garlic sauce. Someone has drawn a crooked bracket in the corner. Someone else has added a tiny skull beside Alexei's name.

"And this is an official tournament?"

"Yes."

"You wrote the rules on a pizza box."

"Official cardboard."

"There's cheese stuck to rule four."

"Official cheese."

Yelena finally breaks. It starts as a small sound behind her hand, sharp and helpless, before she shoves a chip into her mouth and turns toward the fridge like the condiments have suddenly become fascinating.

Ava presses her lips together and looks down at the floor.

Bob slowly lowers his water bottle without taking a sip.

John, meanwhile, has gone completely still beside you, shoulders tense with the kind of restraint that only makes him look more guilty.

Bucky's gaze snaps to Yelena first. She chews with wide, innocent eyes.

Then he looks at John. John stares straight ahead.

Then Bucky looks at you. You straighten so fast your spine nearly salutes.

His eyes narrow.

You smile sweetly.

His suspicion lands on you like a laser sight.

Behind him, Alexei slaps one enormous hand against the table, making the pizza box jump and Bob flinch.

"Come," Alexei declares. "Remove arm. Prove you are not coward."

Bucky turns his head slowly.

Ava takes one careful step backward.

Yelena reaches for another chip without looking away.

John whispers, barely moving his mouth, "He's taking the bait."

You elbow him in the ribs.

Bucky's mouth twitches, but his eyes stay on Alexei. "You really want to do this?"

Alexei grins, bright and dangerous and deeply convinced of his own legend. "I will destroy you."

For a beat, nobody breathes.

Then Bucky reaches across his body, fingers moving toward the release mechanisms of the vibranium arm.

The entire kitchen goes silent.

Ava stops breathing.

Bob freezes with one hand halfway inside the chip bag.

Yelena's eyes sharpen over the rim of her drink.

John's shoulder presses into yours, tense with barely contained victory.

Your stomach drops.

Holy shit. It's actually working.

Bucky's fingers stop. His eyes shift past you. Then toward Alexei, more specifically, toward Alexei's pocket.

The silence changes shape.

Bucky exhales through his nose. "For fuck's sake."

Alexei freezes.

Bucky points. "The alligator's hanging out of your pocket."

Everyone looks.

The bright green tail of a tiny sunglasses-wearing crocodile magnet is sticking out against Alexei's red tracksuit.

Alexei looks down.

For one glorious, terrible second, he simply stares at it. Then he shoves it deeper into his pocket with all the subtlety of a man hiding state secrets inside a toaster.

"This is not alligator."

Bucky stares at him. "It has teeth."

"Many things have teeth."

"It's green."

"Many teeth are green."

The kitchen goes dead quiet.

John slowly turns his head toward Alexei. "You should see a dentist."

Alexei waves John off. "This is irrelevant."

Bucky looks at you again.

There's a question in the look, no, an accusation.

You widen your eyes, soft and innocent and absolutely useless.

He doesn't buy it for a second. "You involved in this?"

"In arm wrestling?"

"In whatever the hell he's planning."

Alexei places both hands over his chest. "I am wounded."

"You're hiding a crocodile magnet in your pocket."

"It could be unrelated," you offer.

Bucky looks at you. "It's not."

"You don't know that."

"I know all of you."

"That sounds almost affectionate."

"It wasn't."

But his mouth twitches anyway. You notice. He notices you noticing.

For a second, the whole kitchen fades behind the look he gives you, sharp at the edges and warmer underneath, like he's trying very hard not to smile and punish you at the same time.

Your pulse trips.

John clears his throat beside you, smug and deeply entertained.

Bucky's eyes flick to him, then back to you.

Then, very deliberately, he moves his hand away from the release mechanisms.

Damn it.

Alexei's first attempt has officially crashed and burned.

Naturally, Alexei responds by blowing the whistle, the sound tears through the kitchen.

Bob jumps so hard his knee clips the underside of the table.

Ava phases halfway through her chair, shoulders vanishing for one startled second before she snaps back solid with a glare.

John swears under his breath and presses two fingers to his temple.

Bucky doesn't flinch, he only closes his eyes.

"Tournament begins!" Alexei announces.

Yelena lowers her drink slowly. "You are standing three feet away. There is no need for whistle."

"Whistle creates legitimacy."

"It creates headache."

Alexei ignores her and consults the pizza box like it holds sacred law.

"First match. Bob versus Bob."

Bob looks down at both his hands. "I still don't know how this works."

"You win automatically," you tell him.

Alexei frowns. "This undermines journey."

"Bob advances." You steal the marker and draw a line beside his name.

Bob looks relieved enough to survive another ten minutes. "Thanks."

"Next," Alexei announces, dragging one thick finger down the bracket, "Yelena and Ava."

Ava doesn't move.

Yelena stands immediately. "I will defeat ghost."

"I'm not doing this," Ava says.

"Then you surrender."

"I never agreed to compete."

Yelena plants her elbow on the table. "So many excuses."

Ava watches her for a moment. Then she sighs, sits across from her, and rolls up her sleeve with the dead-eyed patience of someone already planning revenge. "This is stupid."

"Yes," Yelena says. "You are also going to lose."

They clasp hands.

Alexei raises one hand dramatically. "Ready."

Yelena adjusts her grip.

Ava narrows her eyes.

"Set."

John leans closer.

Bob holds his breath.

Bucky stays by the counter, coffee in hand, watching with the exhausted resignation of a man trapped in a daycare for assassins.

"Arm!"

Both women move. Or, more accurately, Yelena moves.

Ava phases her hand straight through Yelena's.

Yelena's fist slams against the table.

The room goes silent.

Ava stands and smooths down her sleeve. "I win."

Yelena stares at her empty hand. "That is illegal."

"You specifically said no phasing."

"Yes."

"So disqualify me."

Alexei opens his mouth and stops. Apparently, he hadn't considered that.

Bucky takes another drink of coffee. "Great tournament."

Alexei points at him without looking. "This is not your match."

"It's not anybody's match. It's a waste of pizza."

The first round continues anyway, because the team has committed to the bit and nobody knows how to escape it now.

John beats Bob, although he spends almost the entire match apologizing while Bob repeatedly assures him it's fine.

You beat Yelena because halfway through the match, Ava steals her phone.

Yelena abandons your hand immediately. "Ava!"

You gently press her forgotten hand to the table.

"Winner."

Yelena whips back around. "You cheated."

"You left."

"I was robbed."

"Literally," Ava says from across the room, already scrolling.

Alexei beats John after leaning so far across the table that both of his feet leave the floor. John immediately calls it a rules violation. Alexei calls it superior Russian leverage.

Nobody appointed a referee, so the argument continues until Bucky finally sets his mug down and walks toward the table.

Alexei stops mid-sentence.

Everyone notices.

Bob straightens.

Ava looks up from Yelena's phone.

John goes still beside you.

Yelena's mouth curves like she smells blood in the water.

Bucky looks at Alexei. "You wanted to arm wrestle?"

Alexei's grin returns at full wattage. "Yes."

"Fine."

The entire team gathers closer.

Alexei sits on one side of the table, rolling his shoulders like he's about to enter an Olympic event instead of disgrace a kitchen.

Bucky takes the chair opposite him.

Alexei looks pointedly at the vibranium arm, then at Bucky.

Bucky lifts one eyebrow. "Don't."

Alexei presses a hand to his chest. "I say nothing."

"Your face is saying plenty."

"My face is naturally expressive."

"Your face is looking at my arm."

Alexei tries anyway. "Official rules say metal arm must be removed."

"And I already told you no."

"It creates unfair balance."

"I'm using my right arm."

"Vibranium remains suspicious."

Bucky places his flesh elbow on the table. "Then be suspicious."

Alexei hesitates, this was not the plan. His eyes flick toward you. You give him nothing.

He looks toward John. John subtly shakes his head.

Alexei looks back at Bucky. "You should remove it for science."

"No."

"Fairness."

"No."

"Honor."

"No."

"Sportsmanship."

"Are you going to wrestle me or keep naming nouns?"

John coughs into his fist.

Yelena turns away, shoulders shaking.

Alexei's eyes narrow.

Then he takes Bucky's hand. "Fine. But when I win, you remove metal arm for next match."

Bucky's mouth curves. "You're not going to win."

"This confidence will be downfall."

"Ready when you are."

Alexei grips harder.

You move beside the table because apparently you are the referee now. "Ready?"

Bucky's eyes flick toward you.

You've rolled your sleeves up, and his gaze drops briefly to your forearms before returning to your face.

"Whenever you are."

The words are harmless. The way he says them isn't.

Something warm catches under your ribs. You clear your throat. "Set."

Alexei adjusts his footing.

Bucky looks relaxed, too relaxed.

"Go."

Alexei throws his entire body into the match. His chair groans beneath him. The table shifts three inches across the floor.

Bob grabs the aluminum trophy with both hands to keep it from toppling over.

John braces the pizza box bracket like the structural integrity of the tournament matters.

Bucky's arm doesn't move, not even slightly.

Alexei grunts.

Bucky watches him with the patient expression of a man waiting for an elevator.

"Are you trying?" Alexei demands.

"A little."

"This is disrespect."

"You told me not to use the metal arm."

"Use more strength."

Bucky's eyebrows lift. "You sure?"

"Yes."

Bucky presses Alexei's hand to the table in one smooth motion.

The aluminum trophy wobbles.

Bob catches it against his chest like a newborn.

John checks the pizza box. "Barnes advances."

Alexei looks offended. "This was exhibition match."

John points to the bracket. "You wrote him in," John says.

Alexei scowls. "For intimidation purposes."

"You gave him flames."

"Psychological warfare."

Bucky releases Alexei's hand and stands. "That it?"

"No."

Alexei pushes himself upright, shaking out his hand like he has been personally betrayed by physics.

"There must be rematch."

"You lost."

"Best two out of three."

"You never said that."

"I am saying now."

Bucky reaches for his coffee.

Alexei looks at you desperately.

The signal is obvious.

Distract him.

You should refuse. You should let Alexei accept his failure with whatever tiny shred of dignity he has left. Unfortunately, Alexei has never possessed dignity, and you're already too invested.

You step around the table and take his abandoned chair. "How about a different opponent?"

Bucky stops. His gaze moves toward you. "You?"

"What's wrong, Barnes?" You place your elbow on the table. "Afraid you can't beat me?"

A slow smile touches his mouth. "I can beat you with either hand."

"Then prove it."

You hold your hand out toward Bucky.

He looks down at it, then at your face. "You're trying too hard."

"Maybe I like competition."

"You hate losing."

"So do you."

"I don't lose."

You tilt your head. "That sounds like fear."

Bucky sets his coffee down again. His eyes never leave yours. "You really wanna do this?"

"Unless you're worried."

"About beating you?"

"About doing it fairly."

His gaze slides toward his vibranium arm.

The room becomes unnaturally still.

You can practically hear everyone thinking the same thing.

Take it off.

Bucky slowly looks around.

Alexei is attempting to stand casually while the alligator magnet is, once again, halfway out of his pocket.

Yelena has her phone angled toward the table.

John is pretending to be deeply invested in the bracket.

Bob is clutching the trophy against his chest.

Ava has one arm phased into the wall for reasons nobody understands.

Bucky takes all of it in.

Then he looks back at you. He knows, of course he knows.

You smile. "Come on."

"Come on what?"

"Take it off."

Silence drops over the room.

John slowly lowers the pizza box.

Yelena's eyebrows rise.

Ava turns her head.

Bob blinks.

Alexei whispers, "Excellent."

Bucky's eyes stay on yours. "You keep finding reasons to ask me that."

Your pulse jumps. "I'm talking about the arm."

"Are you?"

"Yes."

"For now?"

Heat climbs into your face.

Behind you, John makes a strangled noise.

Yelena elbows him.

You keep your expression steady. "Are you going to compete or keep talking?"

Bucky leans one hand against the table. "I can do both."

"Multitalented."

"So I've been told."

His eyes flick toward your mouth. Quick and deliberate.

Your heart kicks. You tap your fingers against the tabletop. "You stalling, Barnes?"

"No."

His gaze stays on yours. Then he reaches across his chest. The vibranium releases with a quiet mechanical sound.

The entire room reacts like somebody just cracked open a bank vault.

Alexei straightens.

Bob nearly drops the trophy.

Yelena's phone rises another inch.

Bucky catches every reaction. But when the arm comes free, he doesn't set it on the table, he holds it toward you. "Here."

You stare at him. "What?"

"Hold it."

Your eyes narrow. "Why?"

"You wanted me to take it off."

"Yes, but I didn't say I wanted to hold it."

"Problem?" The challenge in his voice hooks beneath your skin.

You stand. "No."

He places the arm into your hands. The weight catches you completely off guard. Your arms drop several inches.

"Jesus."

Bucky's flesh hand shoots out, catching your forearm before the vibranium can slip from your grip. At the same time, he steps in close, his body angling toward yours as he helps you steady it.

Suddenly, he's right there. Close enough that his chest nearly brushes your shoulder. Close enough that his breath warms the space near your cheek.

"Told you it was heavy," he murmurs.

"You've never told me that."

"Thought it was obvious."

"You carry it around all day."

"I'm stronger than you."

"You're also smugger."

His fingers shift against the inside of your forearm, barely anything. Your pulse reacts anyway.

Bucky feels it. His eyes drop to where his hand wraps around you. Then rise slowly to your face. "You good?"

The question is quieter, softer than the teasing.

You nod. "I've got it."

"I know."

He doesn't let go immediately.

Neither do you mention it.

Across the room, Alexei clears his throat with all the subtlety of a building collapse.

Bucky turns his head.

Alexei has one hand buried suspiciously deep inside his pocket.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're staring at my arm."

"I appreciate arm."

Bucky looks back at you then slowly releases your forearm. The warmth of his hand stays behind.

He takes his seat across from you.

You remain standing beside the table, the vibranium arm held carefully against your chest. "How am I supposed to arm wrestle while holding this?"

Bucky places his elbow down. "Sounds like your problem."

"You handed it to me."

"You asked me to take it off."

"For the match."

"And now it's off."

"You're enjoying this."

"A little."

Behind you, Alexei starts moving. You catch him in your peripheral vision.

The plan is finally working. Bucky's arm is detached, you're holding it. Alexei only needs to get the magnet onto it.

Simple.

Except every time Alexei approaches, you move without realizing it.

You shift closer to the table. Alexei moves left.

You turn toward Bucky. Alexei moves right.

You readjust the arm against your chest. Alexei circles again.

After the third pass, John watches him go by. "Are you looking for something?"

"No."

"You've walked around her four times."

"I am warming up."

"You already competed."

"I am cooling down."

"That's the opposite."

Alexei ignores him and makes another pass.

Bucky watches the entire thing. His expression stays neutral.

You meet his eyes. He knows exactly what's happening. And, somehow, that makes your pulse beat faster.

Bucky leans back. "You planning to sit?"

"I'm holding your arm."

"You can put it down."

Alexei immediately moves toward the open space on the table.

Bucky's eyes flick toward him.

You tighten your hold. "I'm fine."

"You're hugging it."

"I'm supporting it."

"Looks comfortable."

"It's shaped awkwardly."

"Need help?" The low edge in his voice sends warmth curling through your stomach.

"With your arm?"

His gaze stays on yours. "With anything."

Yelena makes a soft choking sound behind her phone.

You ignore her. "I thought we were competing."

"We are."

"You're sitting there."

"You're the one holding me."

Your heart stutters. Technically, he means the arm. The faint smile at the corner of his mouth tells you he knows exactly how it sounds.

You narrow your eyes. "Careful, people might think you're flirting with me."

Bucky's gaze moves slowly over your face. "Let them."

The room falls silent again. This time nobody even attempts to hide their reaction.

John's mouth drops open.

Bob looks between you.

Ava's eyebrows rise.

Yelena lowers her phone just enough to stare directly at him.

And Alexei sees his opportunity. He lunges. The alligator magnet flies from his hand.

You jerk in surprise.

It sails past the vibranium arm entirely. There's a sharp metallic click. Everyone looks down. The tiny green alligator is attached to John's belt buckle.

John stares at it.

Alexei stares at it.

You stare at it.

Bucky closes his eyes.

John plucks the magnet from his belt. "Are you kidding me?"

Alexei points at you. "She moved."

"I was standing still."

"You moved emotionally."

"What does that even mean?"

"It affected trajectory."

John holds up the magnet.

Bright green, tiny sunglasses, ridiculous toothy grin.

Bucky looks at it, then at Alexei. "That yours?"

Alexei folds his arms. "No."

"It says Alexei on the back."

Everyone leans closer. Sure enough, ALEXEI is written across the magnet in thick black marker.

Alexei shrugs. "Many people are named Alexei."

"In this tower?"

"It is popular name."

Bucky stands, he holds his hand toward you.

You look down at the arm still tucked against your chest. Then at him. "You're taking it back?"

"Unless you've gotten attached." His eyes flick toward your hands.

Heat creeps into your face. "Very funny."

You shift the arm toward him.

Bucky doesn't take it immediately. His fingers close over yours where you're gripping the vibranium wrist.

For one suspended second, you're both holding it.

He steps closer. "So that's what all this was?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You bait me into taking my arm off, then Alexei attacks?"

"I didn't bait you."

Bucky's eyebrows lift. "You told me to take it off."

"The arm."

"You keep adding that part afterward."

"Because you keep making it sound like something else."

"Maybe I mean something else."

Your breath catches. His eyes hold yours. The teasing doesn't disappear entirely, but something underneath it shifts.

Behind him, John quietly begins taking several steps backward.

Yelena catches his shirt and yanks him back.

Bucky finally takes the arm from you.

The connection breaks.

He reattaches it with a soft mechanical lock.

The opportunity is gone. No magnet placement, no guess.

Alexei's turn has officially failed.

Bucky looks toward him. "You done?"

Alexei lifts his chin. "This was practice round."

"No."

"Trial run."

"No."

"Preliminary assault."

"No."

Alexei glances toward the pizza box. "Tournament remains incomplete."

Bucky takes the tiny aluminum trophy from Bob and sets it directly in front of Alexei.

"You win."

Alexei lights up. "I knew it."

"You lost every match."

"Yet trophy is mine."

Bucky takes his coffee and starts toward the hallway. When he passes you, his vibranium fingers brush lightly over the back of your hand, brief and deliberate.

He doesn't look back.

Yelena waits until he's disappeared around the corner then she turns toward you. "'Let them.'"

You glare at her. "What?"

She drops her voice into a terrible imitation of you. "'People might think you're flirting with me.'"

John answers in an even worse imitation of Bucky. "'Let them.'"

Bob looks between them. "Did he mean it?"

"Yes," four voices answer.

You grab the pizza box. "This tournament is over."

Alexei holds his trophy against his chest. "It was glorious success."

"You didn't get the magnet on him."

"I created romantic progress."

Ava considers that. "He did."

You point at Alexei. "You missed Bucky's arm and hit John's pants."

"Progress has many forms."

John holds up the alligator. "You wrote your name on it."

"So no one steals."

"You were using it for a secret attack."

Alexei takes it from him. "Next time, I will be more subtle."

Everyone looks at him.

Alexei looks down at his red tracksuit, the whistle, the aluminum trophy, the greasy pizza-box bracket. "I can be subtle."

"No," you say. "You really can't."

Later that evening, you find Bucky alone in the kitchen. He's leaning against the counter, drinking from a bottle of water, the alligator magnet sits beside him.

You stop in the doorway. "How did you get that?"

Bucky glances toward it. "Alexei left it on the table."

"You stole it."

"Recovered it."

"From its owner?"

"From a future crime scene."

You walk farther into the kitchen.

The tower has finally gone quiet.

John and Ava are training downstairs. Bob's watching a movie with Yelena. Alexei is somewhere in the building still carrying his trophy around and demanding everyone call him Champion.

You stop on the opposite side of the island.

Bucky picks up the alligator and turns it between his fingers. "You know I knew what you were doing."

You lean your hip against the counter. "He tried."

"He circled you six times."

"Five."

"Six."

"You counted?"

Bucky looks at you. "I notice things."

The words settle between you.

You remember his hand around your forearm, the way his thumb moved, the way his gaze dropped to your mouth.

You move a little closer to the counter. "So why'd you take it off?"

His expression changes. "You asked."

Your pulse gives one hard kick. "That's it?"

"Wasn't gonna do it for Alexei."

"But for me?"

Bucky sets the magnet down, his gaze stays on yours. "You want me to say it again?"

Warmth spreads slowly through your stomach. You fold your arms. "Maybe."

His mouth curves. "You're getting greedy."

"You've been glaring at me for weeks. I'm allowed to enjoy this."

"I wasn't glaring."

"You absolutely were."

"I was watching."

"That's somehow worse."

"Didn't seem to bother you."

You open your mouth, close it again. Because the problem is, he's right. It hadn't bothered you.

Not when you'd felt his attention from across the room like a touch against the back of your neck. Not when you'd pretended not to notice him watching you over the rim of his coffee. Not when every narrow-eyed look from him had left you wanting to push harder just to see what else you could pull out of him.

Bucky's smile deepens. "Whose idea was the tournament?" he asks.

"Alexei's."

"Whose idea was it to use you as the distraction?"

"I wasn't the distraction."

"Really?"

"Really."

"You challenged me."

"That's called participating."

"You told me to take it off."

"The arm."

"There you go again."

You laugh despite yourself, and his eyes flick down to your mouth like the sound pulled them there.

It isn't quick this time, it isn't something he can pretend was an accident. He looks, and he lets you see him looking.

Your laughter thins into a breath.

Bucky rounds the island.

Your pulse starts climbing before he's anywhere near you.

He moves with that infuriating calm, all measured steps and quiet confidence, like he already knows you won't move away.

He stops a few feet from you. Close enough that the air between you feels charged anyway.

Close enough that you can see the faint shadow along his jaw and the way his mouth is still curved, barely there, like he's enjoying every second of watching you try to keep your composure.

"Starting to think the magnets are just an excuse," he says.

"An excuse for what?"

"You tell me."

Your gaze drops toward his mouth before you can stop yourself.

Bucky catches it. His expression shifts into something warmer.

"Maybe I like getting your attention," you admit.

His eyes stay on yours. "You've had it."

Your breath catches. "Since when?"

"Since before the flour."

The answer lands softly.

It still knocks something loose inside you.

"Before the magnets?"

"Yeah."

"How long before?"

Bucky takes another step.

Your spine presses lightly against the counter, but he still doesn't touch you.

He only settles his vibranium hand against the counter beside you.

Not trapping you.

Not exactly.

But close enough that the message is there if you want to read it.

His flesh hand reaches for the alligator magnet, turning it slowly between his fingers.

"Long enough."

"That's vague."

"You want specifics?"

"Maybe."

His gaze drops to your lips. this time he doesn't pretend it didn't.

The silence stretches. You feel it everywhere.

In your chest, your throat, the pulse beating too fast beneath your skin.

Bucky's thumb drags over the edge of the magnet, slow and absent, but his eyes are anything but.

"I noticed you before you started inventing reasons to make me take my arm off."

Your mouth curves. "So the magnets are unnecessary?"

"I didn't say that."

"You like them?"

"No."

"You let Bob win."

"Bob's different."

"You took the arm off today when you knew exactly what Alexei was trying to do."

Bucky's eyes narrow with amusement. "You asked nicely."

"I called you afraid."

"Sounded nice coming from you."

"You're impossible."

"You keep coming back."

The words strip the smile from your face.

Not because they're cruel.

Because they're true.

Every magnet, every committee meeting, every ridiculous scheme. Every unnecessary excuse to find him in the kitchen, in the hallway, at the edge of whatever chaos the team has decided to drag him into next.

Somewhere along the way, the game stopped being entirely about annoying Bucky Barnes, maybe it never was.

Bucky watches the realization cross your face.

His voice softens. "You want me to stop?"

You shake your head. "No."

His gaze drops toward your mouth again. "Good."

One quiet word, and somehow it pulls you closer more effectively than a hand around your waist could.

You lean back against the counter.

Bucky leans in enough to make you think about it.

There are only inches between you now, and every single one feels deliberate.

Your pulse hammers.

His flesh hand lifts.

For one breathless second, you think he's going to touch your face.

Instead, he raises the tiny alligator magnet between you. "You want this?"

You blink. "That's cruel."

His smile flashes. "You hesitated."

"I thought you were doing something else."

"What?"

"You know what."

"Say it." The challenge in his voice sends heat curling through you.

You narrow your eyes. "You're getting bold."

"So are you."

"You're the one standing close enough to count my eyelashes."

His mouth twitches. "I wasn't counting."

"No?"

"No."

"Then what were you doing?"

His eyes move over your face, slow enough to make your skin warm. "Noticing."

The word lands low in your stomach.

You reach for the magnet, but he lifts it just out of reach. Your fingers close around empty air.

Bucky's smile deepens. "Too slow."

"You're cheating."

"Not using the metal arm."

You huff a laugh despite yourself, and his eyes flick to your mouth again.

This time, your smile fades first.

His does too.

The kitchen goes quieter.

Bucky lowers the magnet, but he doesn't hand it over. He lets it hover between you, ridiculous and bright green, while his knuckles nearly brush yours.

You could take it, you don't.

"You always make people work this hard?" he asks.

"For an alligator magnet?"

"For your attention."

Your breath catches.

Bucky's expression shifts at the sound, something smug giving way to something warmer. More careful, more dangerous.

"You already said I had your attention," you manage.

"I did."

"So?"

His voice drops. "Doesn't mean I don't like when you ask for it."

The words sit between you, heavy and electric.

Your fingers finally brush his. Just the edge of his hand where he holds the magnet.

Bucky goes still. His eyes stay on yours as you take the magnet from him.

You expect him to let go immediately. He doesn't. For one suspended second, both of you hold it. Your fingers against his. The tiny alligator trapped between you like the world's stupidest witness.

"Careful," he murmurs.

"Why?"

His gaze dips again, this time, it lingers. "Because you keep looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're trying to decide if annoying me is enough."

Your throat tightens. "And if it's not?"

Bucky's fingers flex lightly against yours. "Then you should probably stop standing so close."

You look down, you're the one who moved closer.

When you look back up, his mouth has curved again, he absolutely knows.

You pull the magnet free from his hand and step into his space just enough to press it against the outside of his vibranium forearm.

You don't let go. The magnet rests beneath your fingertips, ready to click into place.

Bucky looks down, then at you. "Doesn't count."

"I know."

"Arm has to be detached."

"I remember the rules."

"Then what're you doing?"

Your eyes meet his. "Seeing if you'll take it off."

Bucky's stare sharpens.

The air between you changes again. His vibranium fingers flex once at his side. Your hand stays on his arm. The magnet waits beneath your touch.

For a second, you think he might actually do it.

Not because of the game, not because of Alexei, because of you.

His mouth slowly curves. "You're getting greedy again."

"You keep rewarding me for it."

That one gets him.

His smile flickers, quick and real, before he reins it back in. "You like pushing your luck?"

"With you?"

His eyes darken. "Yeah."

You press the magnet a little more firmly against the vibranium, not enough for it to stick, just enough to make the point. "Maybe."

Bucky leans closer, close enough that his voice drops into the small space between you. "Keep asking me like that and one day I might forget you're talking about the arm."

Your heart leaps.

You don't move.

Neither does he.

The silence holds. Warm, sharp and waiting.

Then Bucky reaches up with his flesh hand and gently pulls the magnet from beneath your fingers.

His touch brushes your skin. He slips the alligator into your palm and closes your fingers around it. "You should keep that."

Your voice comes out softer than you intend. "Why?"

His thumb brushes once over your knuckles. "So you have another excuse."

Your breath catches.

Bucky steps around you, but he pauses at your shoulder.

Close enough that his voice grazes your ear. "Not that you need one."

Then he leaves the kitchen before you can think of a response.

You stay beside the counter, the alligator magnet clutched in your hand, your pulse still stumbling over itself like it has no survival instincts.

Alexei's turn may have failed spectacularly.

The flirting?

That might've been the first successful plan all day.