C’s Corner

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.

The world lets you stand beside Bucky in the quiet aftermath of Tony's service, close enough that your fingers still remember the edge of his sleeve. People drift around you in soft, broken clusters. Cars start in the distance. Doors close. Voices stay low, like grief has made everyone afraid of volume.

Bucky doesn't move away. Neither do you.

It should be impossible, standing beside him like this. It should feel like betrayal. Like relief. Like grief wearing a familiar face. Instead, it feels like too many things at once, all of them trying to breathe through the same cracked rib.

You don't know what to do with any of it. So you stand there looking at the lake, Bucky too. Neither of you says anything.

Then Sam's voice comes from behind you.

"Hate to interrupt," he says, softer than the words deserve, "but Steve's ready to head back."

You turn.

Sam stands a few feet away, hands tucked into the pockets of his black coat, expression careful in a way that makes your chest ache.

Behind him, Steve is speaking quietly with Bruce near the house. His shoulders are squared. His face is calm, too calm. You know Steve Rogers well enough to hate that kind of calm. Bucky sees it too. You feel it in the way he goes still beside you.

"What's happening?" you ask.

Sam's eyes flick toward Steve, then back to you. "He's going back to return the stones."

Your stomach tightens. "Today?"

"Yeah."

The word lands wrong. Too soon, everything is too soon.

Tony's service has barely ended. Nat's absence is still fresh enough to bleed. You still haven't heard John's voice. Bucky is standing beside you alive after five years of being dead to you, and now Steve is going back into time because apparently the universe isn't finished rearranging the furniture inside your chest.

You look toward Steve. He must feel it, because he looks up. His eyes find yours and something passes between you. Not goodbye, but close enough that your throat closes.

"He said he doesn't want to wait," Sam says. "Said the longer the stones are out of place, the more risk there is."

"Of course he did," you whisper.

Bucky's jaw tightens.

Sam looks between you both, then nods toward the driveway. "Come on. We're riding back together."

Together. The word follows you across the grass.

Steve drives. Sam takes the passenger seat after giving you one long look that says he considered putting you in front because of your injuries but decided he enjoys living. You and Bucky end up in the back seat. The door shuts beside you.

For one second, the sound throws you backward in time. Another car. Another escape.

Steve in the front. Sam beside him. Bucky folded too large into the back seat beside you, all knees and tension and haunted silence. The world had already started hunting you then, or maybe you'd only just realized it had been hunting all of you for years.

Can you move your seat up?

No.

The memory hits so cleanly you almost smile.

Back then, you'd been wedged into a stolen moment of absurdity between disaster and disaster. Sam refusing to move his seat. Bucky glaring with the exhausted fury of a man who'd been through brainwashing, imprisonment, and international manhunts but had finally found his true enemy in legroom.

Back then, you thought the world was already as complicated as it could get.

Now nobody asks Sam to move his seat up. Nobody jokes about Steve kissing Sharon. Nobody knows where to put their hands.

The car pulls away from Tony Stark's lakehouse, and the lake disappears behind trees.

You keep your phone in your lap, screen black, still on silent. You want to check it but you don't.

Bucky sits beside you, close enough that his knee almost touches yours. A careful distance, like he's trying to be near without making any demands of your body.

You hate how grateful you are. You hate that you notice.

Steve glances at you through the rearview mirror. "You okay back there?"

"No."

Sam turns his head slightly. "Points for honesty."

You stare out the window. "Don't get used to it."

Silence settles again.

Outside, the world looks too ordinary. Trees. Road. Sky. Sunlight flashing through branches. Somewhere far beyond this road, the returned are still appearing in places that don't know how to hold them. Somewhere, soldiers are moving through chaos with orders changing every hour. Somewhere, John Walker has not called you back, or maybe he has.

Your thumb presses against the side of the phone. You don't wake the screen, not yet.

Bucky notices. His gaze flicks down, not enough to read anything, just enough to catch the tension in your hand. Then it lifts back to your face. He doesn't ask. Somehow, that makes it worse.

Sam shifts in the front seat, then clears his throat. "So," he says. "Nobody's gonna ask me to move my seat up?"

The silence cracks just enough.

Bucky huffs once beside you. It's barely a laugh. It still hits you like sunlight through a boarded window.

You glance at Sam. "Don't tempt me, Wilson."

"I'm just saying, we've been here before."

Steve's mouth twitches.

Bucky looks toward the front. "You still wouldn't move it."

"Correct," Sam says.

"You're stubborn."

"I'm consistent."

You look out the window again, and this time, the almost-smile makes it to your mouth for half a second. Then your phone feels heavy again.

Bucky's knee shifts slightly beside yours. Akmost touching.

The drive back to the compound doesn't take long enough.

By the time Steve pulls into the compound, Bruce already has everything set up near the platform. The equipment hums with a low, electric sound that seems to crawl under your skin. The stones are secured. The suit is ready. The whole setup looks too small for what it's supposed to do.

Return the stones, put everything back. Pretend anything can be put back exactly where it came from.

Steve parks, and for a moment, none of you moves.

Then Sam exhales and opens his door. "Guess this is happening."

Steve gives him a look. "It has to."

"Yeah," Sam says. "I know."

That's the problem, everyone knows.

You step out slowly, careful of your ribs. Bucky is at your side before you can pretend you don't need help. He doesn't touch you. Just stands there, ready. It makes your throat tight.

Steve moves toward Bruce.

Bucky follows after a moment, but Steve stops and turns to him. Whatever he says is too quiet for you to hear. Bucky's expression changes, and then the two of them drift a little apart from the rest, speaking low. Deep in conversation. Old conversation. The kind that started long before you knew either of them and will continue in whatever language grief uses when nobody else is listening.

Sam goes to Bruce, asking something about the timing.

For one minute, no one is looking at you. Your phone burns in your hand. You unlock it. The screen lights up.

Your breath stops.

Three missed calls from John, one new voicemail, a text nessage.

John: Em? Please pick up.

The world narrows to those four words. Your thumb shakes as you tap the voicemail. You lift the phone to your ear and turn away from the platform, from Steve and Bucky, from Bruce's low instructions, from Sam's voice carrying across the grass.

There's static first, a burst of noise, then John's voice.

"Em?"

Your knees almost buckle.

His voice is rough. Frantic. Breathless in a way you've never heard before.

"Em, I don't know if this is gonna go through. I don't know if you'll even get this, but I went back to the apartment. I got back and you weren't there."

You close your eyes.

John breathes hard into the line, and behind him you can hear chaos. Voices. Sirens. An engine. Someone shouting orders. The world tearing itself apart in the background.

"You're not here," he says again, like the words are still happening to him. "Your phone's dead. I called. I called so many times, and nothing. Nobody's answering."

Your hand flies to your mouth.

"I have to leave again," John says. "They're pulling us back out. There are returned everywhere. Hospitals are overflowing. People are showing up in places they shouldn't be. We're trying to move them before they get hurt, but it's chaos. It's just... it's everywhere." His voice cracks around the last word.

You press the phone harder to your ear.

"I don't know where you are," he says, lower now. "I don't know if you're hurt. I don't know if you're alive, and I can't stay here to find out."

Your tears spill before you can stop them.

"God, Em." The sound that leaves him almost breaks you in half. "I need you to call me. Please. As soon as you get this, call me. I don't care what time it is. I don't care where I am. Just call me."

A harsh breath. Then softer. So much softer that it ruins you.

"I love you."

The voicemail ends.

You stand there with the phone still pressed to your ear, the dead line buzzing faintly against your skin.

Your whole body aches.

Not from the battle. Not from the sling. Not from the bruises.

From him. From the apartment. From the voicemail. From the fact that John went home looking for you and found an empty room.

"I love you," you whisper.

The words disappear into the air.

"Em?"

You flinch.

Sam is walking toward you, his expression sharpening as he sees your face. You wipe at your cheeks too quickly, like that's going to fool anyone. Sam's eyes flick to the phone in your hand.

He doesn't ask. "Steve's getting ready to go," he says gently.

You nod. Your throat feels shredded. "Okay."

"Can you walk?"

You give him a look.

He raises both hands. "Had to ask."

You shove the phone back into your pocket, still silent, still holding John's voice like a live wire. Then you follow Sam toward the platform. As you get closer, you hear Steve and Bucky.

Not every word, just enough.

Steve's voice is quiet. "Don't do anything stupid till I get back."

Bucky's answer comes low. "How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you."

Steve smiles. It's small, sad, familiar.

Bucky doesn't, not really. He looks at Steve like he's already watching him leave.

Your steps slow.

Sam slows beside you. "You okay?" he asks.

You don't answer.

Steve reaches for Bucky first.

That's how you know.

He doesn't clap him on the shoulder. Doesn't do the old soldier nod. Doesn't pretend this is just a mission with a return time and an easy debrief waiting on the other end.

He pulls Bucky into a hug. Bucky stiffens for half a second then his arms close around Steve.

Your chest tightens so suddenly you almost can't breathe. This isn't see you in five seconds. This isn't return the stones and come back. This is goodbye. The realization cuts through you clean.

Bucky knew. Maybe not all of it, maybe not the shape. But enough. Enough to hold Steve like this, enough to let him go.

You look at Sam.

He's staring too, confusion and dread moving across his face. He doesn't know, or he doesn't want to. Maybe those are the same thing.

Steve steps back from Bucky. His eyes are wet, but he's smiling like he can make that less devastating by sheer will.

Then he turns to you.

For a second, you are back in your old compound room. Back in the doorway after Wakanda. Back in every support group circle where he sat with grief in his hands and tried to teach people how to keep breathing while he was still learning how to do it himself.

You walk to him.

Steve's smile softens. "Hey," he says.

You shake your head. "Don't."

His mouth closes.

"You're doing that face."

"What face?"

"The one where you pretend everything's fine because you already decided something stupid."

Behind you, Sam mutters, "Accurate."

Steve huffs, almost laughing.

You hate that it sounds like goodbye.

His hands settle carefully on your shoulders, light around the injured one. "I'm just putting back what we borrowed," he says.

You look at him.

He looks back.

Neither of you believes that's all.

Your eyes burn. "Steve."

"I'll be okay."

"You say that like you can promise it."

His expression shifts.

You hear John's voice in your head from three days ago.

I can promise I'll try.

Your throat tightens.

Steve seems to see something pass through you, because his hand squeezes gently. "Take care of yourself, Em."

You laugh once, broken and humorless. "You're giving me instructions now?"

"Someone has to."

"Nat would've done it better."

The name lands between you.

Steve closes his eyes. When he opens them, there's pain there so old and fresh it makes you want to look away. "She would've told you to stop pretending you don't need people," he says.

You swallow. "That sounds like her."

Steve pulls you in carefully.

You go.

Your good arm wraps around him, and for a second, you let yourself be held by the man who kept showing up after half the universe disappeared. The man who sat in support groups. The man who carried everyone else's hope until it became another kind of burden.

"Thank you," you whisper.

His arms tighten. "For what?"

"For not letting me disappear."

Steve's breath catches. Then he presses a kiss to the top of your head, quick and brotherly and almost unbearable. "You did that," he says. "You stayed."

You close your eyes. Barely... but you stayed.

Steve lets you go.

He steps onto the platform.

Bruce starts giving instructions, words about time and coordinates and returning to the same point that scrape against your ears without sticking. Steve nods. Sam stands with his arms crossed, looking tense enough to snap. Bucky stands a few feet away, too still.

You keep your eyes on Steve.

Bruce counts down.

"Three."

The platform hums.

"Two."

Your hand curls around the wolf charm.

"One."

Steve vanishes.

For a second, there's nothing. Just the platform, the hum, the impossible absence of him.

Bruce checks the controls. "And returning in five, four, three, two, one..."

The platform stays empty. Nobody moves.

Sam steps forward. "Where is he?"

Bruce looks at the screen, then at the platform, panic starting to pull at his face. "He should be here."

"Bring him back," Sam says.

"I'm trying."

"Bring him back."

"I said I'm trying."

Your stomach hollows.

No.

You look at Bucky.

He isn't looking at the platform anymore. He's looking toward the lake, toward the bench.

Your body goes cold. "Bucky," you whisper.

He turns his head slightly. His face says yes before his mouth does.

You follow his gaze.

An old man sits on the bench near the water.

For a moment, your mind refuses to make sense of him.

Then Sam starts walking.

Bruce falls silent behind you.

Bucky doesn't move.

You stand beside him, staring at the old man by the lake, and something inside you folds under the weight of understanding.

You look at Bucky. "Did you know?"

His jaw tightens. "Some."

Your breath catches. "Bucky."

"He didn't tell me everything."

"But he told you enough."

Bucky's eyes stay on Steve. "Yeah."

Pain twists in your chest, sharp and complicated. "You let him go."

His gaze drops. "I had to."

You want to argue. You want to be angry. You want to say no one gets to leave just because they're tired, no one gets to step out of the wreckage while the rest of you are still bleeding inside it. But then you look at Steve. Old Steve sitting in the sunlight like time finally stopped asking him for payment and the anger loses its teeth.

Sam reaches him first.

You can't hear what they say from where you stand, but you see the shield. You see Steve's hand resting on it. You see Sam step back like the thing has suddenly become heavier than metal.

Bucky's voice is quiet beside you. "Go."

You look at him.

He nods toward Steve. "He'll want to see you."

Your throat tightens. You walk. Each step hurts. Your ribs ache. Your shoulder pulses. Your head throbs. The grass shifts slightly beneath your shoes, or maybe that's just the rest of the world refusing to stay level.

Sam turns when you approach. His eyes are wet. He tries to hide it but he fails.

You don't call him on it.

Steve looks up at you... old Steve. The face is different. Lined. Weathered. Softened by years you didn't get to witness. But the eyes are the same, and that's almost worse. "Hey, Em," he says.

Your mouth trembles. "Don't hey Em me."

His smile is small and familiar. "Fair."

You stop in front of him, looking down at the man who used to seem impossible to bend. "You left."

"I did."

Your eyes burn. "You really left."

Steve nods. No defense, no speech, just the truth.

You hate how much you respect him for that.

"I'm sorry," he says.

You shake your head. "Are you?"

His smile fades into something gentler. "No," he says softly. "Not for staying."

That lands clean and devastating.

You look away toward the lake. Of course Steve Rogers, who spent his whole life arriving too late, finally found one place where he could stay.

You look back at him. "Was it worth it?"

His eyes soften. "Yes."

The answer breaks your heart and fixes something in it at the same time. You nod once, swallowing hard. "Good."

Steve's hand lifts slowly, giving you time to step away. You don't, you let him take your hand. His grip is warmer than you expect. Softer than you remember. Human in a way that makes your chest ache.

"Nat would be mad at you," you say.

Steve's mouth curves. "Probably."

"She'd call you selfish."

"Probably."

"Then she'd pretend not to be happy for you."

This time, his eyes shine. "Yeah," he whispers. "She would."

You squeeze his hand. "I found something," you say quietly. "For Yelena."

Steve's face changes.

"I'm going to find her," you continue. "I'm going to tell her."

He nods slowly, grief passing across his face. "Good."

"I don't know how yet."

"You will."

You almost laugh. "That's your advice?"

"It usually works."

"Terrible."

His smile warms for a second. Then his gaze shifts past you, toward Bucky. "He's going to need people," Steve says.

You close your eyes briefly. "Aren't we all?"

"Yes," Steve says. "But he won't ask."

You look back at him. There it is. One last instruction. One last Steve Rogers burden wrapped in love. Your throat tightens. "I'm not who I was."

"I know."

"I can't be what I was to him. Not right now. Maybe not ever."

Steve's eyes hold yours, steady and kind. "I'm not asking you to be."

You breathe in carefully. "Then what are you asking?"

Steve squeezes your hand once. "Don't disappear from each other just because it hurts."

The words settle under your skin. You hate them, you need them. You nod, barely. "I'll try."

"That's enough."

You look at him for another second, memorizing this version of him too because apparently that is what you do now. You memorize people right before the world takes them or changes them beyond recognition.

Steve seems to know. He smiles softly. "You should go," he says.

Your phone burns in your pocket.

John. The voicemail. The apartment.

You glance toward Sam, then toward Bucky, then back to Steve. "I don't know how to say goodbye to you."

Steve's face softens. "Then don't."

Your mouth trembles. "See you around, Rogers."

He smiles, and for a second, he's young again beneath all those years. "See you around, Hart."

You step away before you break completely.

Sam stays by the bench. Bucky waits near the platform. Bruce stands off to the side, stunned and quiet. For a moment, nobody knows how to leave.

Then your phone vibrates again. You pull it out with shaking fingers. No new call. Just the voicemail still sitting there. John's message still waiting in text beneath it.

Em? Please pick up.

Your chest tightens. You open the ride app with one hand, blinking hard against the blur in your eyes.

No cars available.

You refresh.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

Of course.

Half the world has returned, the entire transportation system is probably screaming into a pillow, and you're trying to get a cab like the universe hasn't been chewing on everyone for three days.

"Damn it," you whisper.

Sam appears beside you. "Everything okay?"

"I need to get to Brooklyn."

His brows knit together. "Brooklyn?"

You nod. "I can't get a ride."

He watches you for a moment, like he's trying to figure out why Brooklyn matters so much, but whatever question crosses his mind stays there. Instead he says, "I'll drive you."

"You don't have to."

"Did I ask?"

Despite everything, the corner of your mouth twitches.

"You've got enough going on," you say quietly.

"So do you."

The words are simple. No pressure. No questions. Just an offer.

You let out a slow breath. "Thank you."

His face softens for half a second. "Come on."

Bucky hears. His eyes flick from Sam to you then to your phone, then back to your face.

You see the question there. Just the first edge of understanding that there is something inside the five years he doesn't know... someone.

Your chest twists. "I have to go," you say.

Bucky nods once. "Okay."

That word again. Mercy as a bruise.

You should leave it there. You should turn around, follow Sam, get in the car, call John back, and stop asking your heart to stand in two burning rooms at once.

Instead, you step toward Bucky. His breath catches so softly you almost miss it. You reach for him with your good arm, careful of the sling, careful of the space between you, careful of everything that isn't careful at all. Bucky meets you halfway.

The hug is quieter this time.

Less desperate than the one by the lake, but somehow worse because both of you know what it means now. He knows you're leaving for something he doesn't understand yet. You know you're leaving him with questions. Neither of you asks for answers you can't survive giving.

His arms settle around you, warm and familiar, his hold gentle enough not to hurt and steady enough to make your throat close.

"I'll be back," you whisper, because you don't know if it's true, but you can't leave him with nothing.

Bucky's hand presses lightly between your shoulder blades. "I'll be here," he says.

You pull back just enough to look at him. For one second, he's Wakanda. He's smoke. He's the hut. He's the battlefield. He's five years of grief standing close enough to touch. You lean up and press a soft kiss to his cheek.

Bucky goes still beneath it, not frozen. Just feeling it.

When you lower back down, his eyes are bright. He doesn't say anything. He only bends, slow enough to let you move if you want to, and presses a kiss to your temple. Soft. Lingering. Right over the place where the bruise still aches.

Your eyes close.

For half a second, the world narrows to the warmth of his mouth against your skin and the impossible truth of him being alive. Then he pulls back. You both stand there with too much unsaid between you.

Sam waits by the car, pretending very hard not to watch.

Your phone sits heavy in your hand. John's voicemail burns through the glass.

You take one step back.

Bucky lets you.

That might be the worst part.

You turn before your heart can make a worse decision, and follow Sam toward the car.

The ride to Brooklyn feels longer than it is. The city is chaos. There's no other word for it.

Sam glances at you, his hands steady on the wheel even though the roads are chaos, even though people are everywhere, pouring out of buildings and into streets, crying into phones, falling into each other's arms, screaming names at the sky.

He has a thousand questions sitting behind his teeth. You can feel them.

Who's in Brooklyn?

Why there?

Why now, with your arm in a sling and your ribs wrapped and your face still too pale from whatever the battlefield took out of you?

But Sam Wilson, God bless him, knows when a person is one wrong word away from shattering. So he doesn't push, he just drives.

You keep your forehead near the window and watch the city blur past in broken pieces. Ambulance lights. Traffic frozen in intersections. A woman kneeling on the sidewalk with both hands pressed over her mouth. A man standing barefoot in the street, laughing and crying at the same time.

Half the world came back. Nobody knows where to put the miracle.

By the time Sam pulls up a block away from the apartment, your body has started to lock around every bruise. The pain in your shoulder has turned sharp and mean. Your ribs protest when you breathe too deep. Your hair is still damp in places from the shower you took at the compound, but you can feel where you missed spots. Sweat. Smoke. Something metallic near the back of your neck.

Blood, maybe. Yours. Someone else's, you don't know anymore.

Sam puts the car in park and looks over at you. "You want me to walk you up?"

Your stomach twists. "No." It comes out too fast.

Sam's brows pull in, but he doesn't take offense. He just studies you for a second. Then he nods. "All right."

You try to open the door, fumble with the handle because your good hand is shaking, and Sam reaches over to help without making a thing of it.

"Thanks," you whisper.

"Don't thank me yet," he says. "You still have to survive getting out of this car."

A weak laugh scrapes out of you. It hurts.

Sam's face softens. "There she is."

You look away before your eyes can burn too much.

"I'll check on Barnes," he says carefully, like he's setting something fragile between you. "I'll let you know how he is."

You nod once. Your throat won't let anything else through.

"And you," Sam adds, his voice turning pointed, "are gonna let someone take care of you. Whoever that is."

Your fingers tighten around your phone. "I'm trying."

"Try harder."

You look at him.

He gives you that steady look again. The one that makes you understand why Steve trusted him with so much. Sam doesn't look at people like they're projects. He looks at them like they're still people even when they've forgotten how to be.

"Text me when you can," he says.

"I will."

You step out of the car.

The world tilts for half a second.

Sam notices. Of course he notices. His hand twitches toward the door like he's about to get out anyway, but you lift your good hand and shake your head.

"I've got it."

He doesn't believe you.

You don't blame him.

Still, he stays in the car.

You shut the door with your hip and walk away before either of you can change your mind.

The street smells like exhaust, wet concrete, and nerves. You tuck your phone into your pocket and keep your injured arm close as you make your way toward the building. Every step pulls at your ribs, but the pain barely registers now.

John is hopefully upstairs. Lemar with him. Alive. You need them to be alive.

The lobby is crowded with people moving in and out, voices overlapping, someone arguing with a building manager near the mailboxes, someone else trying to call a relative on speakerphone. The stairs would've been miserable, but the elevator doors slide open just as you reach them.

A small mercy. You almost don't trust it. Still, you step inside.

The elevator hums upward slowly, carrying you floor by floor toward whatever's waiting.

Your reflection stares back from the dull metal doors.

Black shirt. Sling. Bruised temple. Eyes too tired to belong to anyone. Wolf charm beneath your collar. Phone in your pocket, heavy with everything you haven't explained yet.

Bucky's arms had been familiar.

John's are waiting above you.

Your throat tightens.

The doors open.

The hallway is quieter than the lobby, but not calm. A child cries behind one door. A dog barks behind another. Somewhere, someone laughs in a way that sounds like shock wearing a mask.

You walk to John's apartment.

For one second, you stand outside the door.

The last time you were here, gold light tore through the living room and the battlefield breathed smoke into the place where you'd learned how to sleep again.

Now the door is closed. Ordinary. Impossible. You raise your hand and knock.

The door opens almost immediately.

Lemar is the first thing you see.

He's standing just inside, jacket half zipped, phone in one hand, face drawn with exhaustion. The moment he sees you, concern cuts through him so sharply it changes his whole posture.

"Trouble."

Your chest breaks around the nickname.

John is behind him. For one second, he freezes. His eyes sweep over you in a fast, brutal inventory.

Bruised temple. Sling. Black clothes. Your face.

The color drains from him. Then he moves.

Lemar steps aside before John can say a word, and John is in front of you, hands lifting like he wants to grab you and is terrified he'll hurt you if he does.

"Em."

Your name sounds wrecked in his mouth.

"I'm okay," you say, which is a stupid thing to say and all you have.

His jaw tightens, but he doesn't argue. Not yet. He just reaches for you. Carefully. So carefully it almost ruins you.

One arm slides around your waist, avoiding your injured shoulder. His other hand cradles the back of your head with the kind of gentleness that makes the tears rise before you can stop them.

You fold into him.

And your eyes fill immediately because his arms are different than Bucky's.

Not better. Not less. Different.

Bucky's hold had been memory. Wakanda. Dust. The old shape of a life you buried and found breathing again.

John's hold is the apartment. The key. The couch. The basement during the storm. His voice saying love when you were too broken to know what to do with tenderness.

John's arms are the life that happened after. The life that found you when you weren't sure you deserved to be found.

A sob catches in your throat.

John feels it. His hold tightens just enough. "I've got you," he whispers.

You close your eyes. The words hurt differently from his mouth.

"I'm sorry," you say into his shirt. "I'm sorry. I tried to reach you. I tried to reach both of you. My phone was destroyed in the battle, and then everything was overloaded, and Steve got me a new one, but it's been a whole mess."

John goes very still.

Your stomach drops.

He pulls back just enough to look at you. His eyes are red-rimmed. Exhausted. Alive. Angry in that scared way that has nowhere soft to land.

"My last calls went through," he says.

The hallway seems to narrow around you.

You look at him. Then away. Anywhere but his face.

To the doorframe. To the floor. To the scuff on his boot.

To Lemar standing a few feet away, watching both of you like he's already preparing to throw himself between two collapsing buildings.

"Em," John says quietly.

You swallow. "I know."

The confession is barely there.

John's jaw shifts. "You know?"

"I heard the voicemail."

"When?"

You don't answer fast enough. That is answer enough.

John inhales once, sharp through his nose.

Lemar moves before the air can catch fire.

"Alright," he says, voice calm but firm. "I'm going to step outside."

John doesn't look at him. "Lemar."

"No." Lemar's eyes flick to him, then to you. "You two need to talk, and you don't need me standing here making it weirder with my handsome emotional support presence."

A broken laugh nearly escapes you. It doesn't quite make it.

Lemar softens when he looks at you. "I'll be right outside," he says.

You nod, throat tight. "Thank you."

He gives John a look. Not warning exactly. Not accusation. Something steadier than both.

Then he steps into the hallway and pulls the door mostly closed behind him.

Just enough to give you privacy. Just enough to remind both of you that he's there.

The apartment goes quiet.

John stands in front of you, one hand still at your waist like he forgot how to let go.

You can't look at him yet.

Because Bucky kissed your temple by the lake. Because John left a voicemail sounding like the world had torn him open.

Because Tony Stark is dead. Because Natasha Romanoff is gone. Because Steve Rogers left and came back old.

Because you love him. Because you loved Bucky first. Because none of this is clean enough to survive being spoken all at once.

John's voice drops. "Three days," he says.

Your eyes close. "I know."

"No," he says, softer now, and somehow worse. "You don't."

You open your eyes.

He looks at you like he's been holding panic in his teeth since the moment he opened the apartment door and found you gone.

"I came back here," he says. "I came back, and you weren't here."

Your chest twists. "John..."

"I left that voicemail because I had to leave again." His voice roughens. "Because people were appearing in the middle of streets, hospitals were overflowing, dispatch was screaming for every available unit, and I had to walk out of this apartment not knowing if you were alive."

Your eyes burn. "I'm sorry."

His face tightens. "I don't want sorry."

The words land hard.

You flinch.

John sees it and immediately looks like he hates himself for it. He exhales, dragging a hand over his face before lowering it again. "I don't mean it like that," he says, quieter. "I just... I don't know what to do with sorry right now."

You nod, tears slipping down your cheeks. "I don't either."

For a second, neither of you speaks.

The city makes noise beyond the windows. Sirens. Traffic. Voices from the street below. The returned world refusing to be quiet.

John looks at your sling again. His anger cracks under the weight of fear.

"How bad?"

You glance down. "Shoulder. Ribs. Head."

"Head?"

"I woke up."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have right now."

His mouth presses tight, but he doesn't push. His hand lifts, then stops. "Can I?"

You nod.

He touches your cheek with the backs of his fingers, careful near the bruise at your temple.

His hand is warm. Shaking. That undoes you more than anything.

"I thought I lost you," he says. The words come out barely above a whisper.

You close your eyes and lean into his hand. "I'm here."

His thumb brushes beneath your eye. "You weren't."

Your breath catches.

The truth of it sits between you.

You weren't here. Not when he needed you to be. Not when he came home looking for the life he'd left behind and found an empty apartment instead.

You open your eyes.

"I was unconscious for two days," you say. "At the compound. Steve was with me when I woke up. I tried to call you as soon as I could."

John's expression shifts, pain and relief tangled together. "You were unconscious?"

You nod.

His hand drops from your face like the strength leaves it. "Jesus, Em."

"I'm okay."

"Stop saying that."

Your mouth closes.

He takes one step back, not far, just enough to breathe without holding you upright. His eyes search your face. "And today?" he asks.

Your pulse stumbles. "Tony's service was today."

John frowns."...Service?"

You look at him. The confusion on his face tells you everything.

He doesn't know how it ended. He doesn't know what it cost.

"John..." Your throat tightens. "Tony died."

His face empties. "What?"

The word comes out sharp, almost disbelieving.

"He died during the battle."

John stares at you. For a moment, he doesn't seem to breathe.

Your eyes burn. "He used the stones to end Thanos... he saved us," you whisper. "He saved everyone."

John's eyes search yours.

"And it killed him."

Silence crashes into the room.

John looks away, one hand rising to cover his mouth as he tries to absorb it.

Tony Stark dead.

The battle won because he chose to die for it.

You standing close enough to watch the light leave him.

"Damn," John whispers. His anger is still there, but grief moves through it now, dulling its edges. "I'm sorry."

You nod, but the tears come faster. "And Nat," you say.

John's eyes lift immediately.

"She's gone too," you say.

John's face stills. "What?"

The word is barely there.

"Nat didn't come back." Your voice cracks on the place.

John looks like the sentence takes a second to reach him. His eyes move past you, not really seeing the apartment anymore.

He's remembering her.

You can tell.

Nat in his kitchen. Nat in his space. Nat with that red hair and careful eyes, standing only a few feet from where you are now. Nat looking at him like she could read every protective instinct he was trying to hide and every selfish fear he was ashamed of having.

"She was just here," he says quietly.

Your face crumples. "I know."

John's anger breaks. Not completely but enough. He closes his eyes for one second. When he opens them, they're wet. "Damn it," he whispers.

You nod, crying harder now. "Yeah."

He looks at you for a long moment, and whatever fight was building between you shifts under the weight of grief neither of you knows how to hold neatly. "I'm sorry," he says again.

This time, the words don't feel useless. They feel like his hand reaching across a hole.

You take them.

"And Steve," you say.

John frowns faintly. "Steve?"

You wipe at your face with your good hand, but it doesn't help. "After the service, we went back to the compound. Steve went back to return the stones."

John watches you carefully.

"He was supposed to come back in five seconds," you continue. "He didn't."

John's expression sharpens. "What happened?"

You let out a shaking breath. "He came back old." The words sound impossible even though you saw him.

John blinks once. "Old?"

You nod. "He stayed... somewhere in the past. He lived a life."

John stares at you. For once, he looks honestly, completely stunned. "Did Steve tell you he was going to do that?"

"No." Your throat tightens. "I think Bucky knew. Not everything. But enough."

There. The name enters the room.

Bucky.

John's face changes in a way so small someone else might miss it.

You don't. You step closer. "Bucky was there," you say quietly.

John doesn't speak.

You owe him the truth, not all of it at once, but enough. "I didn't hide your call because I wanted to hide you," you say quickly, voice trembling. "I didn't. John, I swear, I didn't."

His jaw flexes.

You keep going before fear can close your throat. "I saw the missed call after Tony's service. Then Steve went back, and everything happened so fast. I listened to your voicemail when I got the chance, but Bucky and Steve were saying goodbye, and then Steve didn't come back the way he was supposed to, and I couldn't call you in the middle of it."

John says nothing, that's worse than yelling.

You step closer. "I'm not ashamed of you."

His eyes flick to yours.

"I need you to know that," you whisper. "You're not a secret because I regret you. You're not something I'm trying to erase. I just..." Your voice breaks. "I didn't want to hurt him by letting him find out like that. From a phone call. In front of everyone. After everything."

John looks away. His throat works.

You watch him try to be fair while exhausted, terrified, grieving, and bleeding from three days of not knowing.

It costs him. You can see it.

Finally, he says, "And what about hurting me?"

The question lands softly.

That makes it worse.

Your tears spill again. "I know."

John looks back at you.

"I know," you say again, uselessly. "I'm sorry."

He closes his eyes. For a second, he looks so tired you want to take the whole world by the collar and throw it out a window.

Then he opens them. "I'm glad you're alive," he says.

Your breath catches.

"I'm so mad at you right now," he continues, voice rough. "And I'm glad you're alive. And I'm sorry about Tony. And I'm sorry about Nat." His voice cracks slightly on her name. "And I don't know which thing I'm supposed to do first."

A broken laugh slips out through your tears. "Can you do all of it?"

His mouth twitches, but it doesn't become a smile. "Probably."

You take another careful step toward him. "Can I stay?"

John looks at you like the question hurts. Like after everything that's happened, after three days of not knowing if you were alive, after grief and anger and relief have all tangled together into something neither of you knows how to name, you still aren't sure you belong here.

He shakes his head once. "Em." His voice is quiet. "You're home, aren't you?"

The words strike deep.

Your throat closes. "Yes," you whisper.

John's face tightens, but he nods. "Then you don't have to ask."

He reaches for your hand instead, careful of your injuries. "Can I hug you?"

Your answer is immediate. "Please."

He pulls you in carefully, so carefully.

You press your face against his chest and listen to his heartbeat.

Not memory. Not the past. This heartbeat belongs to the life that found you after the world ended.

John rests his chin lightly against your hair.

His voice is barely there. "Don't disappear on me again, love."

The nickname breaks something open.

Your fingers curl into his shirt. "I'll try."

A knock sounds against the door.

John's hold firms around you on instinct before he remembers who's on the other side.

"Yeah?" he calls, keeping you tucked against his chest.

The door opens a few inches, and Lemar peers inside. His gaze passes over you both, checking the damage without making it obvious.

"I'm heading out," he says. "Gonna check on my family. Calls are still spotty, and my mom will personally bring me back from the dead just to kill me herself if I don't show my face soon."

The corner of John's mouth lifts. "You need a ride?"

"I've got one."

Lemar's attention shifts to you, the humor easing from his expression. "You gonna be okay, Trouble?"

You nod, careful of the ache in your temple. "I will be."

His brows rise slightly.

Not I am.

I will be.

He understands the difference but lets you have it.

"Good." He gestures toward John. "Take care of her."

"I will."

"I mean it."

John meets his eyes. "So do I."

Something unspoken passes between them, shaped by years of friendship, shared missions, and the kind of trust earned in places neither of them likes remembering.

Lemar gives a satisfied nod. "Call me if either of you needs anything. I don't care what time it is."

He starts to pull the door closed.

"Lemar."

He pauses.

"Thank you."

His expression softens. "For what?"

For driving through chaos. For the oranges on the counter. For giving you privacy without ever making either of you feel alone. For standing beside John when the sharpest parts of him threatened to turn inward.

There are too many answers, so you choose the simplest one.

"For being here."

His tired smile warms. "Always, little sister."

Emotion catches behind your ribs, leaving you unable to answer.

Lemar glances at John one last time. "Keep your phone on."

"I will."

"And try not to be an idiot."

John sighs. "Go check on your family."

"That wasn't a promise."

"Goodnight, Lemar."

With a small salute in your direction, Lemar slips into the hallway and closes the door behind him.

His footsteps recede, leaving you and John alone in the apartment.

John doesn't move immediately. He keeps one arm around you, his cheek resting lightly against the top of your head.

"You want to lie down?" he asks.

You think about the bedroom. Clean sheets. Darkness. John beside you. The possibility of closing your eyes and seeing the battlefield again.

Your skin feels too tight.

Smoke still clings beneath your nails. There's dried blood near your hairline, sweat cooling beneath your clothes, ash hidden in places you haven't found yet. You showered at the compound, or tried to, but you'd barely been able to lift one arm. You'd stood beneath the water until it ran cold and called that enough.

It hadn't been.

"Can you help me get in the shower first?"

John leans back enough to see your face. His gaze drops briefly to the sling, then to the bruising visible above the collar of your shirt.

"Yeah," he says immediately. "Of course."

He guides you toward the bathroom slowly, one hand at your waist. He matches his steps to yours without making it obvious, pausing whenever your ribs catch or your balance wavers.

The bathroom light feels too bright.

You stop beside the sink and stare at your reflection.

The person looking back at you appears assembled from leftover pieces. Bruised temple. Split skin near your hairline. Shadows beneath your eyes. Your hair dried wrong after the rushed shower at the compound, tangled and stiff near the back of your neck.

John sees it too. His jaw tightens. "I can help with the sling," he says carefully.

You nod.

He steps behind you and works the strap loose, moving slowly enough that you can anticipate every touch. When the weight shifts away from your injured shoulder, pain flashes down your arm.

You suck in a breath.

John freezes. "Too much?"

"No. Just give me a second."

He waits.

No impatience. No order to breathe through it. He simply stands behind you with one hand hovering near your waist, ready to catch you if your knees give out.

When the pain dulls, you nod.

John eases the sling away and places it on the counter. Then he helps you pull your shirt over your head, carefully guiding the fabric around your injured arm.

His expression changes when he sees the bruises along your ribs.

Dark fingerprints of the battlefield bloom across your skin. Purple near your side. Blue beneath your collarbone. A strip of medical tape still clings stubbornly near your shoulder.

John's eyes go cold. Not at you. At every person and every moment that put those marks there.

"I'm okay," you murmur automatically.

His gaze lifts to yours in the mirror.

You close your mouth.

"Right," you whisper. "Not saying that anymore."

"Thank you."

Despite everything, a weak smile touches your lips.

John helps with the rest of your clothes without looking anywhere you haven't invited him to look. His hands are steady, clinical when they need to be, gentle everywhere else.

Once the water is warm, he places a towel within reach and sets your clean clothes on the closed toilet lid.

"I'll be right outside," he says.

You nod.

His eyes remain on yours. "If you feel dizzy, you call me."

"I will."

"If you drop something, don't try to pick it up."

"John."

"I'm serious."

"I know."

He hesitates, visibly fighting the urge to stay. Then he steps outside and pulls the door mostly closed behind him.

You enter the shower.

The first touch of warm water makes your entire body ache.

You stand beneath it with your forehead pressed against the tile, trying to let the heat loosen muscles that have been clenched for days. Water runs pink near your feet at first, washing away blood you hadn't known was still on you.

You reach for the shampoo.

Your fingers close around the bottle, but lifting it sends a sharp bolt through your shoulder. The bottle slips from your hand and strikes the floor with a hollow crack.

You bite back a sound.

Outside, John goes still. "Em?"

"I'm fine."

The answer comes too quickly.

You brace one hand against the wall and bend slightly, trying to reach the bottle with your good arm. Your ribs seize halfway down.

A broken gasp escapes you.

The bathroom door opens immediately. John steps inside, eyes already searching for blood, a fall, anything worse than what he finds.

You're standing beneath the water, one arm wrapped protectively around your ribs, the shampoo bottle at your feet.

His expression crumples for half a heartbeat. "I told you not to pick anything up."

"I didn't."

"You were trying."

"I was considering it."

"Love."

The word carries no anger. Only fear worn thin.

Your chin trembles. "I can't wash my hair."

John's face softens completely.

You stare at the tile because looking at him suddenly feels impossible.

"I tried at the compound," you continue. "I stood under the water, but I couldn't reach properly, and I thought it was enough. I thought I could just..." Your breath catches. "I thought I could do one thing by myself."

John removes his boots.

You look at him through the steam as he sets them beside the door, followed by his socks. He rolls his pants to his knees and steps into the shower fully clothed, not caring when water immediately soaks through his shirt.

"What are you doing?"

"Helping you."

"You're getting soaked."

"I own other shirts."

A laugh tries to escape you, but it breaks apart before it reaches your mouth.

John bends and retrieves the shampoo bottle. Then he straightens and stands behind you, close enough that warmth presses along your back without trapping you.

"Can I touch you?"

You nod.

"With words, love."

"Yes."

His free hand settles lightly against your waist. "Lean back."

You do.

John pours shampoo into his palm and works it carefully into your hair.

The first pass of his fingers over your scalp makes your eyes close. He moves slowly around the bruised place near your temple, separating tangled strands without pulling. His fingertips massage gently at the roots, patient and thorough.

You don't realize you're crying until the water carries the tears away.

John notices anyway. His hands pause. "Am I hurting you?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

You shake your head. The movement sends another tear down your cheek. "I don't know."

John resumes washing your hair, even gentler now.

That's the problem. The gentleness.

The fact that he isn't asking you to explain Bucky. Or why you listened to his voicemail and didn't call. He's standing in the shower with his clothes soaked through, carefully washing smoke and blood from your hair because you couldn't do it alone.

Your knees soften.

John catches you immediately, one arm circling your waist. "I've got you."

The words split you open. A sob tears free before you can swallow it.

John turns you carefully, keeping your injured arm protected between you. You press your face against his wet shirt and cry.

Not prettily. Not quietly.

You cry for Tony and Nat. For Steve on the bench. For Bucky's hand against your back. For John's voice on the voicemail. For the blood circling the drain and the five years still lodged inside you like shrapnel.

John holds you beneath the water.

He doesn't tell you to stop. He doesn't ask you to choose which grief belongs here. His hand cups the back of your head, shielding the bruise as you shake against him.

"I'm sorry," you sob.

"No."

"I hurt you."

"I know."

The honesty stings, but his arms don't loosen.

"I didn't mean to."

"I know that too."

You clutch his shirt with your good hand. "I don't know how to do this."

John's mouth presses against your wet hair. "Then we don't do all of it tonight."

Your breath shudders. "What do we do?"

"This." His hand moves slowly along your back. "We get you clean. We get you dressed. We get you into bed."

"And tomorrow?"

"We figure out tomorrow when it gets here."

You close your eyes. For once, you let that be enough.

John rinses the shampoo from your hair, one hand shielding your face from the water. He works conditioner through the tangled ends and gently combs them apart with his fingers. Then he helps you wash the rest of yourself, handing you the cloth when you can manage and taking over when your shoulder begins to shake.

There is something unbearably intimate about being cared for without being made helpless.

When the water finally runs clear, John turns it off.

The sudden silence rings in your ears.

He steps out first and reaches for the towel. Then he wraps it around you, tucking it securely beneath your arms before taking another towel to your hair.

"You're dripping everywhere," you mumble.

"So are you."

"It's your bathroom."

"It's our bathroom."

Your eyes lift to his.

John seems to realize what he said, but he doesn't take it back. Instead, he guides you to sit on the closed toilet lid and kneels in front of you.

He dries your legs and feet, then helps you into clean underwear and one of his soft shirts. He threads your injured arm through the sleeve first, easing the fabric over your shoulder without jostling it.

The shirt falls nearly to your knees.

John retrieves a pair of sleep shorts but looks at the bruising along your ribs and sets them aside.

"These'll hurt."

"Probably."

"Shirt okay?"

You nod. "Shirt's okay."

He gently repositions the sling, checking the strap twice before he seems satisfied.

Then he stands and uses the towel to squeeze the excess water from your hair.

"You don't have to dry it completely," you say.

"I know."

"You're still doing it."

"I know."

His stubborn concentration makes something warm flicker beneath all the grief.

When he finishes, he brushes the damp strands back from your face. "There," he says quietly.

You look down at him. At the soaked shirt clinging to his chest. At his hair falling over his forehead. At the exhaustion beneath his eyes.

"You took care of everyone for three days," you say.

His expression shifts.

"Let me take care of you," you whisper.

John's hand settles against your cheek. "You came home," he says. "That's enough for tonight."

He helps you stand and walks you toward the bedroom.

At the edge of the mattress, he pulls back the blankets and waits until you're settled before moving away to change out of his wet clothes.

Your hand closes around his wrist.

John looks down.

"Stay."

His face softens. "I'm not going anywhere, love."

He changes quickly, then climbs into bed beside you. He keeps to your uninjured side, arranging the pillows so your shoulder is supported and your ribs don't twist.

When he finally lies down, you turn your face toward him.

John reaches across the space between you and takes your hand.

No questions.

No promises too large to keep.

Just his fingers threaded carefully through yours in the dark.

You listen to his breathing until the apartment stops feeling like another place the world might take away.

For tonight, John is here.

For tonight, so are you.

You moved into the apartment next to his on a Tuesday afternoon with three cardboard boxes, one crooked houseplant, and a suitcase with one wheel that squeaked murder every time you dragged it over the hallway carpet.

John heard you before he saw you.

The scrape of cardboard against the doorframe. A quiet curse under your breath. The frantic jingle of keys, then a thump and silence. Then, very softly, "Well, that was stupid."

John had been halfway to ignoring it. He was good at ignoring things. Noise in the hall, his phone lighting up, the ache in his knee when it rained, the sharp little memory jolts that came with being alone too long. But something about your voice made him open the door.

You looked up from where you were crouched beside a fallen box, hair slipping from its clip, cheeks flushed, a bundle of kitchen towels spilled around your knees.

For half a second, you just stared at him.

John knew the look. Recognition, calculation, a quiet little reassessment.

Then you smiled.

"Hi," you said, like he hadn't once had his face on every news channel in America. Like he wasn't a government sponsored problem with a jawline and a poor relationship with authority.

"Hey," he said.

Your eyes flicked to his apartment number, then back to him. "I guess I'm your new neighbor."

"Looks like it."

You glanced down at the mess around you. "I swear I'm usually more competent than this."

John looked at the box, then at you. "Need help?"

You blinked like you hadn't expected him to offer. Which irritated him for reasons he didn't want to examine.

"That's okay," you said quickly. "I don't want to bother you."

"You're not bothering me."

"You sure?"

John stepped out into the hall and crouched beside the box. "I'm sure." He glanced up at you. "I'm John, by the way."

You told him your name.

He repeated it once, careful with it, and watched something flicker across your face when he did.

Your smile softened into something smaller, realer. "Thank you, John."

He liked the way you said his name, too much. He told himself it was nothing. He told himself a lot of things.

By the end of the hour, he'd carried in six boxes, one bookshelf, a nightstand with a busted drawer, and the squeaky suitcase that he lifted one handed before you could protest.

You watched him set it inside your apartment with wide eyes. "Okay," you said. "That was unfairly impressive."

John huffed a laugh and stepped back toward the door. "It's a suitcase."

"It's a suitcase full of books."

"Still a suitcase."

You looked at his arms like you were trying very hard not to look at his arms.

He noticed, he wished he hadn't.

When the last box was inside, John nodded toward the wall separating your apartments. "I'm next door if you need anything."

You tucked your hair behind your ear. "I'll remember that."

The quiet way you smiled made him think you meant it.

That was how it started.

With boxes and a bad suitcase and John Walker deciding, with the firm conviction of a man who had ignored better instincts before, that you were the kind of neighbor a guy kept at arm's length. Friendly, brief, harmless. He was wrong about one of those.

For the first week, you were just part of the building's rhythm.

A good morning at the mailboxes. A nod in the afternoon when you came back carrying grocery bags.

A quick smile by the elevator when he left too early for work and found you standing there in leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, holding a travel mug between both hands like it was the only thing keeping you alive.

"Morning," you murmured.

"You okay?"

You blinked up at him. "I haven't had caffeine yet."

"Rough."

"Pray for me."

John's mouth twitched before he could stop it.

You noticed.

By Thursday, you knew he took the stairs when he was restless. By Friday, he knew you baked when you were stressed because the hallway smelled like cinnamon and butter until nearly midnight. By Saturday, you learned that his job was complicated, classified in the broad strokes, and usually involved people with poor decision making skills and government issued weapons.

"The New Avengers," you said one evening, standing beside him at the elevator with a laundry basket on your hip.

John looked over. "You say that like you've heard of us."

"I've seen the news."

"That's never good."

"Depends on the channel."

His laugh came out before he could cage it.

You looked pleased with yourself.

The elevator doors opened. Neither of you moved right away.

John should've stepped in first. He didn't.

You shifted your basket higher on your hip, and his gaze snagged briefly on the bare strip of skin where your shirt rode up. A tiny, nothing thing. His brain reacted like a match tossed into gasoline.

He looked away.

You stepped into the elevator. "So what do the New Avengers do when they're not saving the world or making headlines?"

"Argue."

"Professionally?"

"Deeply unprofessionally."

You laughed, and something in his chest went warm.

The doors closed and the elevator hummed downward.

John stood beside you, close enough to smell the clean scent of your shampoo, something floral and soft. You had a little smear of flour on your sleeve.

"You bake a lot?" he asked.

"When I'm anxious."

"You anxious?"

You glanced at him. "New city. New apartment. New job. New neighbors."

"Plural?"

"Well, I've only really met one." Your eyes flicked to his. "He seems nice."

John didn't know what to do with that. He cleared his throat. "Nice might be overselling it."

"I don't think so."

The elevator doors opened at the lobby. You walked out first. John followed, wondering when, exactly, his life had become vulnerable to a woman with flour on her sleeve and a laundry basket.

It got worse after that.

You started talking. Not much at first, just scraps, little pieces offered in hallways and elevator rides.

You'd moved from another state for a fresh start. You didn't say what you were running from, and John didn't ask. He knew better than most that fresh starts usually came with teeth marks. People didn't pack their lives into boxes and cross state lines because everything had gone beautifully.

You told him you liked old movies, overwatered plants, and gas station coffee even though you knew it was bad.

He told you less.

That he worked long hours. That his team was a disaster. That Yelena had once threatened to poison his protein powder because he'd corrected her grip during training. That Bucky Barnes could turn silence into a weapon. That Alexei was somehow louder asleep than awake.

You listened like every word mattered. That was the problem.

John was used to people wanting something from him. An explanation, an apology, a performance, a villain, a hero. A headline they could file him under and walk away from.

You just listened. And when he stopped talking, you didn't rush to fill the space. You let him breathe inside it.

That made him trust you faster than he should have. It made him notice you in ways he definitely shouldn't have.

The curve of your smile when you saw him coming down the hall. The way you hugged grocery bags to your chest when they got too heavy but refused to make two trips. The soft sound you made when you stretched your back after carrying laundry. The little dresses you wore on warm afternoons. The bare skin of your thighs. The fact that you always smelled like sugar or coffee or rain.

Sweet. Innocent. His neighbor.

John repeated those words like a warning label. It did not help, because his body did not care about labels. His body cared about the way you said his name when you needed help reaching the top shelf in the shared mailroom.

"John?"

He turned.

You stood on your toes, one hand braced against the wall of mailboxes, fingers reaching uselessly toward a package wedged on the top ledge where someone had abandoned it.

"Sorry," you said. "I hate to ask, but I think that's mine."

John stepped up behind you before thinking better of it. Too close. He realized it the second your shoulders went still. The scent of you hit him first. Warm vanilla. Clean skin. Something underneath that made his stomach tighten.

You lowered your arm slowly but didn't move away.

John reached over you and grabbed the package with ease. For one beat, his chest nearly brushed your back.

He heard you inhale. Not much, barely anything. He looked down. You looked up. Your eyes met over your shoulder.

The air changed.

It was ridiculous, really. A mailroom with beige walls and one flickering light shouldn't have felt like a place where something could happen. But there it was, humming between you, low and electric.

John held your package out.

You took it carefully, fingers brushing his. "Thank you," you said.

His voice came out lower than he meant it to. "Anytime."

Your lashes dipped.

John stepped back before he did something stupid. He was good at stupid. Famous for it, depending who you asked. He didn't want to be stupid with you.

You were soft-spoken. Polite. New to the city. Still figuring out which grocery store had the decent produce. You brought him leftover muffins in a covered container one morning because, as you explained, you'd made too many and didn't want them to go to waste.

John had stared at the container like it was an explosive.

"You don't have to feed me," he said.

You smiled. "I know."

He took them anyway. He ate three before noon.

By the second week, he started listening for you.

Not in a creepy way, he told himself. Just neighbor awareness.

The squeak of your front door. Your keys in the lock. The faint sound of music through the wall when you cooked. Your laugh during a phone call. The soft shuffle of your feet when you padded down the hall to throw out trash.

Normal and harmless.

Except one night, after a long training day that left his shoulder stiff and his temper chewed raw, John came home to find you sitting on the floor outside your apartment, back against the wall, head tilted up toward the ceiling.

He stopped immediately. "You okay?"

You looked over at him and smiled, but it didn't quite land. "Locked myself out."

He glanced at your door. "Seriously?"

"Unfortunately."

"Super?"

"Forty minutes out, last I called."

John looked down the hall, then back at you. "You've been sitting here?"

You shrugged. "Could be worse."

"Come on."

Your brows lifted. "What?"

"You can wait in my place."

"Oh, no, I'm fine."

"You're sitting on the floor."

"It's a very supportive floor."

John gave you a look.

You lasted three seconds before sighing. "Fine."

His apartment was exactly what you expected and not what you expected at all.

Plain furniture. Clean lines. Military neat in some places, strangely neglected in others. Boots by the door. A jacket thrown over the back of the couch. A blanket folded with near-aggressive precision.

One framed photo sat on a shelf, faced slightly away, like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to see it. It showed John years younger, standing shoulder to shoulder with another soldier you didn't recognize, both of them grinning with the easy confidence of men who hadn't yet learned how heavy the world could become.

You didn't comment.

John noticed that too.

"Want some water?" he asked.

"Sure."

He moved into the kitchen, grateful for something to do with his hands.

When he came back, you were standing near his bookshelf, not touching anything, just looking. Your presence softened the room in a way that annoyed him.

You accepted the glass. "Thank you."

"No problem."

You took a sip, then looked at him over the rim. "Your place is very... controlled."

John leaned against the counter. "That your polite way of saying boring?"

"No." You looked around again. "I think it says you like knowing where everything is."

He said nothing.

You kept going, softer now. "I get that."

Something in him shifted.

You had a way of stepping around his defenses without making it obvious. No forced tenderness. No pity. Just observation, quiet and sharp enough to slip under the armor.

John folded his arms. "What does your place say?"

"That I own too many mugs and cannot be trusted near throw pillows."

He smiled despite himself.

"There it is," you said.

"What?"

"You smiling."

"I smile."

"Sure you do."

He raised an eyebrow. "You keeping track?"

"Maybe."

That should've been harmless, it was not. Not with you standing in his living room, holding his glass, looking at him like you liked what you saw and weren't afraid of him seeing that.

John's pulse kicked once, hard.

Then your phone buzzed. You glanced down. "Super's here."

Relief and disappointment hit him in equal measure.

He walked you to the door.

You paused in the threshold and looked back at him. "Thanks for letting me wait here."

"Anytime."

Your smile came back, gentler this time. "Goodnight, John."

"Night."

He closed the door after you.

Then stood there for a long moment, staring at the wood.

"You're in trouble," he muttered to himself.