“Aw, baby. You’re cheating on me?” 

“I’m afraid so,” he says, and hiccups. 

“Where are you?” 

After some hassle wherein you persuade Spencer to give the phone to someone else in the bar for a slightly less drunk interrogation, you dress and gather your bearings for the drive. You zip a hoodie up over your pyjamas, stuff your feet into some old converse, and set out into the dark to find him. 

He calls you again as you’re parking. “Hello,” he says as soon as you answered. “I need you to come and get me.” 

Spencer called you twice to save him. Even if he doesn’t remember, he’s called you to come and get him when he knows he needs help, and that realisation is hard to ignore. “Spencer, I’m two minutes away, I’m parking. You’re still where you were?” 

“Where was I?” 

“At the bar, sweetheart. Are you still there?” It’s scarily dark out and you didn’t grab any sort of defensive measure before you came, which you regret now, climbing out of your car to walk the dimly lit road. The bar glows like a beacon to be followed. 

“Still where?” 

“Did you hit your head?” 

“Not to my knowledge. Though I’m not sure I have much right now. I feel like I’m forgetting everything I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot. You know I can read about eighty average length novels in one hour on an e-reader? The buttons make it faster.” 

“You haven’t told me that before.” You shiver against the nighttime winds, footsteps heavy on the grey sidewalk. 

“I’m trying to be more conversational. Emily says it’s not working.” 

“You’re conversational. Isn’t the only condition of being conversational to prompt a conversation? We’re always talking.” 

“…What?” 

You laugh like crazy. “Spencer, you don’t need to change the way you talk.” 

“I annoy people.” 

“You don’t annoy me.” 

You approach the door of the bar, a ramshackle sheet of plywood over what looks to be a glass door. The bar building seems in similar dessaray, with modern features wrecked by scratches and smashed panes. It’s a real dive. Spencer couldn’t have meant to come here. 

You war with both hands to open the door and find yourself faced with a long and empty corridor leading to another door. Worried you’re going to get kidnapped, you bring the phone back to your ear, Spencer’s chatting an immediate greeting. “…telling me I’m doing something wrong without telling me what it is, it’s impossible.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, can you come to the door?” 

“I don’t think I have control of my legs,” he says without inflection. 

“It’s definitely the building with the smashed door?” 

“Yesssss. Are you here?” he asks excitedly. 

“I better not get murdered, Spencer Reid.” 

“Am I in trouble?” 

“How are you even keeping the phone to your ear right now?” 

“I’m on speaker phone. Milly showed me how to do it. Say hi, Milly.” 

“Hi Milly,” a new voice says. 

You rub your eyes with one hand and square your shoulders, prepared to defend yourself if the creepy door leads to a creepier room. 

Spencer is immediately visible from the get go. You open the door on to a rather cosy looking bar, which you’re thinking might be the whole point; wretched exterior, secret attraction. Warm orange light ebbs into the space from sconces and a faux fireplace, while a wrestling match playing from the small TV behind the bar casts brighter light down onto Spencer’s shoulders. He looks out of place, dressed in a white oxford shirt and a suit jacket, his tie loosened and hanging from either side of his neck, compared to the lingering patrons who sit dotted around the room in booths and on barstools. One such patron sits in a plaid shirt and a trucker hat, her hair to her back, thick and dark. 

You hang up the call and put your phone in your pocket. Spencer gasps like he’s been smacked and picks his own phone up from the bar, clicking at buttons with clumsy fingers. “No,” he hums sadly. 

“Spencer,” you say, not wanting to disturb the people spending their sorry-looking night here. “Spencer. Hey, Spence!” 

His phone tips between his fingers. The woman you assume to be Milly catches it and offers it back without looking too far from her beer. 

“Hey,” you say gently, crossing a wide empty space to meet him. The room itself is shaped like a horseshoe, the bar taking up a surprising amount in the centre, and booths and tables placed around it. Spencer’s off of his barstool as you approach, eyes like puppy dog’s, arms extended. “You okay?” you ask. 

You can feel eyes on you both from every angle, but it doesn’t matter, not when Spencer’s falling into your arms (or on to them —he’s surprisingly tall when you aren’t wearing heels). “You alright?” you ask again. 

“You don’t have to be worried, I’m fine.” 

He’s less coordinated in real life than he’d sounded over the phone, his slurring unmissable, his hands like jumping fish as he tries to hug you. It’s weird and straining to take his weight but you do it without complaint. He smells the same, at least, only his cedary cologne is sharpened by the tang of gin on his breath. 

“Thank god you’re here,” he whispers. 

“Why?” you ask, pulling away to check for danger. 

“I missed you.” 

“I missed you too, handsome,” you say, genuine but laying it on thick simultaneously as you ease his head back to cup his cheek. You can’t help yourself. He’s the prettiest man you’ve ever met, and it gets worse every year. 

He frowns at you deeply. “I don’t like first dates.” 

“Then don’t go on them,” you suggest, “you don’t need to until you’re ready.” 

“I’m ready for love,” he says. You pull your lips into a flattened line, unsure of what to say, how to explain that it’s waiting for him, but his chin dips towards his neck and his eyes lock onto your face. “You’re not wearing makeup. God, you’re so pretty.” 

You flinch away from him. “Fuck, Spencer.”

“I’m sorry! It’s not that you don’t look pretty with makeup, but I never see you without it!” 

You’d forgotten you weren’t wearing any. Makeup isn’t a shield, exactly, but you like putting your best foot forward, so to speak. You’ve no clue what you look like tonight, hadn’t managed to look in the mirror, you’d been focused on getting to Spencer before he got lost. You can imagine the puffiness.

Spencer touches your cheek. You let him turn you mostly because he’s surprised you, his eyes roving up and down your face with a fawning curiosity. 

“You’re beautiful. You know that already, but people don’t tell you enough,” he says, his hand falling from your cheek. 

“Spencer,” you say softly, “let’s get you home.” 

You thank Milly for her help and grab Spencer’s bag from the floor to hang on your shoulder. You’d make a joke about how heavy it was if you didn’t think he’d take it from you, and, considering how drunk he is, topple over from the imbalance it provides. His shirt is clammy where you push your hand through his arm to link them, his footsteps wobbly. 

“I didn’t want to go on a date,” he says. 

“Then why did you go?” you ask, helping him over the door jam into the long hallway. 

“I don’t want to be alone forever.” 

“Spencer, you won’t be.” It doesn’t feel like the best time to bring up how much you like him. You’re sure he thinks you’re kidding, doesn’t everybody? Don’t torture him, they say. Don’t toy with him. Every time you flirt with him the team acts like you can’t mean it, and for a while it worked for you; you weren’t in love with Spencer. You weren’t playing with his feelings, but you didn’t love him, and then you joined the team and got to know him, watched him fluster at every comment you made or under any soft looking and realised you could love him. It was easy to fall for him. You liked doing it. But now he’s determined to write your affection off as a joke and going on dates? 

In the morning, when he’s sober, you’ll have to tell him how you feel. Or you could let him find someone more like him… ugh. It’s such a mess. 

You grapple with the size of your feelings for him as he hums and laughs his way down the hall to the glass door. On the street, he squints and straightens his back, fighting to regain his arm from your hold to cover your shoulder instead. “It’s cold,” he says in surprise. “You okay?” 

“I’m fine, I got my jacket. It’s a short walk, come on.”

His arm stops acting as protection and starts to use you for support. “I didn’t mean to drink so much.” 

“Drowning your sorrows is always a terrible idea because it tends to work,” you lament, less scared of the dark with him at your hip, though what protection he might offer is negated by the alcohol. 

“She kind of looked like you.” 

You squeeze your eyes together quickly. “Oh.” 

“I didn’t know she was going to. But she didn’t– she didn’t– it’s hard to talk. She didn’t listen like you do,” he says, lightly slurring, “she just stared at me like everyone used to in high school. Like she could tell there’s something wrong with me.” 

“Spencer, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I know,” he says. 

“Do you?” 

“Yes.” He frowns. “No, I don’t know. I don’t feel like there’s something wrong with me,” —his voice turns to a nearly indistinguishable mumble— “but everyone else always does.” 

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.” 

“Is that why you make all your jokes?” 

“What jokes, babe?” 

“Like that! Like babe. It’s funny ‘cos you’d never date me.” 

You’d slow if he weren’t already walking at a snail's pace. “That’s not true. Let’s talk about it in the morning, okay?” 

“I won’t remember to ask you in the morning.” 

“Spencer, you remember everything.” 

He drags his feet. “I wish I wasn’t so weird,” he whines. It’s playful at the forefront but desperate otherwise, and it gives you pause. “I wish I was normal, and you could like me normal.” 

You look down at your hands, panicking, a flash of Is this a good idea? like an alarm in your head as you turn on the sidewalk to face him. He’s looking at you like he’s begging you to disagree with him. 

You’re happy to. 

“Spencer, I like you like this,” you insist loudly. His eyes and all his sweet lashes track the movement of your hand as you touch your chest, and your neck. “You’re not normal, I’m not normal. Do you know how many times I’ve been rejected? Just for being me? I’m too bossy, too outspoken, too– too high maintenance. I've had friends with good intentions tell me I need to lower my standards, need to relax, because otherwise I’m going to end up alone for the rest of my life. I feel alone all the time.”

“But you’re perfect,” he says, puzzled. 

“To you. And you’re perfect to me.” Your hand crawls to the base of your throat. “So don’t say you’re weird like it’s ugly, honey. And don’t think I don’t like you, ‘cos I do. You think I’d come and get anybody else in the middle of the night dressed like this?” you ask him, gesturing to your ratty pyjamas and your dingy converse. 

“You look so cute,” he says mournfully. 

You roll your eyes. He’s too wasted for this conversation. “Come on, sweetheart. You can think about this too much in the morning. Let’s just get home in one piece.” Physically and emotionally. 

“Can I come home with you?” he asks. 

That had always been the plan. “Ask me nicely and I’ll consider it on the way.” 

— — 

Spencer shuts his eyes, hands itching to clap over his ears as you scratch the head of a spatula across your frying pan. “Is three eggs too many? People usually have two but that’s never enough for me.” 

“I think…” Oh my god the metal screeching is so loud. “You should have as many as you want. You know your body. There’s this study on intuitive eating…” I'm too hungover for this. “Three eggs is better than two.” 

“So you want three?” 

He cannot eat right now. “Yes. Please.” 

Spencer’s half sick with dehydration and half grief. He stayed at your house last night and he was too drunk to be nosy. He slept in your bed. He slept in your bed. He woke up to you at your vanity doing your hair, the nutty smell of hair oil mixed with the heat of the hair tool on high and realised with a start that he’d missed something he thought about all the time. 

You’d tipped your head back to smile at him. “There’s my boy. Sweet dreams?” 

He didn’t dream, but if he had, it would’ve been another agonising wish where you were his girlfriend, or his wife, or just there looking at him with love. He wakes up feeling sick because it isn’t true. And now you’re making him breakfast, humming a tune under your breath, sourdough sizzling under the grill and a shoddily blended avocado sitting in the bowl in front of him. 

You asked him for one thing. He picks up the fork and starts to mash the avocado again. He can’t fight the foreignness of sitting in your kitchen, a gap in his memory. 

He knows he told you about his date, how she looked like you, how she didn’t seem to like him much, but he’s struggling to collect the finer details. Why had you picked him up? He must’ve called you, but you could’ve said no. He remembers thinking you looked beautiful, but he always thinks that. 

The avocado is making him feel sick. 

“Here,” you say, sliding a plate of toast in front of him. “Do you want butter?” 

“I think I'm gonna throw up.” 

“You’re okay.”

“I can’t believe how I acted,” he says, pressing his palms to the hollows of his eyes. 

You turn off the hob. Fat bubbles and pops until it’s cooled. The clock on the wall by the refrigerator ticks incessantly. His slept-in shirt feels too tight despite the undone button. 

“Hey…” You round the island but don’t touch him, your voice gentle. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

He drags his hands down his face. “I can barely remember what I said.” 

“You were really nice to me… told me I looked pretty without my makeup, n’ that I was perfect. You were really nice.” 

Your tone is off. No flirtatiousness, no endless confidence, you sound wistful, like you’re glad he said it. You take the bowl of avocado he’s made a mess with and put it aside with the toast, resting your arm on the counter, and leaning into his space. “Spencer, last night? You didn’t do anything to be embarrassed of. You were nice, and kind. You tried to open the car door for me and you almost lost your eye, but you were fine. You don’t have anything to be worried about, really.”

“But it’s you.” 

“Gonna touch your hair,” you say, giving him enough time to move away as you reach out and rake back his fringe. His heart leaps into his mouth. “You said something last night like that, you know? Do you remember that? You said if you were normal.” You grace the skin beside his eye with the tip of your thumb, your perfume floating his way as you move. “And I said–”

“I’m not normal,” he says, remembering now. 

You’re not normal, I’m not normal, you’d said.

But you’re perfect, he’d said. 

To you. And you’re perfect to me.

“Right. We’re not normal, Spencer Reid, so forget that girl. She didn’t deserve you anyways,” you say. 

You draw a short, silken line down his cheek with the side of your pinky. To be touched so lightly has his stomach in knots —he’s not shocked by the swiftness with which your affection can make a bad situation good again. 

You turn away. “Now we should eat before everything goes cold.” 

He watches your shoulders move, and he remembers one last detail. So don’t say you’re weird like it’s ugly, honey. And don’t think I don’t like you, ‘cos I do. 

The way you’d said it… you couldn’t really mean…

“How’s your appetite? Still feeling sick?” you ask. 

Spencer smiles to himself, the ghost of your touch glowing warm on his cheek. “I’m feeling a lot better, actually.” 

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

"Um, a lot. He's her attending." Dennis was always the responsible one of your group. Party pooper.

You just leaned over your glass, straw in your mouth as your eyes moved between the two of them as they discussed your crush on one Jack Abbot.

Trinity waved Dennis' concerns away and turned to you. "Listen to me. You're hot. Abbot is...objectively attractive." You snorted. "He flirts with you constantly, you're an R4 and your schedules match up. What's the problem?"

Dennis dropped his head into his hands. "Why do I bother?"

It only took two more drinks for Trinity to convince you to lay your cards on the table.

"I'm gonna do it," you said with a nod pulling out your phone.

"Fuck yeah," Trinity cheered.

"You absolutely should not do that." Dennis tried to take your phone from your hands but you twisted away while Trinity all but tackled him.

You: just think u should no ur hot as hell

You: also why i moved to nights

Thank god for autocorrect or that would have been a lot worse. A reply came through almost immediately.

Jack: i think you should switch to water. Do you have a ride?

Your lip stuck out in a pout. "That's mean."

Dennis finally got your phone from you and read the text. "It's not mean. He wants to make sure you're safe."

"See I told you he likes you," Trinity said.

Dennis rolled his eyes and typed back that he was ordering an uber to get everyone home.

By the time you got home and crawled into your bed, you'd forgotten all about the text.

It was early afternoon when you were awoken by someone knocking on your front door. You groaned and pulled the blankets over your head. Then your phone rang. Your hand felt along the nightstand until you found it. "Yeah?"

"Open the door, sweetheart," was Jack's response.

You sat bolt upright then groaned at the pain that shot through your head. "You're here. Why are you here?"

"Door."

You ran a hand down your face. "Give me five to go to the bathroom at least."

He chuckled. "I'll give you ten" and he hung up.

You managed to get yourself cleaned up to the point you wouldn't completely embarrass yourself, washing your face, doing something with your hair and changing into fresh lounge clothes.

You finally opened the front door with a frown, not understanding why this man would be on your doorstep.

He held up a bag filled with pedialyte amongst other things. "Thought you might have a bit of a hangover."

"You're a lifesaver," you said, reaching for the bag only for him to pull it back.

To be fair, you didn’t really enjoy the pager yourself, especially when you had a mountain of notes to complete and not enough time in the day. But when it went off around 7, around shift change downstairs, the sound elicited something strange within you. Something exciting. 

You fixed your hair in a passing window as you made your way to the elevators, praying that the silent halls meant every office was empty. The last thing you needed was your coworkers becoming more suspicious; they had begun to question your eagerness to take afternoon psych consults and asked one too many times about your obsessive use of lip gloss. 

The ride down to the pitt had you bouncing on your toes, the uncomfortable shoes the hospital required you to wear making your heels throb. Damn the Joint Commission and its penchant for business casual. But, at the same time, the pretty blouse you had chosen this morning was perfect for your not-so-impromptu consult. 

Pros and cons, then. 

The ED was buzzing with handover reports, hallway beds, and nurses zipping across rooms, as it always was. You took in a deep breath and entered the madness, not yet seeing the target of your visit, but comfortable enough to linger by the nurse’s hub. You were down there often. People knew your face. 

That fact was evident in the subtle brow raise Princess sent you when you leaned against the counter, her face in a humorous grimace as she typed away on a charting computer. “I wasn’t aware we had a psych case.” 

“Hi, Princess,” you drawled out, tapping your fingers on a near-empty tissue box. “Nice to see you, too.” 

She threw you a look. “I see you almost every day. You don’t get pleasantries anymore.” 

“What do I get then?” you teased. 

She pretended to think, tapping quickly to lock her computer and whisking a discharge summary from the printer. You looked at her expectantly, but a smirk had taken over her face, and she spun on her heel after a glance over your shoulder. 

“I swear you’re getting faster.” 

You felt the breath punch from your lungs at the sound of Jack Abbot’s voice, quickly reigning in your smile as you turned and leaned your back against the nurse’s station. He was there in all his glory, arms stretching long beneath his scrubs and crossed over his chest, hair just a touch out of place. His mouth was already quirked into a half-smile, but when you met his eye, you were almost sure it grew just a little bit wider. 

You didn’t give him the satisfaction of a smile. Not yet. “Well, I have to be fast. I was supposed to go home an hour ago, but I keep getting paged right when I’m finally about to leave. It’s the strangest thing.” 

“That right?” he posed, his eyes drifting down your body and back up. It really was a pretty blouse. 

“You should know,” you accused. “You’re the one who always seems to have a psych consult as soon as you walk in the door. Have you even finished your handoff from Robby?” 

“I don’t think they pay you to ask all these questions, sweetheart.” 

“I get paid to ask questions all day. That’s, like, the whole job.” 

Jack huffed out a laugh, shaking his head in place of a response. He stepped forward until you could smell the soap lingering on his skin and reached over your shoulder, his nose edging just a little bit closer to your temple. You tried to ignore it, but he was chipping away at making you smile. Proximity was always an easy one. He was going for the low blows, then. 

“Dropped this,” he said as he pulled back, waving your badge between you. “Still haven’t fixed the reel?” 

You stared at the shining plastic between his fingers, over-correcting and grasping his full hand in yours as you took it back. “I don’t want to fix it. The entire thing is broken, and I don’t want to get a new one. I like this one.” 

Jack tugged it loose from your grip and examined the badge holder. He let the rhinestones shimmer against the hospital lighting and hadn’t dropped his smile as he threw you a disbelieving look. “Mental health is your jam?” 

You snatched it back. “Yes! It’s cute. I’ve had it since med school.” 

“There’s a little jam jar on it. And glitter.” 

“Exactly. It completes all of my outfits.” 

Jack was shaking his head again, still close enough for you to feel the heat of his body. He did that often—got close enough to leave you flustered and flirted relentlessly until he decided it was enough. You never wanted it to be enough, but you were still at work. Technically. 

“Are you going to tell me what you called me down here for, or was the page just to make fun of me?” you asked, chin turned up to look at the attending. 

“Never making fun of you,” Jack rumbled from deep in his chest. He took a step back, watching the way your gaze finally lowered with the distance. “Got an early 20s male with new onset psychosis. Family history of bipolar disorder. Mom’s on meds for it. He’s been pretty disoriented and doesn’t trust any of the doctors.” 

You eyed him skeptically. “Your shift doesn’t start for another 30 minutes, Dr. Abbot. How do you already know all of that?” 

“He asks about the psych cases first,” a voice spoke up from behind you. You glanced over your shoulder to find Robby setting up a home on the charting computer, glasses low on his nose. He gave you a fleeting smile. “Real interested in psych cases, that guy.” 

You let your head fall back in a laugh, missing the way Jack tracked the sound. “What a coincidence, then, that I keep having to stay late.” You patted Jack’s chest on the way to the observation room. “I think I win this one, Dr. Abbot.” 

He craned his neck to the side and quickly trailed after you. Sometimes, your meetings in the ED were shorter, more fleeting. He would page you down, and you would catch a glimpse of him just long enough for him to report to you, stare at every inch of your face, and then get whisked away by a resident or a patient or a trauma. The consults were never urgent enough for you to really be needed—you had an on-call attending for a reason—but you figured the 10 seconds he took to stare at you and smile meant something, so you didn’t mind the extra work. 

Other times, like today, you had more leeway to enjoy each other. To play the game. Sometimes he won, and sometimes you won. It boiled down to a game of flirting and never quite saying the words out loud, but he liked it that way, and you weren’t going to push. You were just going to win. 

“Win?” Jack parroted. “What are you winning?” 

“Oh, you know,” you hummed, logging into the computer outside the observation room and skimming the patient’s chart. “The knowledge that I’ve bested you today.” 

Jack crossed his arms again. You were sure there were several things he needed to be doing at the start of his shift that did not involve talking to you, but there he was, anyway. “You haven’t bested me.” 

“Haven’t I?” 

“No,” he scoffed. “You were blushy and giggly over there. I saw it.” 

You raised your brows over the computer. “So you admit that’s your goal? That this psych case could have waited?” 

A smirk accompanied Jack’s next scoff. He looked at you for another long moment, the same way he did when he didn’t have the time, when he was busy and overworked and still called you down in the hopes you hadn’t left yet. You looked back at the chart. Jack spoke. 

“You don’t know what you’re doing, sweetheart.” 

Another flash of your eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Means I’m old. Got a lot that comes with me. You don’t want all of that.” 

“I think I’m quite aware of the things I want—” 

“I’m serious.” 

His low tone had you locking the computer, finally taking him in the way he did to you. His brows were low over his eyes, and while he was still staring at you intently, something had shifted. Your arms fell to your sides. 

“Jack—”

“I don’t—” he began, hands on his hips as he stared up at the ceiling for a beat. “—I don’t think this is like that for me anymore, the winning and losing. But I don’t think that’s fair to you either, really. Maybe—I don’t know, maybe I’m not making sense.” 

Months of build-up had led to this. Months of dancing around each other. Both your departments knew something was going on, but neither of you had had it in you to label it. To speak it out loud. The current conversation was the closest you’d gotten. 

Stepping around the rolling table, you stared back up at Jack, resolute. “After this consult, I’m going to walk to my car. Outside of the hospital. I think you should ask me on a date.” 

“What—” 

“Don’t ask me in here. We’re always in here. Do you know which car is mine?” 

Jack furrowed his brows. “Yeah.” 

“Right,” you nodded. “So, I’ll wait there then.” 

A long pause. Jack didn’t look away. Not until you were walking into the observation room and leaving him alone in the hall. 

~~

You were distracted. You shouldn’t be, but you were. You asked all the questions, assessed what needed to be assessed, and reassured the patient several times that you were not part of the group out to get him. Working with psychosis took a lot of patience, a lot of carefully placed words when interventions were new. You knew this, and still, you were distracted. 

You were not supposed to be distracted. 

Things with Jack were never difficult. He called you, he flirted, he watched you until you sent a wave over your shoulder and went home for the night. You liked the way he made you feel. You liked how he looked at you. 

Today, he made things… difficult. Or maybe you made them difficult by framing this as a game. It had never been a game to you, but the undertones of playfulness acted as a shield, and both of you had decided to throw the shields to the ground. 

I’m old. Got a lot that comes with me.

You knew he was older. You knew he had hang-ups. God, you were working in the mental health field; did he forget that? You tapped your fingers against the keyboard and considered that you had just made a fool of yourself. Asking him to ask you on a date—who does that? Idiots. Idiots do that. 

With your years of training and several more years of spouting knowledge, you recognised the spiral immediately. You were spiralling. You were not in the setting to have a spiral. You shook your head at yourself and cataloged every CBT skill in the book to set your thoughts straight. 

This was fine. 

What was the worst thing that could happen, and then how much would that actually suck? How could you recoup? 

“Mr. Nelson, I’m going to step out now, okay? Remember, there are going to be a few nurses in and out of this room just to check on your physical health, but in the morning, I’m going to come by and move you to another room upstairs,” you calmly explained, tucking your hands behind your back. 

Mr. Nelson’s eyes were blown wide as he nodded back. “Who’s upstairs?” 

“A few people like me who can help. I know this is all very stressful and confusing, but this is the right place for you. You are safe here, and you’ll be safe there.”

“Safe from them?” 

You nodded softly. “A safe place for us to help you.” 

Mr. Nelson nodded back, jerkily, and you offered him a gentle smile before heading out. The walls outside the observation room were much brighter, busier, and distracting. You let out a long breath and steeled your shoulders back, still determined despite every thought making you second-guess. 

If he didn’t show up—if he didn’t ask—that would be okay. You worked upstairs, anyway. He would probably stop paging you so much, and the distance would be good. It would set boundaries, and even though you didn’t want those boundaries, they would make sense. 

You were good at this. Reframe, set boundaries, redirect. Box breaths, progressive-muscle relaxation, mindfulness. Right. You were good at this. 

Your fingers curled into your palms as you paused outside of the room, unwilling to face the entirety of the pitt just yet. He could catch you before you walked out, convince you that this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe you’d never know if you didn’t try. 

Tension began to seep from your shoulders as you replayed that last thought. You wouldn’t know unless you tried. You wouldn’t know anything past Jack’s lingering touches, or his playful quips, or the way his smile looked, but only under hospital lighting. You liked the way things were now, but there were so many other possibilities, so much more that could be waiting just past the window of tolerance. 

That window would be passed as soon as you got to your car and waited. 

Only, you weren’t moving towards your car anymore. You had told your body to move, to take a step, but suddenly, pain erupted along your scalp, striking and hot, and you were yanked back instead of moving forward. Tears spring to your eyes instantly, blurring your view of the man who shoved you against the wall. 

“You are a liar,” he seethed, face close to yours. “You’re with them. It says it on here.” 

Your badge was shoved into your face then, the sparkles flashing against the light and making you blink. It was how he got out of the observation room. It must have fallen off in the doorway. 

“Mr. Nelson,” you choked out, your arms in an abrasive hold, your mind going into overdrive because you were pretty sure you were trained for this. You could remember a training on non-violent crisis intervention. “Let me speak to you about this. Please, just take your hands off of me, and we can talk.” 

Your head was throbbing, the feeling becoming duller as his fingers created divots in your biceps instead. No one was looking yet. Too many people were in patient rooms receiving reports for shift change. 

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he spat out. “You didn’t mean what you said. You don’t want to help me. You want to get inside, like they do.” 

Low and slow. Don’t be combative. Don’t try to explain yourself. “I know you’re very upset about feeling watched, and I don’t want to make that worse, Mr. Nelson. From what you’ve told me, it sounds—” 

“No!” he screamed. You could hear shoes squeaking against the sanitized floor then. But it was too late. He was already upset, and you were alone. “You don’t know anything!” 

“Hey!” It was Robby who called out first, a rushed sort of sound that startled your patient. Mr. Nelson’s eyes flashed, and he slammed your head against the wall once, and then twice, before he was ripped away from you. The room was buzzing, and something tasted bitter in the back of your mouth. 

“Don’t—don’t hurt him,” you stumbled out, fingers coming up to rest against your temple. The air felt heavy. “A-ativan. Push Ativan and soft restraints.” 

You weren’t sure if your orders were actually coming out of your mouth in clear sentences or if they jumbled together to match the state of your brain. Adrenaline mixed with sharp, intruding pain, and you heard a commotion that you couldn’t quite focus on. Your eyes were still blurred with tears, and your head felt both light and too heavy at the same time. That probably wasn’t good. You had the fleeting thought that you should go to your car before you left Jack waiting too long. 

“What the hell?” a familiar voice echoed. Jack’s voice. Jack was here. “Hey. Hey, what happened?” 

Your face was taken into sturdy hands, and you blinked to orient yourself to the new feeling. Jack had touched your face before—moved a stray hair away, tapped your chin, brushed an eyelash from your cheek that wasn’t actually there. But he was holding you, then, scanning your face with a precision he didn’t usually harbor when he looked at you. 

“Jack?” you mumbled out. 

“Yeah. Yeah, sweetheart, it’s me. What—what happened? You alright?” 

“Patient was confused. Scared. He didn’t mean to. He needs restraints, or he might—maybe hurt himself.” 

Jack’s face screwed up into displeasure, and he tilted your head back slightly to take you in. “You. Are you alright? Patient’s got a team of doctors in there right now, but you don’t. You were the one attacked.” 

“‘Wasn’t attacked,” you slurred back. “He was—” 

“Scared. Got that part. Think you can walk to a bed for me? Let me check you out?”

You tried to shake your head, but Jack had you firm in his grip. “‘M just shaken up. I’m alright.” 

“You’re slurring your words. I’d like to be sure, okay? Can you do that for me?”  

The sigh you let out was half-hearted and tired and still a bit wobbly from the adrenaline, but you couldn’t say no to Jack. Not when he was looking at you with so much concern and holding you the way he was. When you finally gave him some semblance of a nod, Jack pulled his hands away to guide you by your elbow. He stopped halfway. You both stopped, staring down at the shining red coating on his fingers. 

“Is that mine?” you shakily asked. It seemed like a lot of blood. The dripping sensation on your neck made you think it was a lot. 

Something flashed across Jack’s face, but he quickly stashed that reaction away and replaced it with calm. With measured responses. He was a doctor, and you were bleeding. You were sure that was normal for him. A common occurrence. 

“It is, but, hey—” he moved again at the sound you let out, hands on your waist as your knees began to shake. “—I’m gonna fix it, alright? Easy fix. Just need to take a look and—someone get me a chair! I need a stat CT!” 

 “I think I’m going to throw up.” The words tumbled from your lips before you had even thought them. “I’m—Jack, I’m going to throw up.” 

You clutched at his arms as you felt the overwhelming wave of nausea push past the pain and confusion. There was a bag shoved in front of you, several hands entering your line of sight and alerting you to the fact that it actually hadn’t just been Jack assessing you. Someone pressed you into a seat, and you felt deft fingers bringing your hair back as the nausea won out. 

“That’s okay. Breathe through your nose,” Jack hushed, his thumb rubbing against your temple. “I’ll fix it.” 

You groaned when the lurch of your stomach finally subsided, grimacing as someone—you thought maybe Jesse—whisked the bag away and replaced it with a new one. You scrunched your eyes open to the abrasive lights of the ED and found Jack still kneeling before you, his expression pinched, assessing. His jaw twitched in small bursts. 

“I’m sorry,” you groaned out, feeling equal parts mortified and disoriented. “That was gross.” 

“Hey,” Jack hushed again, tilting his head up to show his seriousness. “No apologizing. We’re gonna move you now. Probably gonna get dizzy.” 

He gave you one last squeeze of your shoulder that caused you to hiss in pain, eliciting another flinch from the attending’s face. He shook his head slightly and rose with a grunt, but he didn’t pause. His leg was probably bothering him after the position he held, but he didn’t pause. 

You did get dizzy when you moved, and you got more confused when light was shone into your eyes, and then you got overly sleepy when something was pushed into an IV, and Jack was urging someone, again, about CT. The buzz around the room had started to quiet after his last press, and you blinked against the spinning in your head. Your legs hung off the side of the bed, unwilling to lie down and look ridiculous even with several nurses encouraging you to do so, and Jack was soon between them, kneeling again. 

“Can you tell me where you are?” he quietly asked. 

You felt yourself smile weakly despite the situation. “That’s the third time you’ve asked me that.” 

Jack placed a hand on your knee. “Just answer.” 

“Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.” 

“And the year?” 

“Jack—” 

“Just one more time. You're next up for CT.” 

You sighed and relayed the year, and then your full name, and then the president. Jack’s fingers were creating unintentional patterns against your knee, and you wanted to find a way to make him look a little less serious. To make him get off his knee, because even though he tried to hide it, you could tell it hurt. 

“So, is my brain going to explode?” 

That gave you a smile. But his brows were still furrowed, and he didn’t get up. “Probably not. As long as your CT comes back clean, we’re not looking at anything life-threatening. You’ll have a pretty nasty concussion, though. Head wounds bleed a lot. It looked scarier than it was. We’ll stitch it up.” 

“So I’m fine,” you concluded, blinking quickly as the room swayed. 

Jack was up on his feet before you could settle. He met your eyes, serious again, and steadied you by your shoulder. “Nasty concussion. Not fine.” 

“But not life-threatening.” 

“I don’t know if I can separate the two. Not with you.” 

The admission gave you pause. You glanced down at your hands on the bed and clutched the starched blanket until your knuckles changed colors. You could hear Jack’s breathing, and it grounded you amidst the painkillers and the airy feeling in your head. 

“Can I look at your arms?” Jack asked, low enough to blend in with the hum of the central heating. 

“What?” 

“You flinched when I grabbed you earlier. Can I look at them?” 

“I think they’re just bruised.” 

“C’mon,” Jack whispered, playfulness seeping back into his tone. “Give an old guy a break. You scared the shit out of me.” His fingers flexed on your shoulders. You saw red still staining the crevices. “Let me just make sure.” 

You relented. You always relented when it came to Jack. With permission, he brushed your shaky hands to the side and began to unbutton your blouse, careful in his movements, slow and purposeful and trying not to scare you. But he never scared you. You weren’t scared. 

“I really liked that top,” you sighed, staring longingly at it as Jack placed the stained satin to the side. 

“It was pretty,” Jack hummed. He leaned down and narrowed his eyes at the already-formed bruises on your arms. His eyes skimmed over the blood that had seeped to the chest of your undershirt and pressed his lips together. 

“I knew you worked today. Maybe I chose to wear it because I knew that.” 

“Maybe if I hadn’t been working, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.” 

That made you scoff out a laugh, pressure shooting through your head. You winced and went to tap your fingers to your forehead, but Jack’s hands were already there. He was always there. 

“Take it easy, okay? Especially before we can get a good look inside.” 

“Well, maybe if you didn’t say such ridiculous things, I wouldn’t have to risk my brain and laugh.” 

“Wasn’t ridiculous,” Jack murmured, lifting your eyelid again to look at your pupils. He’d done that several times. Nothing had changed. 

“It was. You had nothing to do with what happened. It’s an occupational hazard.” 

“You were supposed to be home already. You stayed.” 

“Jack, enough,” you finalized, pushing his hand away. He compensated by resting against the bed, his hands on either side of your thighs, his weight over you. “I wanted to stay. I’m a big girl who can make her own decisions, and just like I chose this specialty, I chose to stay. So enough with this crap about me not knowing what I’m doing and you not being right. I’m glad I stayed. I’m glad you were here.” 

The air became static, and Jack hung his head between you. You weren’t sure if it was the pain medication lowering your inhibition or the seemingly near-death experience that made you so brazen, but you figured the crack had already been there. It had always been there. There was no going back after today, and you were good at this. You were good at boundaries and reframing and— 

“You scared the shit out of me.” 

Your shoulders fell. “Jack, I know. But—” 

“No. You scared me. Badly. You were out for a couple of minutes. Do you remember that?” When you didn’t respond, he looked up. “Went limp before we got you into a chair. And I know concussions. I’ve treated hundreds. But your blood was on my hands and you were unconscious and I kept thinking about how much of a damn idiot I’ve been.” 

You tilted your head to take him in, and he looked down at the bruises on your arms. 

“Robby’s been on my ass about asking you out. I kept telling him it wasn’t the right time. That it wouldn’t be right for you. And then you show up today and call me out, and I panicked. I was in the breakroom drinking a damn lavender tea to calm down because it’s supposed to be a coping skill or whatever it is my therapist was trying to push.” 

“Lavender can be very soothing—” 

“Not done,” Jack chastised, standing fully. He took your face back into his hands. Your lashes fluttered, but not from the pain or the dizziness or the meds. “This shouldn’t have happened because I should’ve gotten over myself a long time ago and asked you. Shouldn’t have taken this for me to get my act together.” 

“This wasn’t your fault, Jack,” you reminded him. 

He let his hand drop from your hair, and for the first time all night, got a proper look at your side profile.

You finally lifted your head off your hand and turned to him. "No, I am. I promise." You rubbed your eye softly.

Jack shot you a look, that look, the one that said he didn't believe you but wasn't going to argue.

He turned back to Robby, to whatever conversation they'd been having. But he stayed close. And as he did, his hands found the scarf you'd been wearing all night. He started to work it loose, realizing exactly how overheated you must have been.

You let him.

Because it's Jack. And Jack takes care of you. Always has. Always will.

Even Robby didn't budge, kept talking like nothing was happening, because honestly? This was just how Jack was with you. How he'd always been and Robby had stopped mentioning it months ago.

At some point, Jack finished with the scarf and spoke without looking at you. "You should stop wearing that so much." He folded it carefully. "It's May."

You were slumped against the back of your seat now, warm and loose and not really tracking much. "It's really pretty, though." You sounded like a child. But that was a given. You were drunk off your ass.

"Yeah. It is." Jack glanced at you and shook his head fondly.

While you slouched and let the bar noise wash over you, he reached for your bag and opened it. He carefully tucked the folded scarf inside, then set your purse back down within your reach.

Usually you'd hang out with Trinity at the bar, but she'd gone God knows where with Victoria at some point, leaving you stranded at the table with Jack and Robby and their never ending medical talk. Not that you minded, necessarily. Jack was here.

Plus you were tired. You hadn't slept well, hadn't slept well in days, honestly, though you'd never admit it. So you had no idea why you'd even come in the first place. Maybe it was because this was the first day off you'd had in ages. And sitting at home alone, watching baking competitions while you ate chocolate straight from the wrapper, had sounded kind of sad. So you'd come out.

Maybe it was also your chance to see Jack in outside clothes. Not that you didn't enjoy seeing him in his scrubs, you did, obviously, you weren't blind, but there was something about him in regular clothes that hit different. The way his jeans fit. The shirt he’d worn tonight was dark grey, the sleeves tight against his biceps.

Too bad you were too drunk to really appreciate it tonight.

The bar seemed louder now. You weren't sure if that was your drunkenness perceiving it that way or if the crowd had actually picked up. Either way, the noise was starting to press against your skull in a way that wasn't entirely pleasant.

You noticed a little drip of beer left in your glass, just a swallow, really, and you picked it up and drank it, plopping the glass back down satisfied that the little yellow was fully gone now.

Your not quite existent thoughts were interrupted by Jack’s hand brushing up and down your back. "How are you feeling?" He leaned in closer, mouth near your ear.

Ah. The bar had gotten louder. You weren't imagining it.

You turned your head, slightly caught off guard by how close he was, close enough to count his eyelashes, but you didn't pull back.

"Okay." You mumbled it, then turned your head away again, facing forward. Jack stared at you anyway. You could feel it.

"Jack."

"Hm?"

"Stop staring. I'm fine."

He chuckled, a sound you felt more than heard. "You're not fine."

His hand stopped moving, resting flat against the middle of your back. "Come on. I'm taking you home." His thumb started moving again, just brushing back and forth.

You sighed loudly, turning your head back to him. "Will you carry me home?" You were joking. Obviously. Being ridiculous. Drunk and warm and not wanting to move.

"Sure." Jack said it like it was nothing. Like carrying you home was the most natural thing in the world. He was already scooting off his seat.

"Jack!" You smiled despite yourself, rubbing your eyes tiredly again.

He smiled back, softly. And you knew, even drunk, even with your head spinning slightly, that he would have carried you either way. Joking or not.

That was just Jack.

The bar swayed slightly as you scooted out of the booth. Or maybe that was just you. Hard to tell at this point.

Jack was already standing, waiting at the edge of the seat with his hands.

You stared at his hands. Not on purpose.

Okay, maybe a little on purpose. But in your defense, they were right there, in front of you, and you were drunk enough that staring felt justified. His fingers, the way his knuckles looked, the silver band on his ring finger.

You stared anyway. Your drunk brain had apparently decided this was fine. Normal and acceptable behavior.

Luckily for you, Jack was good at reading the room. Or, more accurately, good at pretending he hadn't noticed whatever embarrassing thing you were currently doing. He tilted his head slightly, trying to catch your eyes. "Come on, sweetheart."

You finally glanced up, shaking whatever expression was on your face into something less obvious, and took his hands. He pulled you gently off the seat, and then the world decided to keep moving even though you'd stopped.

You stood there for a moment. Then another moment. Then a moment too long. Your eyes squeezed shut as you gripped his hands, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

Jack didn't move, instead he stood there, watching you with something soft in his expression that you couldn't see because your eyes were still closed.

After a beat too long, he got worried. "Hey." His voice was quiet. "Don't sleep on me." He let go of one of your hands and touched your cheek. Barely.

Your eyes opened immediately. "'M not asleep." The words came out mushier than you intended. "Just dizzy. Really dizzy." You blinked at him, trying to focus. "Please don't let go."

"I won't." He dropped his hand from your cheek but kept the other one firmly wrapped around yours. "You okay with me just holding your hand, or do you need more support?"

"Waist." You didn't even hesitate. Didn't even have it in you to be embarrassed about how quickly that came out.

Jack smiled. "Okay."

He didn't say anything about how that was exactly what he'd been hoping for. Didn't let on that his heart did something dumb when you said it. Just gently grabbed your arm, draped it over his shoulder, and slid his own arm around your waist. "You good?" He turned his head to look at you, close enough that you could see how hazel his eyes were.

"Good." You smiled up at him.

The walk to his car was long. Way too long, honestly. Jack had parked outside and every step felt like three. You stumbled twice. He just tightened his arm around your waist and kept going.

At some point you realized you hadn't said goodbye to Trinity or Victoria. You mumbled something about it, half panicked and Jack just shook his head. "It's okay. Robby will let them know."

Eventually, finally, you reached his car. And then he had to let go of you to get the door open. You groaned loudly. The kind of groan that belonged in a teenager having a tantrum, except you were a grown adult who was simply too drunk and too tired to care about dignity.

Jack started chuckling.

"You find all of this too funny." You leaned heavily against his car, glaring at him with zero actual heat. "I don't like it." He was still chuckling as he opened the door. Soft chuckles that made him shake his head slightly. "Stop making fun of me." You tried to sound stern. It came out sleepy.

"I'm not." He was smiling. "I promise." His hand found your waist again and you felt yourself relax into the touch before you could stop it. "Watch your head."

He guided you down into the seat carefully, one hand on your waist, the other hovering near the top of the door frame like he'd catch you if you forgot to duck. Which, honestly? You might have. The night was fuzzy.

You plopped down into the seat, your head lulling against the headrest like it was too heavy to hold up on its own. The leather was cool against your warm cheek. Nice. You might just stay here forever.

"There you go." He said it quietly.

Jack pushed the door wider, so he could bend down to your level. The interior light spilled over both of you as he leaned in, reaching across you for the seatbelt.

"You smell nice," you mumbled.

He clicked the belt into place. "I smell like a bar."

"You smell nice." You said it again, correcting him.

Jack paused, looking at you properly now. The kind of look that missed nothing. He realized then that you were much drunker than he'd thought.

He smiled anyway, shook his head slightly. He reached up and carefully tucked your hair behind your ear like it was muscle memory now, so you could see him better.

Not that you were looking. Your eyes were closed again.

But then his fingers brushed your skin, and your eyes fluttered open, startled by the closeness. He didn't mention your staring, didn't comment on how your breath caught slightly. Just held your gaze for a moment, before speaking quietly.

"You want to go to your place or mine?"

Your eyes went wide. Wide enough that if you'd been sober, you'd have been mortified. "Is your place an option?" The excitement in your voice was impossible to miss.

Jack's eyebrows lifted slightly and he pulled back a fraction. His hand rested on the side of the door, steadying himself.

"Yeah." His voice was measured. "I'm concerned about you. You've had way too much alcohol. I'd rather not have you out of my sight."

You tilted your head, processing this. "I can take care of myself."

His arm traveled up to the top of the door frame now, leaning in slightly as he looked down at you. The position made him seem bigger somehow. "I know you can." He reached down, catching your hand just as you were about to rub your eyes again. His fingers wrapped around yours gently, stopping you. "But I'd still like to help."

You stared at him. Then your eyes dropped to his hand holding yours. "Okay." It came out small. Nothing like your usual self.

Jack smiled. Then he let go and straightened up, pulling the door closed.

You watched him through the window as he walked around the front of the car, the night dark behind him. He opened his door, slid into the driver's seat, and glanced over at you. "Doing okay?"

"Yeah."

He nodded back, satisfied with that, and started the engine.

The ride was quiet. Your eyes were closed, just letting the movement of the car rock you gently while the warmth from the seat seeped into your tired body.

"I can't wait to see your home." The words came out before you fully realized you'd spoken them.

Jack glanced at you briefly, then back at the road. A red light was coming up, and he slowed the car to a stop. "Why's that?"

You tilted your head against the seat, turning to look at him properly. The streetlight above cast warm orange light through the windshield, catching the lines of his face.

"'Cause I just wanna know more about you." The words hung in the air between you, and you watched the slight shift in his eyes, the way he held your gaze a moment longer than necessary.

Then he nodded. "Guess you will in a couple of minutes."

You smiled. "Do you have a cat?"

"No, I don't have a cat." He paused, glancing at you again as the light turned green and he started moving. "You think I'm capable of taking care of a cat?"

You raised your eyebrow at him, still smiling. "You're doing a great job with me right now." He'd been taking care of you all night. All the time, really, if you thought about it. Which you tried not to. Usually.

Jack turned his head toward you for a second, but long enough for you to catch the look on his face. He was surprised, maybe, like he hadn't expected you to say that. "You're comparing yourself to a cat?"

You shrugged. "Cats are nice. I'm nice."

He smiled. "Yeah. You are nice."

You felt your face warm, shy in a way you hadn't been a moment ago. "Yeah?" you asked, voice smaller now.

"Very nice." He said it like he meant it.

You made a happy sound. The kind of sound you couldn't have stopped if you tried, because Jack Abbot just called you very nice, and he was your boss, and also your crush, and also currently driving you to his apartment, and none of that made sense but all of it felt right.

"You're nice too," you said softly.

Jack didn't respond. Just kept driving, eyes on the road, but you caught the barely there smile at that.

You stared out the window for a while, watching streetlights blur past. But your brain was still turning, still willing to say things you'd never say sober. "Ellis said you're nicer to me than to everyone else."

There. You'd said it. Put it out in the world.

Jack's hands tightened on the wheel. Ah. He got it now. Drunk you was honest. Vulnerable. The kind of vulnerable that usually hid behind jokes and deflection and pretending not to care.

"Would that be a problem?" he asked, testing the ground.

You shook your head, still looking out the window. "No." you paused. "I just wonder why."

The car slowed. You heard the engine cut out, felt the sudden stillness settle around you. You glanced outside but you didn't really look. Pretended to, though.

"Seriously?" he asked.

You met his eyes. And suddenly you weren't just drunk anymore, you were aware of how the car felt smaller now.

"You're asking too many questions tonight, Jack." You grumbled it, but it came out nervous. The kind of nervous you get when you ask something you weren't sure you wanted the answer to. "Just answer the question."

He chuckled. Almost nervous, if Jack Abbot even got nervous. And you realized, dimly, that you'd never heard him nervous before.

"I'm not answering this one." Your heart dropped, but he kept going. "Because you know the answer already."

He was staring at you and you stared back, frozen, because yes. Yes, you did know. You'd known for a while, probably. Known in the way he looked at you, the way he found you in a crowded room, the way he let you get away with things he'd never let anyone else try. Known in the foot under the table, the scarf folded into your bag, known in the way he was driving you to his place.

But hearing it straight up like this while drunk off your mind was something you hadn't expected.

You looked away first. Your heart was too loud, your face too warm, your brain too fuzzy to process the weight of what just happened.

The silence stretched.

Then, softly Jack spoke again. "Come on. Let's get you inside."

You bit your lip, watching as Jack got out of the car. The door closed with a solid thunk, and then he was walking around the front, headlights catching him briefly before he disappeared into shadow, then reappearing at your door. He opened it softly, the night air rushing in cool against your warm skin, and leaned down to undo your seatbelt.

"Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable." He said quietly. "I'm sorry."

You shook your head immediately. "Not uncomfortable." You reached for his hands without thinking. "Just…" You searched for the word. It floated somewhere in your fuzzy brain, just out of reach. "Shy?" You smiled up at him, hoping that was the right one.

He smiled back. "Shy is good."

You smiled back, warmth spreading through your chest. Then he was helping you out of the car, guiding you up and out until you were standing, leaning against the doorframe for balance. He shut your door and the car beeped twice as it locked.

You stayed leaned against the car for a moment, looking at him. He stood in front of you now, arms crossed loosely over his chest, watching you.

"I know your answer." You said softly, barely meeting his eyes. "You know. Before. I know it."

He uncrossed his arms, let them hang at his sides. "Good."

You smiled at him and he smiled right back. "I hope you say it properly one day."

"I plan to, sweetheart." He promised. "Trust me."

You watched him for a long moment. "Soon?"

The word came out smaller than you meant it to. You reached for his hand, not as dizzy anymore or maybe just not noticing it, and he took it immediately. His thumb brushed across your knuckles.

"Soon." He smiled softly.

You smiled back, heart full to bursting, before finally letting him guide you away from the car. He kept looking at you as you walked, making sure you weren't about to fall. You weren't. You were mostly dizzy on love, if that made any sense at all. It probably didn't. You didn't care.

He helped you up the steps to his building, one hand firm on your waist, the other ready to catch you if you stumbled. You managed just fine, though, even found yourself grinning at the ordinary miracle of walking and of his hand warm through your shirt.

At his door, he fumbled with keys for a second before finding the right one. The lock clicked open.

"You're rich," you mumbled as you stepped inside.

He chuckled behind you. "Well, I'd hope so after twenty years of being a doctor."

You giggled at that and you heard him smile even before you turned to see it. He pushed the door open wider, and you managed to walk in on your own, looking around as the space opened up in front of you.

"Woah." yeah, he was most definitely rich.

Jack locked the door behind you, and then he stepped closer, hands coming up to brush softly at your waist, steadying you as you took it all in.

"You like it?" His breath warm against the back of your neck as he helped you out of your jacket.

"You're not messy!" you said, maybe too loudly. "Everything's organized."

You pulled off your shoes and tried your best to put them away neatly by the door. They ended up slightly crooked but together, which felt like a win.

Jack sighed behind you, worried more than anything. You heard him hang your jacket and bag up.

When you turned around, he was watching you with that look. The one that probably meant that he was calculating your blood alcohol content, probably whether you needed water or food or just to be sat down before you fell over.

"You're worrying," you said.

He raised an eyebrow. "I'm always worrying."

"About me?"

He held your gaze for a long moment. "Yeah. About you."

You smiled and then you stepped further into the apartment, still taking everything in, when Jack glanced down at your feet. His eyes caught on two different socks and he grinned to himself.

"Jack, you have a really nice house," you mumbled, wandering toward a shelf against the wall. It was covered in random things. A dusty trophy from some old sports thing. A couple of framed photos, faces you didn't recognize. Some diplomas. A stack of books with worn spines.

"Thanks, sweetheart." His voice came from somewhere behind you. "But we should really get you to sober up."

You turned your head toward him. He was standing there watching you, arms crossed loosely over his chest, a small smile playing at his mouth.

"Am I sleeping here?" You weren't on your tiptoes anymore, trying to see the top shelf. Instead you turned to him, meeting his eyes.

"Would you like to sleep here?" He asked it gently, giiving you the choice.

"Would you like me to sleep here?"

He didn't hesitate. "Of course I do."

"Okay." You tucked a piece of hair behind your ear, suddenly shy again. "If I'm not a bother, I'd like to stay."

He crossed the distance between you, hand finding your lower back as he led you down a short hallway. "You're never a bother."

He stopped at a door, pushed it open, and flicked on the light. His bathroom was clean, just like the rest of his place. He motioned you inside. "Wait here."

He pulled the toilet seat down and you plopped down gratefully, suddenly aware of how tired you actually were.

Jack disappeared. You heard him in the kitchen, water running, a cabinet opening and closing. You let your head rest against the wall behind you and your eyes drifted to his shower.

There was a small collection of bottles lined up along the ledge. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash. Nothing fancy. Just regular guy stuff. But you found yourself staring anyway, head tilted, squinting slightly as you tried to read the labels. Trying to figure out what kind of shampoo Jack Abbot used.

You were still squinting when he appeared in front of you, holding a glass of water. You startled just slightly.

"Drink up." He held the cup out, waiting. You mumbled a small "thank you" before reaching for it, but your hands were less coordinated than you'd realized, and instead of taking it properly you just covered his hand with yours.

He let you. His other hand came up to brush your hair gently away from your face. You felt his fingers graze your temple, your cheek, tucking strands behind your ear the way he always did.

When you lowered the glass, he caught the corner of your mouth with his thumb, brushing away a stray drop of water.

You sighed, content and suddenly so much less thirsty. "Thank you."

Jack took the glass from your hands and set it on the counter, out of the way. Then he crouched down in front of you. "How you feeling, sweetheart?"

You considered the question. Actually considered it, instead of just saying fine like you always did. "Tired," you admitted. "But good. Really good."

He nodded slowly. "Dizzy? Nauseous?"

You shook your head. "Just tired. And warm. And happy." The last part slipped out before you could stop it. You felt your cheeks warm, but you didn't take it back.

He smiled. "Happy's good."

He reached up to softly remove the hair clip from your hair. You felt the tension release as your hair fell loose around your shoulders.

"I look like a mess. I'm sorry." You mumbled it, eyes dropping to your lap. "I got all dressed up for you, and now I'm drunk sitting on your toilet, and I'm going to regret this so terribly tomorrow."

Something flickered in Jack's eyes. Something that he didn't let himself say out loud, like how at least you'd wake up in his bed, at least he'd be there when you did. He stopped himself. But he couldn't help latching onto the other part.

"You got dressed up for me?"

His voice was soft as he reached up again, finding another clip, then another. Little ones now scattered on his sink. He sank back to his knees in front of you, winced slightly, because kneeling on a prosthetic leg wasn't comfortable. But he stayed there anyway. His hands found your knees as he brushed back and forth slowly.

"Yeah. I wanted to look pretty for you."

The words landed somewhere in his chest. He smiled gently, thumb tracing a small circle on your knee. "You always look pretty."

You shook your head immediately, already sighing. "No I don't. Not right now."

Jack shook his head right back at you. "Yeah you do."

You opened your mouth to argue and he just shook his head again. You stopped immediately.

"Uh uh. Enough of that." He shook his head again. "I'm your boss. I'm the one who has the last word here."

You stared at him for a second, then you grinned. "Okay."

He smiled back and started to push himself up. You caugh his reaction this time, the slight grimace, the way he braced himself on the sink, the small groan he tried to hide.

"Are you okay?" you asked concerned.

He waved it off. "Fine. Old man stuff." He stood there for a moment, catching his breath, then looked down at you. "You want to sleep in these clothes?"

You considered it, chewing on your lip for a second. Then you shrugged. "Actually, I wanna wear your clothes."

That stopped him cold. He halted mid step, turning to look back at you. You were smiling up at him with that huge grin. You knew exactly what you were doing. You were aware, on some level, what those words did something to him.

"You're terrible, you know that?" he mumbled, but there was no heat in it. He reached for your hand, pulling you gently up from the toilet seat.

You took his hand, steadying yourself against him, and grinned even wider. "You like me. That means I can't be that terrible."

He shook his head, smiling despite himself. He led you out of the bathroom and down the hall.

His bedroom was nice. A dresser with a few things on top. A lamp on the nightstand. A window with the blinds half drawn, letting in slivers of streetlight

"Nice bed," you mumbled softly, taking in the way he'd properly made it, sheets tucked in, pillows fluffed, a blanket folded at the foot.

"It's good enough," he replied, already moving toward his closet.

You stood there watching him, not even trying to hide it. He was choosing something for you and your drunk brain found that unbearably sweet.

He turned around holding sweatpants and a t-shirt and tilted his head slightly. A question. Okay?

You nodded, reaching out to take them from his hands. The fabric was warm and you hugged them without thinking.

"I'll be in the bathroom. Just call for me when you're done."

You nodded again, suddenly more tired now that you were in his room with his lamp casting warm light and his bed right there looking so comfortable. He slipped out, closing the door softly behind him.

In the bathroom, Jack leaned against the sink for a moment. He turned on the cold water, splashed some on his face, stared at himself in the mirror. You were here. In his home. Sleepy and honest and practically admitting you liked him. Dressed up for him. He pressed his palms against the counter and exhaled slowly, aware of his heart beating faster than it had any right to.

He changed quickly. Sweatpants, a clean shirt. Brushed his teeth. Tried to look normal, tried to calm down, tried to remember how to be just Jack instead of Jack who had you in his bedroom wearing his clothes.

Then you called his name.

He opened the door and walked down the hall. And yeah, the sight didn't help his heart at all.

You were standing by his bed, well, standing was generous. More like swaying gently, having clearly tried to fold your clothes and put them on the chair in the corner. The folding hadn't gone well. Your shirt was half draped over the chair back, your jeans in a heap on the floor next to it. But you were wearing his clothes. His shirt swallowed you whole, the hem falling to your thighs. His sweatpants were rolled at the waist and still too big, pooling slightly at your feet.

He smiled to himself, trying to get his heart to calm down as he reached for the bed, pushing back the sheets, getting it ready for you.

The silence behind him lasted just a little too long.

Ah. You wanted a compliment. "You look as pretty as ever." he said over his shoulder, smiling at you.

"I like your clothes," you giggled, happy over receiving the compliment you'd been waiting for. You shuffled closer until you were standing next to him.

He turned to look at you fondly. "Like them on you, too."

His hand gently found your waist and he guided you backward, lowering you onto the bed until you were sitting, then lying down, your head meeting the pillow he'd just fluffed. You went easily. He thought about how different this was from your usual shyness, how you'd normally get flustered and look away if he got too close. But here, now, you were more than happy to jump into his bed.

But, who was he to judge? He loved having you here.

"God, I'm so tired." You mumbled it, hand coming up to rub your eyes again. "And drunk. So drunk."

Jack still stood above you, watching. He loved the way you curled slightly toward the warmth of his pillow and the way you looked so perfect in his bed.

"I know, sweetheart." He said softly "Just rest now." He reached down and pulled the blanket up over you.

He, then, reached for your shoulder and turned you onto your side. "That's better," he mumbled softly, fingers brushing your hair away from your face. His hand lingered for just a second on the curve of your cheek.

"Sleep well," he whispered. "I'll get you some ibuprofen for your headache and some water tomorrow, yeah?" He gestured vaguely toward the nightstand, even though you couldn't see it. "They'll be right here. On the night table."

You just hummed in response, already slipping under, already gone. You burrowed deeper into his pillow.

He started to pull away, to move toward the door, when your hand shot out. "Don't leave." He looked down at you, at your hand wrapped around his wrist. "What do I get out of being in your bed if you're not here?" you murmured, turning onto your back to look up at him properly.

His heart stopped. He was sure he didn't hear you right.

"Please?" you added, softer now.

"Yeah. Okay." he replied quietly as he rounded the bed slowly, walked to the other side, and laid down at a distance. So much distance you could have fit another person between you. He laid on his back, staring at the ceiling, hands folded over his stomach.

You propped yourself on your forearms behind you, head tilted, staring at him with an open mouth. And then you started giggling.

"Jack Abbot." His name in your mouth was so wonderful, he wanted to close his eyes for a second to cherish it. "Are you nervous? Do I make you nervous?" You seemed genuinely delighted by this discovery. Thrilled, even.

He shot you a look. And yeah. Okay. He was laying very far away from you. The kind of distance a teenager would put between themselves and a date on the first night. He was old enough to not be nervous about this.

But here, now, with you in his bed wearing his clothes and looking at him like that? Of course he was nervous.

"Sweetheart." His voice came out quieter than he meant. "You're in my bed. What do you expect?" Honesty. He'd decided on honesty. "Of course I'm nervous."

You tilted your head, and then you were moving closer, until you were leaning on one elbow, looking down at him from above. Your hair fell forward, brushing against his shoulder. You'd brushed your teeth earlier, used his toothpaste, and you smelled like mint and him. It did something to him. "That's cute."

He huffed out a laugh, reacting the only way he knew when feeling this seen. "Sure."

You giggled again, that wonderful sound that seemed to live somewhere in his chest now, and then your hand found its way up to his chest. And that's when his heart stopped.

Not really. Obviously not really. But it felt like it stopped. Felt like everything stopped.

Your fingers traced patterns on his chest, circles, lines, nothing recognizable. Then they drifted lower, tracing random shapes on his stomach through the fabric of his shirt.

"I am really drunk," you murmured, "but I still know that I'm going to regret this tomorrow." You were watching your hand. "But being drunk also gives me an excuse to touch you. So I'm using it."

"You don't need an excuse to touch me." He watched you, enjoying the view of seeing your pretty face so close. "I promise you, sweetheart."

You tilted your head, looking at him, processing his words slowly, the way drunk people do.

"I'll take you up on that." You said softly. "A lot."

Jack Abbot had never ever felt more thrilled. "You do that, baby."

His hand found the back of your shoulder, gently guiding you down until your head was resting fully on his chest, right over his heart, letting you feel what you did to him.

His hand came up to the back of your head. His big hand engulfed it completely, fingers spreading through your hair, brushing through it slowly. His thumb moved gently against your scalp.

He felt you startle slightly at first and then relax. Your hand finally stopped moving on his stomach. He reached down with his other hand, grabbed the sheets, and pulled them up over you both.

Then he felt your ankle hooking gently over his, just like at the bar. And he smiled to himself in the dark.

He kept brushing through your hair. He remembered watching you once. You'd been stressed about something, pacing the break room, and you'd done this thing where you ran your own fingers through your hair, over and over, until you calmed down.

He hoped this helped.

He could feel it in the way you relaxed further, the way your breathing evened out, the way your body went heavy against his.

You were quiet for a long moment, so long he thought you'd fallen asleep, but then you spoke quietly. "I hope I remember this tomorrow."

"And I'm glad for it. I wouldn't want to look like that."

Feyre hummed, rolling her eyes as she looked on at the pair. Azriel was holding about a dozen tiny bags from various shops you had undoubtedly dragged him around to. He would hold one up, and you would beam, diving into the contents to show off everything you bought. Elain and Mor would then gush over the small items, and Azriel would stare at you with an obvious adoration.

It was sweet. And a complete mystery how you had yet to notice his infatuation with you.

"You're just jealous," Feyre lightly sang, pressing her shoulder into Cassian's as they bumped Nyx between their knees from the far side of the room. "It's easy for Az. Y/n is very sweet and has yet to push him away."

"Yeah, well, she has to know. No one looks at someone the way Az looks at her and makes it subtle."

"Maybe she's letting him take his time."

You turned, smiling back at Azriel with a tiny vial of perfume that you then shoved against his nose, and the pair across the room watched as the Shadowsinger's hand flexed up by your waist. He didn't touch you, but he almost did. He hovered. You whisked yourself away to share with your friends, and Azriel shut his eyes in a moment of recollecting himself.

Feyre had to stiffle her own laugh, then.

"See!" Cassian quietly snapped. "You get it. I knew you got it."

"I still think you should let him be," she argued with a slight chuckle, diverting her attention to her son. "Let them run around each other for a while longer."

Azriel tried to tear his gaze away. He looked around the ballroom and took in the array of flowers and the flowing white wine. It was all very Spring, and of course it would be. The fact of his current whereabouts made his infatuation that much more taboo, because he couldn't be interested in a High Fae from Spring. He was sure he couldn't.

But then his eyes found you once more, and something about you kept him there. Azriel curled his fingers in and tried to ignore the way his siphons seemed to point their light towards you. He needed to find Tamlin. He was only invited to this ball as a diplomatic gesture, and after he met with the High Lord, he would leave.

The song was over, the musicians swapping out instruments, and the dancers taking respite near the refreshments. His instinct made him search for you, trying to find the light in the room, but you were gone. Azriel hadn't gotten a good look at your last dance partner; perhaps you really liked him and had been whisked away. Something deflated within him at that thought, until... you were there.

Hands clasped behind your back, weight rocked onto your toes, you smiled softly in the corner of the ballroom, looking radiant against the darkness that Azriel was sure he gave off.

"Hello," you greeted, not smiling so brightly that it would scare him off. But he'd already seen your joy from a distance, and it only made him want to get closer. "I see you haven't moved from this spot since the ball began. I wanted to see if it was really so nice over here."

Azriel's voice got caught in his throat before he uttered, "Hello."

Your smile became conspiratorial. "Not much of a talker. I figured. But... ah, yes, I do happen to have one last spot open on my dancecard. Perhaps you would be interested?"

Azriel's head started spinning. He looked down at the ribbon around your wrist, how delicate it looked there, and found your smile once more. So pretty. You were very, very pretty, and it was making it hard for Azriel to focus.

You blinked. Three times. "Does that mean you'll dance with me?"

Something icy ran down Azriel's spine as he realized his mistake. He was good with women—great, actually, according to every woman he'd come across, but with you, he was embarrassing himself. He'd just called you pretty by accident.

"I am—I am from the Night Court. I'm here on business," he offered, not sounding very convincing in his attempt to excuse you from his company.

"Do you not dance in the Night Court?" you asked.

Azriel had danced maybe a handful of times. "I—We do. But I know that Spring and Night have had their differences, and I did not want to make you feel obligated to seek me out just because I was alone."

You raised a brow at him. "Unfortunately, Mr. Night Court, you are quite obvious in where you hail from—you know, given the shadows and wings and general aura of darkness. So, be that as it is, I was very aware of who I was asking to dance, and I was doing it because I wanted to. Not for some political ploy. Now, if you really don't want my company then—"

"No!" Azriel collected himself when you smiled again, brow still raised. He cleared his throat. "No, I mean, I would love to dance. I don't—I don't have a pen. For your dance card."

"I guess it's a good thing I don't much care for the thing then," you brushed off, swiping the ribbon from your wrist as the next song began.

Morgan drags you through the booths.

It feels like you don’t even have control over where you’re going anymore. It’s like this five-year-old is a fully sentient Tesla Cybertruck with a chocolate milk engine and you are the crumpled napkin tied to the trailer hitch.

She’s incandescent, cheeks red and joy-bright, eyes mirrors for every string light in the market. “Look! They’ve got peppermint bark with glitter sprinkles again this year,” she gasps, practically levitating, a neon sign of holiday ecstasy in the shape of a child. Her braids are bouncing.

It’s the first weekend of December. The air is starched and zesty — peppermint-loaded, cinnamon-crazed. Snow is powdering down but in that very expensive movie way. A soft-focus flurry. Just the right amount to feel whimsical and not like anybody’s eyelashes will freeze shut.

You’re trying to keep your coat closed with one hand as Morgan tugs at the other. She’s wearing a pink puffer jacket with starklette bedazzled in rhinestones on the back. She’s basically a brand.

You’ve been to this holiday market every winter for the past four years. A tradition with your friends. A tradition with yourself.

And yes, technically, a tradition of making accidental eye contact with Bucky Barnes, or lingering around his booths like a lost person or just a girl who’s too big of a coward to ask a guy out.

The man owns the hand-turned wooden toy booth and the artisanal coffee booth right next to it, plus the leatherwork booth that sells belts, journals, and hand-stitched gloves somehow.

He’s like a person who just seems to collect micro-hobbies and then becomes elite-tier at all of them.

And you have had a persistent, semi-controlled crush on him for, approximately forever.

But this year is new because you’re not with the girl gang. You’re here as someone’s entirely responsible grown-up.

“Hello, can we go see the wood animals?” Morgan demands like a tiny politician already lobbying for votes. She’s already trying to drag you toward the booth.

And that’s his booth.

And your pulse is a very rude drum at your throat.

You steer her gently in that direction, completely innocent, never mind the fact that you basically talked her ear off about certain animals shaped in wood made by certain hands earlier when you picked her up, successfully making a five year old girl interested. You should feel bad, perhaps. But also, why would you.

The sign is exactly the same little burnt-wood sign from last year. BUCK & BEAM CO.

And yeah. There he is.

Bucky.

He’s wearing a navy beanie and a sweater under a flannel under a jacket. He looks like the human equivalent of a campfire.

He glances up and catches you and something in his expression softens, lifts, rises, poofs, like bread meeting the right kind of heat.

“Hey,” he greets. Except it’s not a casual hey. It’s a hey that ripples. A hey with muscle under it. A hey with recognition.

It hits your bloodstream like a burst.

You try to sound normal. Unfazed. “Hi. We’re- uh- browsing. She just wanted to see some animals out of wood.”

And you just wanted to see him.

Morgan launches forward like she was shot from a glitter cannon. “I’m five,” she divulges to Bucky, which is her favorite icebreaker. “My mom says I’m small but extremely dynamic.”

Bucky’s mouth does a little corner tuck. “I can confirm the dynamic part, kid.”

“This one,” Morgan decides excitedly, pointing to a delicate wooden deer with tiny carved antlers, standing at the front of the row. “He’s got to come home with us. He has antlers.”

Bucky leans forward, elbows braced on the wooden counter, a twinkle in his eyes. “Top-tier antlers,” he drawls, his voice rich with pretend seriousness. “You’ve got great taste.”

Morgan’s cheeks go pink, and you smile.

“And your taste,” Bucky adds, with a brief slide of a look to you, “was excellent last year too. The red cardinal, right?”

You blink. “You remember that?”

He gives the smallest shrug, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth. His gaze hovers and his eyes are smiling too, warm and bright. “‘Course I do. Hard to forget.”

You bite your lip. Something tightens in your chest.

Morgan sighs in that middle-aged way children do when the adults become weird narrative poems around her. She turns her big eyes back to you and starts tugging at your sleeve once more. “Can we get cocoa? Please? I want cocoa.”

Bucky lifts a finger, grin on his face. He seems to talk to Morgan but he mainly looks at you. “I make a peppermint mocha that could probably raise the dead.”

Morgan claps like an angelic seal. “Let’s raise the dead!”

You laugh, ruffling her hat to which she giggles. “That would be great, thank you,” you tell him, smiling.

Bucky’s grin widens, delighted. “Hang here. I’ll be right back,” he says, backing away, but keeping his eyes on you for a lingering second. His palms meet the wood beside him with a small thud and then he disappears next door to his coffee booth. “Watch the deer for me, yeah?”

Morgan pets the deer like it is her family. You try to breathe.

Lights are shimmering overhead. Cameo gold. The market jingles with brass carols, string lights, the softness of winter.

When he returns, he hands Morgan a warm cocoa. Kid temperature, and you love him all the more for it. Then he hands you a peppermint mocha in a bigger paper cup with a hand-drawn snowflake on it. His fingers brush your cold ones.

You look at him.

He looks back.

And he’s looking at you with that quiet, thoughtful sort of intensity that feels like standing too close to a fireplace.

Morgan, slurping, watches both of you, then very seriously gets closer to the booth and whispers to Bucky, “This is her favorite booth. She gets shy because she thinks you’re cute.”

Your soul leaves your body. “Morgan-”

Bucky freezes. Then smirks slow. His brows lift for half a heartbeat. His jaw does a subtle clench as though he’s holding something back and failing.

He rests both palms on the edge of his wooden counter, voice dropping low and fond just enough to make the air spark. “Well, would you please tell her I think she’s cute too?”

Your ears ring.

Morgan comes close to you, opens her mouth, but you give her a warning look. There’s no need for you to get embarrassed again. Worse. Your heart is hiccuping, not knowing what to do with the wild flutter of all those butterflies in your belly.

She then starts bouncing on her toes, braids bobbing under her hat as she claps her hands together in a plea, seemingly moving on to the next thought. “Can we go ice skating tomorrow? Pleeeease? He can come too! Then he can hold you when you fall, ‘cause you always fall, like, a lot.” Her giggle bubbles out, light and proud.

You let out a long sigh that fogs the air around you and buys you a heartbeat to recover. More warmth blooms up your neck and spreads under your skin. You try to look anywhere but at him, hoping the blush doesn’t give you away. Somehow, even the winter air feels too thin to hide it.

Bucky lets out a soft laugh, the sound more breath than voice. It’s warm enough to melt snowflakes in the air. His teeth catch his lower lip for a small moment. But he doesn’t stop watching you, an amused glimmer in his eyes that is accompanied by something gentle and soft. For a moment, he just looks at you, the corners of his mouth twitching, a private thought passing through his eyes before he lets it go.

Bucky doesn’t let his gaze move away from you, the laughter still living somewhere behind his eyes. Then he plucks the deer off the display and sets it in a tiny paper bag. “Tell you what,” he offers after a beat, his voice warm twilight, his eyes intensely soft, and thinking under the lights. “You let me gift this to you, and I’ll take you two to the rink tomorrow. A hot toddy for the grown-ups, and marshmallow bribes for the little troublemaker. If it’s alright with Y/n, of course.”

Morgan squeaks delighted, bright smile on her lips, sparkling and pleading eyes turned up to you.

You swallow around the sudden neon of happiness in your chest and that little reaction of your body at the way he said your name. “I’d like that.”

His eyes lock with yours and he doesn’t let you go. “They light up the skating rink around sunset,” he goes on, his tone a soft drawl. “Gold lights, music, the whole thing. If you happen to wander by here around six, I’ll close up early.”

Something inside you loses balance. The words are casual, but the air around them isn’t.

Morgan claps her mittens together, already sold. “We’ll come back at six!” she exclaims loudly.

You can barely find your voice. “Alright.” You give Bucky a smile.

With a grin, Bucky hands you the bag containing the deer. His fingers brush yours again. He has such warm hands, how is that even possible in the cold weather? Static snaps in the winter air and the snow keeps falling and your heart keeps calling out to him.

“See you tomorrow, Starklette,” Bucky says to Morgan, and then quieter, a glimmer just for you, “See you tomorrow, Y/n.”

You nod, heart fluttering like wings against glass. Snow keeps falling as you turn away from his booth. Lights keep shimmering. Morgan takes your hand, triumphant, her cocoa sloshing. “He’s nice,” she declares.

“Yeah,” you whisper, looking back at his booth one last time. “He really is.”

And you feel like the holiday market just tripped into a parallel timeline where the warmest thing in the whole place is the possibility of him.

You’d already been going, but you hurry to match his pace into the audacious kitchen. Steve’s stovetop could cook for ten, and the main counter is already laid out with snacks, sodas, and red cups. You lean on your elbows between chocolate covered pretzels and a bowl of fruit, wondering if tonight’s the night Steve might blow his lid. The wager is a generous sixteen dollars accrued between losers. Eddie thinks Steve’s gonna crack tonight. Jeff and Gareth both agree that the end is near but not nigh; a week or two and he’ll throw you out on the street. Cindy and Mindy have better faith in your ability to charm him, both girls betting on months further ahead. 

From the way he’s looking at you, you aren’t sure you’ll make it to the end of Hellraiser.

It might have something to do with your chewing. “Uh, sorry,” you say, pushing the bowl of pretzels away from you. 

He shrugs. “It’s fine. Who cares, right? What’s mine is yours.”

His sarcasm is acidic. 

“Aw, thank you, Stevie. I didn’t know you felt that way.”

Steve snorts. It’s not a nice laugh, but something in your chest pulls hot and rough at the sound. He practically throws your popcorn onto the stovetop and lights the burner, his shoulders tensed under a warm brown polo, steam curling out of his ears with every second you stand there behind him. The metal of the container starts to creak in the heat, but you wait for the first pop of popcorn inside before you slip around the counter to stand beside him. 

“Where’d you get the movie?” you ask. 

Steve doesn’t answer. So annoyingly immature. You love the stupid haughtiness lining his eyes and the set of his mouth as he ignores you. It’s a tad smug, poorly concealed. 

“I didn’t know you liked horror.”

“How could I? Do jocks even watch movies?” he asks. 

Your eyebrows raise of their own accord. “Do they?” you ask. 

“I worked at a movie rental.” 

“Well, one doesn’t like to assume.”

Steve scoffs, as if to say, that’s rich. It confuses you enough to have you fall silent, turned completely to Steve as he shakes the jiffy pop over the heat. He looks less angry and more sad for a moment, his almond eyes in a sorry downturn you’d happily kiss back upwards again, until he feels you looking and snaps his gaze to yours. His glare comes alive. “What?” he bites. 

“I didn’t say anything?”

“Why are you looking at me?”

You widen your eyes, a little showfully. “Am I not allowed?”

“Why would you want to?”

“Is that a trick question?” The popcorn pop-pop-pops, quicker now, a steady rhythm. “Why do people usually look at you, Steven?”

“Are you guys coming?” Robin calls. 

“In a minute!” Steve sounds as annoyed as he looks.

“I’m just asking!”

He swings open a cabinet door and slams a bowl onto the kitchen counter. Risqué, he tears open the jiffy pop like it isn’t scaldingly hot and upends your popcorn into the bowl. 

You like seeing his twitchy brow, the way he clenches his fist when you take a step forward, but you’re not as eager for a beating as you might pretend. “I can go home, if you really don’t want me here. I wasn’t trying to abuse your hospitality, or anything.”

Your careful monotone attracts his incredulity. “Why’d you even wanna come, anyways? You knew I’d be here, didn’t you? It’s my house.” 

“That’s exactly why I came.”

“To fuck with me.”

“‘Cos I like you, Steve.” You take pleasure in his lack of response, reaching over his arm to turn off the heat on the burner, the weight of his eyes like a burn on the side of your face. “Despite what you might think.”

“Since when?”

“Since forever?”

“You called me a neanderthal.”

“You were being rude.”

“You told Dustin you’d rather be caught dead than date me?”

“Is that what I said?” You meet him head on, staring right into his eyes with that flirty flare of your lashes and a gentle smile, something to mess with his head, even as you tell him the truth. Is there anything so fun as making Steve’s heart pound? His lips part in surprise. “I don’t think that’s what I said. What did Henderson tell you, word for word?”

“He said you’d rather die than go on a date with me.”

“Well, I told Dustin I’d rather die than go to see Wham! with you when he implied you had a spare ticket.” You tilt your head gently to one side. “But that was hyperbole. I could’ve toughed it out… given a good enough reason. I told him I’m persuadable.” 

“That little shit didn’t tell me that.” 

“No, he’s fine. You were so sweet to me before, but I like this version of you.” You follow the line of his neck to his Adam’s apple. It bobs as he swallows nothing at all. “Bitter suits you, H.”

“I think you’re fucking with me.”

“Do you want it in writing?” 

You drag the bowl toward you and shovel a few pieces of popcorn into your mouth. It’s fresh and crunchy, still hot in their centres. You’re tempted to smile at Steve with kernels in your teeth, but you pout a little for a kiss instead and watch his jaw go slack. 

“No?” you murmur when he doesn’t move, licking your teeth clean. 

“You’re evil,” he says, reaching for your side, his hand behind your back and pressing you closer as his brain works overtime, “you knew he lied to me?”

“He didn’t lie, Steve, he just told you what he thought I meant. I lied, a little. Just to see what you’d do.”

You should’ve expected the kiss. His hands are on your body and you’d goaded him, invited him, but the press of his lips to yours isn’t half as spiteful as you’d pictured. There’s no clack of teeth or sudden gasp as he yanks you into his chest, just heat as he closes the distance between you and folds you into a half-embrace, his free hand covering your collarbone as he gives a firm, testing kiss. Quick as anything, he pulls away, eyes flashing open again to yours that hadn’t managed to shut. 

“Fine?” he asks. 

You offer him a real smile. 

The second kiss is more like what you’d imagined. It’s not better, but harder, and greedier, the hot seam of his mouth meeting yours as the bridge of his nose nudges your own, too close, too quick, too needy. You sew your hand into his hair, tugging him back when you need to breathe. He presses a needy kiss into the line of your jaw rather than part from you, and you start to wonder if you should’ve been more flexible about the Wham! concert.

“You still like me, then,” you say happily. 

“Yeah. Apparently,” he mutters, red blush spread over his nose and the tops of his cheeks. He looks like he could sit you down and bite you hard if you let him. 

“Let’s sit together,” you say, hip checking him as you turn to leave. 

You didn’t say a word. You only stared for a heartbeat longer than necessary before your attention was swept away by the pastry stand across the street. You had turned to him, tugging at his sleeve and smiling with such excitement that Azriel let himself be clumsily pulled along.

But his shadows lingered.

**

Later that night, the two of you returned to the house of wind. His shadows were helping you shrug your coat off and fixing the hairs that had fallen out of place on the flight up. Azriel’s lips quirked. He didn’t know whether to be offended that his shadows now doted over you more than they did over him.

Such traitors…but he couldn’t blame them. He was no better.

”I have something for you,” Azriel said as he led you to one of the many sitting rooms.

Your eyes lit up immediately. “For me?”

He then pointed to the coffee table, where a black rectangular box sat. You sat on the couch, pulling the box to your lap. With a curious smile, you lifted the top.

A small gasp escaped from you.

Your gaze snapped to him, wide and in awe. “How did you…?”

Azriel couldn’t fight off the smile tugging at his mouth. His shadows snickered behind him. He didn’t bother answering you nor did you care for a genuine one. The way your gaze flickered between him and the shadows fluttering around you two were enough context clues.

“Well?” he murmured, tilting his head. “Try them on.”

You nodded, carefully pulling out the heels. You stared at them for a moment, admiring the feel of them in your hands. Your fingers fumbled with the straps, unused to the straps and small buckle. They were unlike your other shoes that you could easily just slip on.

Without a word, Azriel knelt before you.

Your breath caught as his scarred hands reached for you, his skin brushing against yours. It was all a new sensation to you—having legs. You found them more sensitive than your tail or perhaps, it was all because of the devastatingly handsome male before you.

He slipped off your flats, his touch brushing further against your ankle as he gently eased your foot into the shimmering heel. He clasped the strap with care and then repeated the gesture with the other shoe.

When he finally looked up, he found that you had been staring at him the whole time. Your cheeks tinted from being caught yet your eyes held his—always bright and soft and adoring. No one had ever looked at him the way you did.

Your knees pressed together slightly and it was then he realized, his hands were still holding onto your leg. He immediately pulled away.

You cleared your throat, managing to whisper, “will you help me up please?”

“Of course,” he replied. He rose, offering his hand and you took it, your fingers curling around his.

The heels lifted you higher but even with them on, Azriel still towered over you. Your hand slowly let go of his. Still, he kept close, his shadows also ready as he noticed the slight tremble of your legs.

You admired the way the heels looked on you. They felt strange but they were too beautiful for you to care over the slight discomfort. You took a tentative step forward.

”Do you like them?”

”Yes, they’re beautiful,” you grinned up at him. “Thank you.”

You took another step forward but this time, your ankle twisted and your balance tipped. Azriel’s arms closed around you instantly, guiding your fall straight into his chest.

Azriel’s eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“Are you okay?”

You rolled the ankle, using Azriel as support to keep you steady. “Yeah,” you said with a relieved exhale. Your ankle was fine. You had just tripped over your own feet…again.

It was then that he wondered if gifting you heels when you were new to walking was a good idea after all. “But did you see the look on her face? Her smile?” His shadows whispered quietly to him so you wouldn’t hear, countering his thought. “Worry not, Master. She will learn how to walk in them. We will help her.”

Your head tilted back to look up at him. You were so close that he could feel the brush of your breath against his throat. The smile on your face had faltered but not from fading joy.

Azriel’s chest tightened.

For a dangerous moment, his gaze dipped from your eyes to your lips. They lingered there, every instinct urging him forward. His hand slid just a fraction closer at your back, keeping you flush against him. Your lashes lowered, just slightly—

Azriel stopped himself with effort, pulling in a steadying breath. He ignored the disappointed hissing from his shadows, forcing his smirk back into place. “Looks like you’re going to need practice,” he murmured. “I can’t carry you every time you wear them.”

“Yes,” you agreed, smiling again, your cheeks flushing deeper.

There was a determined glimmer in your eyes he found himself admiring. He’d knew it’d be awhile before you could properly walk in those heels.

And the Mother help him—he also knew he’d carry you anyway, heels or not.

**

Tag list: @breathingstarlight @my-venus @xxbelaa @bravo-delta-eccho

@booksbypisces @marina468 @pricklepearbloom @blackgirlmagicforever

Clark looks up when you kneel, his face quickly taken by a smirk. It looks funny on him, missing any of the smugness you might see when he’s Superman against one of his boggling villains. He seems boyishly pleased before you’ve so much as opened your mouth. 

“Are you busy?” you murmur softly. 

“Oh, never too busy for you,” he says, rolling it around in his mouth as he places his book upside down on the nightstand. 

“No? I don’t have to persuade you to put things down?” you ask. 

He really couldn’t look happier. Like, he’s ecstatic rather than lustful, though this is often how it starts with him. 

“Nothing in there could be as interesting as you are,” Clark says. He pats the bed in front of him. “Come here? There’s more than enough room for you.” 

You cannot crawl sexily, won’t kid yourself into thinking so, instead walking carefully on your knees until you’re in touching distance, settling quietly, carefully. 

“You’re such a treasure,” he says, more to himself than you as his fingers brush your knee. “Have you always worn stuff like this?” 

“The shifts?” you ask, pinching the fabric between your fingers. “No, not really.” 

“No?” 

“No. I bought a couple when we first started dating…” You flush at the idea of telling him something like this and then tell him anyhow, because you might be the shyest thing he’s ever seen, but you’re also undoubtedly in love with him, and craving to have him in confidence is a constant. “It was exciting, when you asked me to be your girl,” —that exact phrase— “I went online that night to look at babydolls and, uh, new panties and things, I never had to before. I liked thinking about it.” 

His fingers work further down your thigh. “Never had to?” 

“No. You’re my first boyfriend. You know that already.” 

Clark soothes away your puzzled tone with a big hand spread out over your thigh. Shaved again. He rubs at you searchingly, his brow slightly crinkled. “I’d have you in a sack, if you wanted that.”

You laugh. 

He smiles. “I would. You could wear full briefs to bed.”

“Yeah, cos that’d be sexy. Me in my jammies, you’d love that.”

Clark smarts, indignant. “I would.”

You laugh again, wrapping your fingers around his thick wrist. “Sure.”

“Honey, I would. I’d love to see you in your pajamas. I didn’t realise you had pajamas, I– stupidly, I thought this was what you’d usually wear to bed.” 

“I’m supposed to be sexy.” 

You hadn’t meant to say it quite so abruptly. Clark wasn’t expecting it either, his lips parted enough to catch a slip of his tongue. Just as abruptly, his teeth snap and his mouth closes, both hands finding yours. “You are,” he says, his mouth such a serious line that your heart feels like it’s constricting in your chest for a moment. “Without trying, you are. With effort too, don’t get me wrong, I– I don’t think I’ve ever had so much blood in one place–”

“Clark,” you whine, unbidden. 

“–some nights, your dresses, those lacy skirts and stuff, that’s all beautiful. You’re beautiful. But don’t think you have to dress up every night for my benefit, huh?” Your face goes so hot you can feel it in your ears, ‘cos his voice is like satin, talking to you like you need it gentle. “I’d just as happily have you in one of my old t-shirts. Or your jammies.” 

“Why are you asking me about this?” you deflect. 

He closes his hands around your wrists with a light squeeze. “You won’t let me in the bathroom when you’re in there most the time, but every night you stand in the door in one of these lovely things and I was just… wondering, I guess. I can be really awkward. I wanted to know if I was overstepping with the bathroom thing, but. Anyways. I have my answer.”

“What? What answer?” 

“You have a complex. I’ve given you a complex,” he says decidedly. 

“You did not.”

“I did. Clearly, I haven’t made it obvious how much I want you at all hours, in anything, and you assume you have to dress up to earn my affection.” Clark dips his head forward, a sweet, dark curl kissing his forehead. “Tell me you like the lingerie, at least.” 

“I do.” You realise you can tell him more, and decide to trust him with a little more truthfulness. “I don’t love shaving my legs every night.”

“No?” His eyebrows rise. “Then don’t.”

“Yeah? You won’t care?”

“Of course I won’t.” 

You hold your arms toward him and he does the same, taking your hips into his hands as you begin the melding ascent into his lap. Clark folds you into him nicely. “And you really don't care if I stop wearing the lacy panties?”

“Honestly? I assumed you were spoiling me. I had no idea you thought I’d care about them otherwise. Wear anything. Wear nothing.”

You press your nose to his neck, withholding a sound too close to a moan at his smell and general solidness beneath you. His arms are a vice around you that you’d rather die than lose. Especially now he’s letting you say goodbye to headrush-showers and the two hour delicates wash on cold. “Promise?” you murmur.

“I promise.” 

︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

"Come in," he calls before you can knock. Of course he heard you coming.

You push the door open to find him tidying up the living room, shoving papers into neat stacks and fluffing couch cushions. He looks up when you enter, hair falling across his forehead in that way that makes your fingers itch to brush it back.

"Sorry about the mess," he says, though his apartment is immaculate as always. "I wasn't expecting company."

He's wearing his flannel pajama pants and a soft t-shirt, glasses on. You'd have a hard time figuring out whether this or the suit is worse on your heart. 

"You don't have to clean for me, Clark. It's just laundry."

"I know, but..." He trails off, running a hand through his hair. "I guess I wanted things to be nice. It's been a while since you've been over."

You feel a stab of guilt at that. You can't explain why you haven't been over in so long. You can't say, I have a ridiculous crush on you and need to save whatever is left of my dignity by keeping some distance between us.

So, you say, "Oh... yeah." Like an idiot.

"I missed seeing your face around."

"Did you?"

It's out before you can take it back. Clark freezes, then turns to look at you.

"Of course I did." There’s something like hurt behind his glasses. "Why would you say that?"

"No... I didn't mean..." you stammer. You want to go hide in a closet somewhere. "That sounded weird. I'm sorry. Just forget it."

Clark is still studying you with that puzzled, concerned look, but he eventually lets out a little huff of a laugh. "I’ll never understand how you don’t realize how much people like you around."

"Maybe I'm just fishing for compliments," you say in an attempt to play it off.

"Mm," he hums, taking your laundry basket with such ease one would think it was full of cotton balls instead of two weeks’ worth of dirty clothes. "Well, you're welcome to fish here anytime."

You follow him to the tiny (immaculately clean) laundry nook. It's not a room so much as a closet off the kitchen, with much less space than you need for a successful Clark Kent avoidance technique. If he stays to chat, you'll be standing no more than an arms' length apart at best, and you're not sure how that’s going to work for the duration of a full cycle.

"Have you eaten?" Clark asks again. He's leaning against the doorframe of the laundry nook, watching you with an easy sort of patience as you start to load the machine. The space feels impossibly small; you have to keep reminding your lungs how to do their job.

"Yeah," you lie, your voice tight as you untangle one of your t-shirts from a pair of jeans and pray that you didn't throw anything too embarrassing into this basket. "I ate."

"Liar. I can hear your stomach from here."

You freeze, utterly mortified. He’s just joking. Probably. "You cannot."

"I can," he insists, a grin spreading across his face that makes your stomach do a nervous little flip. "It’s telling me very sad stories about an empty fridge." He pushes off the doorframe, taking a single, deliberate step into the nook. The fluorescent bulb above flickers once, as if startled. He fills the space completely, blocking the light from the kitchen.

Your hands are suddenly clumsy. You become hyper-aware of the contents of your basket—the worn-out state of your favorite pajamas and, god forbid, your underwear. You try to discreetly bury a pair of frankly embarrassing floral underwear beneath a towel while he leans over your shoulder.

He’s reaching up, his body twisting around you to open a small cupboard above your head. The soft cotton of his t-shirt presses against your shoulder blade as he stretches, and a warm cloud of something clean—laundry soap and fresh air and just him—envelops you. You hold your breath, your universe shrinking to the inches between you, the faint scent of his shampoo, and the solid wall of his chest at your back.

He pulls back just as you think you might pass out, holding out a bottle of detergent. He’s completely, devastatingly oblivious to the five-alarm fire he just started in your nervous system, it seems. His expression is open, friendly, his gaze searching your face. You'd like to curl up inside the washing machine with your laundry and go on a spin cycle right now.

"Laundry detergent for your thoughts?" he asks, offering you the bottle like he hasn’t just driven every rational thought from your head.

You look down at the bottle, trying to remember how words work. "My thoughts are boring."

"That’s impossible." He unscrews the cap for you before passing it into your hands.

You take it, but he doesn't move back. You can see the flecks of green in his blue eyes behind his glasses.

You turn back to the washer, desperate for something to do with your hands and a way to escape his gaze, but your mind has gone completely, utterly blank. What comes after adding detergent? Cold wash? Warm wash? What exactly are you supposed to do with your arms, your legs, your shoulders? How do people even stand normally?

"Let me get that," he says, gently, quietly. His hand brushes yours as he takes the bottle, and he’s pouring the soap in, setting the bottle aside, twisting a dial. The washer rumbles to life, filling with water, and it feels like the air in the tiny nook is being sucked out through the pipes. He closes the lid and turns to look at you. He's so tall you have to tilt your head up to see his face properly.

"There," he says softly, like he's accomplished something monumental instead of just starting a load of laundry. "All set."

You nod, acutely aware that you should probably leave the nook now, give him space to escape back to his work. But your feet seem rooted to the spot, and Clark doesn't seem to be in any hurry to move either.

"So," he says, leaning back against the dryer, arms crossed. The position makes his t-shirt pull slightly across his chest, but at least now he's a full arms' length away from you. "What's really going on with you lately?"

Your heart stutters. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. The avoiding me thing. The way you practically sprint in the opposite direction when you see me in the hallway."

"I don't sprint."

"You do a very fast walk," he says with a small smile. "It's actually pretty impressive. I didn't know you could move that quickly."

Despite everything, you find yourself fighting back a laugh. "You're ridiculous."

"Maybe. But I'm also right." He tilts his head and looks at you for a long moment, like if he focuses hard enough, he can figure out what's going on inside your head without you having to say it out loud. It's an unsettling feeling, as if he might somehow peel back all the layers of your walls and see your pathetic little crush sitting at the core.

"Did I do something wrong?" he asks.

Your heart sinks. "No, Clark, you haven't done anything wrong. Jesus." You run a hand over your face, letting out a sigh. "That's not—you're just—"

He's just perfect. He's kind and patient, he helps an elderly woman carry groceries back to her apartment every Thursday night. How do you tell someone like that that it feels like dying every time he mentions the coworker he's clearly in love with?

"We're good," you finish weakly. "You don't have anything to worry about."

He gives you a look that says he doesn't believe you for a second. "You just hate being around me?"

"Oh, yes. I hate you. Absolutely despise you," you joke.

"Hmm."

"Repulsed," you're holding back a laugh now. "Completely repulsed by your very—"

Clark takes another step forward, and whatever words were in your mouth evaporate. The laughter fizzles, turns less playful and more nervous as he invades your personal space like he's been doing your thoughts, 24/7, for maybe a solid year.

Playful Clark is almost worse than kind Clark. Kind Clark can fill your stomach with butterflies, sure. Kind Clark will stay on your mind, will fuel daydreams of late mornings and gentle hands, but you've built up a tolerance. Playful Clark—bold Clark—might actually shatter the very carefully maintained equilibrium you've worked so hard to create around your relationship with him.

"...face," you manage to squeak. He's much too close and much too comfortable, taller than you've ever really allowed yourself to consider.

What a terrifyingly wonderful feeling. If he leaned down, if you got on tiptoes...

"Clark," you say. The word is a weak warning.

He doesn't move, but his eyes flicker down to your lips and back up. You can feel the blush creeping over your cheeks. "What?"

"Clark."

He's smiling. "Y/N."

You can barely hear your own voice over the roar of your blood in your ears. "Are you just... gonna stand here?"

A small, breathy laugh escapes him. "I don't know. I'm enjoying the view."

"Clark."

His smile widens. "It's not my fault. You're cute when you're flustered."

"Stop. I'm not flustered."

He leans in a fraction closer. "So, I could get closer?"

He knows. He absolutely knows. And you know that he knows, and he's playing chicken. "Clark," you whisper, a final warning. If he gets any closer...

"Y/N." He mimics the tone of your voice. He's trying to tease, but he can't keep the soft, warm edges from creeping into it, the gentle affection he can never hide.

Clark Kent wants to kiss you, you think, distantly, as his nose brushes yours. As a big hand reaches up and cradles the back of your head.

"Is this okay?" he asks, breath fanning over your lips. And god, if that isn't just about the death of you.

The air has solidified, turned to glass, and it's lodged in your chest. "Clark."

"Can I?" His fingertips are warm against the base of your neck. The contact sends electricity racing up and down your spine. "I'm tired of waiting for you to catch on."

"Me catch on?! My biggest problem is that you, Clark Kent, you are the most—"

He's kissing you. He's laughing against your lips as he's kissing you, and your mind has been reduced to a collection of sparks going off in a vast expanse of darkness.

"You're so oblivious," he's saying, his lips moving against yours. "You're the most oblivious person on the planet. I swear."

"I'm oblivious? You're—"

But he's kissing you again—this time more insistent, less patient, a little bit needy and a whole lot of something you can't name, but you want to drown in. Any argument you might have made melts under his touch, vanishes like dew on a sunny morning and leaves nothing but this in its wake.

"I hope your machine is dead for good," he murmurs against your lips.

Your answer gets lost somewhere in the shape of his mouth and the warmth of his hands.

It raged on in his heart like a never-ending tempest.

Ever since that night, it’s felt like this. It left him to wonder if the pieces left behind could ever be salvaged.

**

Out of all the heartache Azriel has endured, this one had to be the worst. 

Because it ended exactly the way he had feared. 

Elain had chosen her mate.

In the end, fate prevailed. He was a fool for thinking otherwise. He should’ve listened when Rhysand warned him. Perhaps then, his heart wouldn’t mirror the storm before him.

Azriel’s fist unclenched, revealing the rose necklace he had gifted Elain on solstice. It was beautiful and one of a kind. He had gone to the best jeweler in Velaris to have it made. No matter the lighting, the necklace had been crafted with a jewel that glimmered from every angle. It now seemed to glimmer at him in a mocking manner, laughing at him almost, for thinking Elain could actually be his.

“You should head inside, Mr. Shadowsinger.”

Azriel didn’t bother to turn. His shadows assessed the fae beside him, deeming them a nuisance rather than a danger. The shadows recognized the small child from earlier. She was one of the merchant’s granddaughters, no older than a decade. He had caught her curiously peering at him and when one of his shadows waved, she had quickly turned the other way. 

He could feel her wide eyes on him now. Whether she was captivated by his shadows or wings, he could not tell. One of his shadows made a show of twirling from behind his wing and flew right in front of her, earning a small gasp. Her hand twitch at her side as if she wanted to reach out and catch it but thought better of it.

Azriel’s lips quirked up. “You should listen to your own advice.”

The little girl shook her head, determination and wonder flashing in her eyes. He swore her pupils dilated as she looked forward at the thrashing sea. “They say storms bring mermaids.”

“Who says?”

“My grandfather. He’s very smart so he would know.”

Azriel didn’t respond, fearing what he’d say would insult her grandfather and result in drama he did not need. He had come to Summer to avoid drama, after all. Rhysand had recommended–well, more like strongly urged–him to take a “much needed vacation.” It was just his luck that the week he had decided to come was the one week of the year with bad weather that not even Tarquin could stop.

It seemed that no matter where Azriel went, darkness and cloudy skies followed him. A shadow tugged at his hair, reprimanding him for the negative thought. They’d been doing that a lot lately, chastising him for wanting to continue to sulk. They were the ones that forced him out of his room and brought him to the docks to enjoy some fresh air, despite Azriel arguing that opening his window was sufficient.

“My grandfather also says that mermaids can grant you any wish.”

“Any wish?” Azriel echoed. 

Would a mermaid be able to undo fate? He thought. He swore he heard a disapproving hiss from one of his shadows.

“Mmhmm,” the little girl hummed happily. “Seems like you’re in need of one.”

Azriel blinked, taken aback. “Why do you say that?”

“You look sad,” the little girl replied. “Very, very sad.”

Azriel didn't know whether to laugh or be offended. Kids could be very blunt and honest, especially when you didn't ask for it. Though, he knew the girl meant well.

His knowledge of mermaids was not vast but he doubted a mermaid could fix him. There was no fixing a broken heart.

“What would you wish for?” He decided to ask, diverting the conversation from him. A part of him was also curious as to what would make a little girl smile up at a storm as if it were a rainbow.

“I would wish for my mother to wake up. She’s been asleep for a very long time. The doctor’s can’t figure out how to wake her up,” she quietly said, her voice taking on a more somber tone.

A knot tightened in his chest at her words. He opened his mouth to speak, to say anything to offer some comfort. But before his mouth could form the words, an older male called for her and she ran toward him, bidding Azriel a quick goodbye.

**

The storm finally reached the palace, furiously pouring down as Azriel shut the door to his room. His leathers were slightly damp from the walk back from dinner with Tarquin and Cresseida. He had hardly eaten a bite, mainly joining to not be seen as impolite. Also, to appease and quiet the complaint of his shadows. They had been smuggling him food late at night the past couple of days. He had a feeling they’d still do the same tonight.

Showered and dressed in comfortable sleeping pants, Azriel stretched out across his bed, laying on his stomach. One of his wings draped across the floor. The bed, though the biggest the Summer palace had to offer, was not made for an Illyrian. Much less for one with his wingspan. His cheek was pressed into his forearm as he stared at the towering window that nearly took up the entire wall. 

Lightning forked across the night sky. Waves slammed against the rocky shore and sometimes, against the window itself. It was so close, it seemed like the water might come pouring in.

Azriel tried to sleep. He really did. Even his shadows hovered close to his ear to deafen the sound of the storm.

However, it wasn’t the storm keeping him up. 

It was his thoughts that kept him up. They were always louder at night.

I thought she was happy. I thought she loved me. Where did I go wrong?

It was never long before his eyes would fill with tears. He’d cry and cry until the pang in his chest became overbearing. Tonight, he didn’t cry. The tears simply did not come but that urgent sense of emptiness that made him restless and feeling lonely was all the same.

Azriel didn’t know how long he’d been staring at the vast darkness and thrashing of the sea outside, hoping and wishing sleep would finally claim him as it had done with his shadows. They were nestled quietly under one of his wings, their favorite place to rest.

It could’ve been minutes, hours. No true sign of time passing. That is, until his shadows stirred, awakened by something. He didn’t move, body too tired to do so. His ears perked, also sensing a change amongst the howling wind outside.

Somehow, beneath the crashing sound of waves, he heard it.

A sound that could be best described as… singing?

It was strange, a sudden softness creeping through the harshness of the tempest outside.  A song meant for no one, or perhaps meant only for him.  Against all odds, it lulled him, coaxing the dark thoughts to finally loosen their iron grip around his mind. 

For the first time in weeks, Azriel fell into deep, untroubled sleep.

**

The storm lasted for days.

The one upside was that it forced Azriel out of his room during daylight hours to enjoy as much as he could before the rain would claim the skies again. It wasn’t often that he got to visit other courts as a tourist rather than the Night Court's spymaster.

He visited the little girl, whose name he learned was Serena. She sold seashells at her grandfather’s fish stand near the market square. He bought a couple of shells, slipping her extra coins for ice cream.

He had even let his shadows follow her home one day, hoping to gather more information on her mother’s situation. He was hoping there would be something he could do to help but it seemed, her mother’s condition was beyond him. A sea-creature’s poison had locked the woman in a coma that even Tarquin’s magic could not break. 

Azriel turned instead to the library, scouring volumes on venomous marine life, though the words blurred before his tired eyes. At night, though, the rain returned, and so did the song.

It came to him every night at the same time as if he sung to his very soul. His shadows stirred restlessly in time to the melody. Then, one night when the rain slowed to a drizzle, the song grew clearer. Words formed in the tide of sound.

Sing me to sleep…

Azriel froze, eyes heavy with exhaustion but refusing to close them.

Sing me to sleep… I don’t want to wake up… on my own anymore…

His throat tightened. He could feel the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness within the singing. It was one he was familiar with. And though the words were simple, they echoed too closely to thoughts he’d buried deep, things he’d never voiced. 

There is another world…there is a better world…

Another streak of lighting lit up the sky, and for a moment, the world was painted in white. Outside his window, perched upon the jagged rocks, there was a figure. Long hair spilled down over scaled shoulders, a tail glinting faintly in the rain…

But when Azriel blinked, the vision was gone and there was only the echo of the ending to the song.

Well, there must be…

**

The sun always shines the brightest after stormy nights, they say, and it couldn’t hold more truth the following morning. The sky was as bright and clear as ever. Long gone were the dark clouds, pouring rain and angry waves. All the chaos from the storm was replaced with peace and tranquility, the waves rocking softly against the rocks.

The only one unhappy about the clear skies was Serena. She greeted him with a pouty face, disappointment in her tone as she told him she had seen no mermaid. Azriel felt for her. He almost wanted to confess to her that he thought he had heard and seen one but he swallowed the words. He worried he’d only raise her hopes again or worse, it’d dim her spirit even more for not appearing to her.

Instead, he made a mental note to visit some of the gift ships before heading back to the palace. He hoped he could find a small figurine of a mermaid to gift Serena. Of course, it wouldn’t be the same but he hoped it’d at least brighten her spirits.

Later, he walked the shore alone.

He walked until he was far enough, where the only other presence was the soft sound of waves and the saline caress of the light wind. His shadows clung to his wings, hiding within them. Though they were happy for the sun’s return, they weren’t fans of the brightness in general.

Azriel had come all this way to be rid of something.

It was finally time to say goodbye to the necklace. It only haunted him, reminding him of what almost was but could never be. He drew it out from his pocket and stared down at it. He let out a deep exhale. 

His shadows suddenly stilled. They sensed a presence nearby and the sensation of being watched pricked at his spine. His shadows darted about searching as he, too, scanned the horizon.

There was nothing. No movement, except for the waves.

Still, the unease lingered. He blamed it on the necklace and closed his fist around the necklace. “An offering,” he murmured to the sea. 

The wind built up, as if encouraging him, and his shadows skimmed across the water merrily. He doesn’t know what came over him at this moment but he found himself speaking the words his mother would say to him after every downpour in his life.

“After every storm, there’s a calm. After every night, there’s a morning. And after every ending, there’s a new beginning...for you and me.”

He then threw the necklace as far as he could. When it landed, the wind went eerily still and so did his shadows. An unexplainable shudder went through him, his heart fluttering. 

But Azriel shook it off and headed back to town.

**

By the time he reached the market, something had changed in Azriel. He felt lighter, hopeful. It seemed that the storm raging in his heart was also reaching its end.

He was successful in finding a small carved mermaid figurine for Serena. He had his shadows deliver it to her doorstep. He watched from afar as her face immediately brightened with delight. She looked around (as Azriel had not left a note, wanting to gift it anonymously) before she cradled it to her chest and ran inside. He smiled as he could hear her squeal of joy from where he stood.

Azriel then made his way back to the palace. Tonight was his last night in Summer and he planned to leave before dinner. He longed for his bed in Velaris, specifically the one in the House of Wind. That one was the biggest and most comfortable. He also longed for his family’s company, even if dread curled in his gut at the thought of seeing Elain and Lucien together.

When he stepped into the palace courtyard, he found Tarquin already waiting for him. Strange, he thought. The High Lord usually met him at the dinner table.

Tarquin’s expression was cool, unreadable. Yet, there was a troubling look brewing in those bright turquoise eyes of his. Either something happened or something was about to happen.

Azriel’s shadows stirred uneasily, his wings tensing behind him.

“Azriel,” Tarquin nodded at him in polite greeting.

“High Lord,” Azriel returned, dipping his head.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

And then he saw her.

A female stepped out from behind Tarquin. Her legs trembled and she lost her balance, tripping over her own feet. On instinct, Azriel reached out to stop her from falling over. Tarquin beat him to it, his hand reaching for her arm to help steady her.

“Sorry,” she murmured, a sheepish tint coloring her cheeks, and he swore his shadows gasped.

His gaze narrowed toward the dark tendrils floating next to him but his attention was quickly pulled back to Tarquin and the female.

Tarquin smiled softly at her, assuring her she had nothing to apologize for, before turning back to Azriel. He did not reserve that same softness for him. Azriel was not bothered by it, his attention piqued by the female at Tarquin’s side. 

Who was she and why was she staring at him like she knew him?

She was beautiful, unlike anyone he had ever seen. If he had come across her before, he would've definitely remembered. Her satin dress shimmered like sunlight on water, clinging as though it had been poured over her body. She cradled something against her throat, half-hidden by her fingers.

Her eyes caught his, and when she smiled at him, something inside his chest stuttered. 

He blinked, taken aback by the sudden feeling, and glanced back at Tarquin. Anxiety suddenly crept over him as he waited to be introduced. But his shadows– his shadows pressed forward toward the female in an exciting manner as if they recognized her.

Finally, after what felt like eternity, Tarquin spoke her name. However, it wasn’t her name that made Azriel feel as though the world stopped spinning on its axis. It was what followed after.

“This is your betrothed.”

Betrothed.

Azriel’s blood went cold. The female’s hand shifted just enough to reveal what she held against her neck. The necklace.

The very one he had hurled into the sea earlier.

a/n: I made up my own little mermaid lore for this au, where mermaids are nomads and outside of Tarquin's jurisdiction. And also, in merculture, the gifting of jewelry is so special that it's only reserved for engagements/really special occasions. While I do have another part planned for this au, I cannot promise when that will come. (I basically planned out how this will end. It will be a happy ending, ofc and cute! I just don't have any ideas on the filler part/how to get there. This is the fic where instead of Az yearning, it is you, the reader, who yearns for him. )

General tag list: @scooobies, @kennedy-brooke, @sillysillygoose444, @lilah-asteria @the-sweet-psycho

@daycourtofficial, @milswrites, @stormhearty, @pit-and-the-pen, @mybestfriendmademe

@loving-and-dreaming @azriels-human, @mrsjna, @adventure-awaits13, @lorosette,

It starts with a coffee. A hot one.

He runs for the elevator—late, as usual—and his foot catches on the threshold, sends him tumbling forward. The coffee in his hand gets forgotten as he throws his arms out, braces himself on the back wall of the elevator. Which is fine—technically—if you ignore the scalding coffee that now soaks the front of his shirt.

He sighs, mumbles under his breath, “Really?”

He steps out of the elevator, white shirt stained brown. Weaving his way through the already bustling bullpen, he finds his desk. He tosses his bag on it, throws his now useless coffee mug in the trash can, and makes his way to the break room.

He’s wiping at his shirt with a paper towel when he hears your voice.

“Rough morning?”

Clark looks up. You’re standing by the counter, leaning one hip against it like you’ve been there a while. You’re holding a box of donuts, lid open, half a jelly one in your hand.

There’s no teasing in your voice. No laugh or sideways smirk. Just a simple question. And it catches him off guard more than the scalding coffee did.

He blinks. “Yeah. Just—clumsy.”

You glance down at his shirt, then back at him. “Looks like you lost the fight.”

Clark huffs a soft laugh, rubbing at the stain a little harder.

You look at him for a moment, then hold the box out toward him. “You want a donut, Kent?”

He hesitates. There’s something unexpectedly intimate about it—being offered a donut while feeling like a disaster. But you don’t say anything more, don’t try to explain it or soften it. You just keep holding the box.

He reaches in and takes one. “Thanks.”

You nod like it’s nothing, but he watches as you tuck the lid back over the box and move past him, back into the bullpen.

x

Later, when he returns to his desk, there’s a napkin sitting just beside his keyboard.

“Next time, wear a darker shirt.”

Written in Sharpie, slightly smudged. He stares at it for a long moment, then huffs out a quiet laugh.

He folds it once, carefully, and slides it into the back of his top drawer.

He doesn’t really know what just happened.

But it feels like something.

x

A few days later, he stands in the lobby coffee shop staring at the menu like it’s written in Kryptonese.

He doesn’t know what you usually drink. He’s seen you hold a cup, sure—but not the label. And it changes. Sometimes it’s iced. Sometimes it smells like vanilla. Once it had foam shaped like a cat.

He tries to guess.

Hazelnut latte. Almond milk. Light cinnamon. It sounds close enough.

When he sets it down on your desk, you blink at it like it’s an unexpected package.

“I thought you might need caffeine,” Clark says. “Or sugar. Or…both?”

You raise your eyebrows, but accept it, lifting the lid to peek inside. You take a sip without comment. Then another. You smack your lips thoughtfully.

“Bold move with the cinnamon.”

His heart stops.

“Oh—did I mess it up?”

You shake your head, smiling around the rim. “No. It’s terrible. But it’s endearing.”

He laughs, a little too loud. “Endearing. Terrible. Good to know.”

You tap the side of the cup with your fingernail. “Don’t worry, Kent. I’ll return the favor.”

Later that afternoon, when he comes back from a meeting, there’s a pencil topper perched on his keyboard. It’s a neon green frog with googly eyes and bendy legs, clinging to a tiny sign that reads “Stay Ribbiting.”

No note. Just the frog.

He glances over. You’re at your desk, pretending to type.

He picks it up, holds it between two fingers. “This for me?”

You don’t look up. “For good luck. Or frog luck, I guess.”

He bites back a grin and slides it onto the top of his pencil.

It stays there the rest of the day.

Then the rest of the week.

Eventually, it just becomes part of his desk—like it’s always been there.

x

It starts with a duck.

Not metaphorically. A literal duck. Ceramic. Possibly cursed.

He’s on the train home when his phone buzzes. It’s a photo from you—blurry, taken from a distance, like you didn’t want to get too close. The duck is tucked into a shop window display beside a mannequin foot and what looks like an old CPR dummy.

You:

You in pottery form.

He stares at the screen for a second. Then he snorts.

Clark:

Haunting. Accurate.

You don’t reply right away. He thinks that’s it—just a one off joke—but the next day, you send him a photo of a novelty candle shaped like a screaming clown. The caption just reads:

You:

Your vibe after deadline.

He scrolls back to the duck, then the clown, and starts a new folder in his phone.

From there, it becomes a thing.

The ugliest salt shakers in the window of a bodega on 43rd. A sock monkey with one eye. A velvet painting of a cat playing poker. You send each other photos like breadcrumbs—tiny, ugly reminders that you’re thinking of each other when the city gets loud and messy and heavy.

And Clark? He kind of loves it.

It’s the kind of joke you only make with someone who knows you. Or wants to.

One afternoon, walking past a souvenir kiosk in Midtown, he sees it: a keychain shaped like a corn cob, wearing sunglasses. Embossed on its rubber body:

NEBRASKA — A-MAIZE-ING.

It’s horrible.

He buys it immediately.

He doesn’t leave a note—just sets it on your desk when you’re in a meeting. When you return, he watches from across the bullpen as you pick it up, examine it, and slowly break into a grin.

You don’t say anything.

But the keychain goes on your bag.

And that’s more than enough.

x

He’s been staring at the same paragraph for half an hour.

The words blur, swim, reform in different shapes. He doesn’t even remember what the article is about anymore—just that it’s due, and he’s behind, and his head aches like he skipped breakfast.

Which he did.

And lunch.

He’s about to force himself to power through when something slides into the corner of his vision.

Half a sandwich. Wrapped neatly in wax paper.

You sit on the edge of his desk like it’s nothing. Like you do this every day.

“You eaten?” you ask.

He blinks. “Uh. Not really.”

You nod like that tracks. “It’s turkey. Sorry, no mustard. I don’t trust the office packets anymore.”

You don’t wait for him to say thank you. Just hop down and walk back to your desk, already mid-conversation with someone else like handing him food wasn’t the kindest thing anyone’s done for him in weeks.

Clark unwraps the sandwich slowly. It’s not the food.

It’s the fact that you noticed.

It’s the fact that you cared enough to share something small, without asking for anything back.

He chews quietly, watching you laugh at something across the bullpen. The ache in his head starts to fade.

A few days later, he leaves something folded on the corner of your desk.

It’s a napkin from the break room. On it, a careful ballpoint pen drawing: your name, hidden inside a tiny, sketched city skyline. Fire escapes. Rooftops. A water tower. A coffee cup drawn on the roof of one building like a beacon.

You pick it up during a lull and glance across the room.

He looks up just in time to see your expression shift—confused, then fond.

You hold up the napkin with one brow raised.

He shrugs, sheepish. “I got bored.”

You roll your eyes. But you don’t throw it away.

You tuck it into the notebook you always carry.

And Clark spends the rest of the day smiling, just a little.

x

It starts in the middle of a deadline week, when everything’s buzzing and no one’s getting enough sleep.

You’re typing like your life depends on it, eyes narrowed, lip caught between your teeth. Clark glances over, barely even aware of the hum at first—just a low, rhythmic noise, almost under your breath.

It takes a second to register.

Dun dun.

Dun dun.

Dun dun dun dun—

“Are you humming the Jaws theme?” he asks, incredulous.

You don’t even look up. “Helps me focus.”

“That’s…worrying.”

You grin without turning around. “Don’t knock it. This article’s not gonna bite itself.”

He laughs—fully, helplessly—and you keep humming, just a little louder now. Like it’s a joke only the two of you are in on.

After that, it becomes a thing.

Any time you’re working intensely, the humming starts. Sometimes dramatically. Sometimes obnoxiously loud. Once, Clark walks by your desk and you snap at him: “You distracted me, Kent! I was mid-attack!”

He brings you a granola bar in surrender.

A few days later, he finds a small plastic shark sitting on his desk.

Its mouth is open wide in a cartoonish grin. It’s painted a bright, almost offensive blue. Clearly from a dollar store, possibly meant for a fish tank. The tag still dangles from its fin: “Jawsome!”

No note. Just the shark. Proudly perched on top of his stapler like a tiny aquatic guardian.

Clark holds it up, smirking.

You glance over from your screen. “You’ve been officially marked.”

He places it right back on the stapler. No one is allowed to touch it after that. Not even Perry.

He never says it, but that dumb shark means something.

A shared joke. A private language. A piece of your brain carved out just for him.

Clark thinks, softly, barely there:

This is how it starts, isn’t it?

x

He feels like he's made of concrete.

Every limb heavy. Every breath slow.

He doesn’t remember sleeping. Not really. Just flashes—his apartment ceiling, the blinking streetlight outside, the steady loop of everything he couldn’t stop thinking about.

It shows on him. He knows that. He didn’t even try to hide it this time.

His tie’s crooked. His eyes are dull. His shirt is wrinkled enough that Lois made a noise when she saw him, like she was personally offended by the fabric.

He trudges through the bullpen, keeps his head down. Reaches his desk.

And freezes.

There’s a cup waiting for him. A paper to-go one, the lid slightly askew. Still warm. He stares at it.

You look up from your computer without saying anything.

He lifts the lid and takes a sip.

It’s cocoa.

Perfectly made—just enough sweetness, not too thick. A sprinkle of cinnamon. Exactly how he likes it. Exactly how he needs it when the weight gets too heavy.

“How did you…?” he asks, voice still rough.

You shrug. “You always want it when you’ve had a bad day.”

Clark doesn’t have an answer for that.

Just stands there for a beat, cocoa in hand, wondering how someone could know him so quietly. So well.

Later that day, when you’re in the copy room, he leaves something on your desk.

It’s tiny—barely the size of your thumb. A small glass bottle, stoppered at the top and filled with fine silver glitter. Tied around its neck: a piece of folded paper.

When you open it, the message is simple, scrawled in his neat handwriting:

For emergencies.

You don’t say anything when you return.

But when he looks up, you’re holding the bottle up to the light, watching the glitter swirl like a snow globe.

You smile.

And Clark feels something shift in his chest—gently, deeply.

Like maybe, just maybe, he’s allowed to be held, too.

x

The walk home becomes a ritual.

Sometimes you talk. Sometimes you just exist next to each other, sharing the quiet hum of the evening.

One night, you tell him about your weird high school poetry phase—scribbled lines hidden in notebooks, awkward rhymes about stars and loneliness.

He tells you about Ma—how she believed in things bigger than just right and wrong, and how she taught him to find light even in dark places.

The city softens around you. Streetlamps flicker to life, casting pools of gold on cracked sidewalks.

At one point, you stoop down and pick up a rock, smooth and shaped vaguely like a heart.

You hand it to him with a grin. “This is a metaphor. Don’t drop it.”

He slips it into his coat pocket without a word but promises himself he never will.

Clark is in love. Probably.

He hasn’t necessarily had that much experience with it, but the feeling seems right. The pull deep behind his ribs feels like love. It makes him want to write poems. Things like “Ode to the Shape of Wet Footprints Outside the Shower” or “Sonnets in the Key of Enamored”.

He’s not a writer, though. Not like that.

Still, he thinks he should tell you. Something. If not all of it, at least the way his heart stutters in his chest when you get him cocoa without asking. Like you know he wants it—needs it sometimes.

And, besides, Ma always said secrets hurt you more than they ever hurt the other person. She was talking about rumors, but, still, Clark thinks the logic holds.

Maybe it’s time he stopped hiding.

x

You pitch it like a joke, like you’re half-serious, half-trying-not-to-care.

“What if we went on vacation here? Stayed in some little hotel? Went swimming and ate greasy takeout?”

He blinks, not expecting you to actually want to do it. But when you look at him, waiting for a “no,” and he doesn’t say it, you smile.

So, he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.”

It feels like the first time he’s agreed to something without overthinking it. No mission, no deadline, no hero stuff. Just you and him, being stupid and normal.

And somehow that’s exactly what he needs.

x

The hotel isn’t fancy. Just a room with a tiny pool, a bed too small for comfort, and enough quiet to feel miles away from everything.

You jump in the pool even though the water’s freezing. You laugh like a kid while he tries to hold his breath underwater, failing miserably. You splash, make dumb faces, and forget the world for a little while.

Dinner’s takeout—messy, greasy, and nothing like what you usually eat. You both sit on his bed, share fries like thieves, teasing each other over who’s the better snack bandit. It’s ridiculous. It’s perfect.

It all seems to go sideways when you start to leave, go to your own room.

You linger in his doorway, lean against the doorframe like there’s something you want to say.

Instead, you only lean forward, press a kiss to his lips.

And, it happens too fast for him to catch up, to kiss you back. You’re gone before he can even realize he wants to.

“I'm sorry,” you mumble. “I’m sorry. That was…” You trail off, shake your head. “I shouldn’t have done that.

“No,” Clark starts, but you’re already turning, already running down the hall to your own room.

You leave him standing barefoot on the hotel carpet, feeling for all the world like a fool.

x

The room feels off.

Too still, like even the air’s holding its breath. The leftover takeout is cold now, fries gone limp in their box. Your laughter clings to the walls like chlorine from the pool to his skin—fading, but not gone. Not yet.

Clark sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing in particular. His hair’s still damp, and the pillow behind him is proof he didn’t think to dry off before collapsing back here.

It all replays on a loop:

You, jumping into the pool without hesitating.

You, with fry tusks and that ridiculous grin.

You, standing in the doorway, looking at him like you meant it.

And then—

The kiss.

Soft. Quick.

Enough to undo him.

He hadn’t expected it. Not really. He’d hoped for it—somewhere deep and unspoken—but he didn’t think you’d actually do it. And when you did, when your lips touched his, it felt like gravity flipped sideways.

He didn’t kiss you back. Not because he didn’t want to—he just froze. His whole body went still except for his heart, which was suddenly trying to punch its way out of his chest.

Then you were apologizing. Backing away. Already gone.

He didn’t chase you.

He should’ve.

Now, all he has is silence, chlorine skin, and a pit in his stomach that won’t let him sleep.

x

He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

He’s standing in front of your door, hoodie sleeves pulled over his fists like armor. It’s late. Or early. The hotel hallway hums with that weird, too clean quiet that only shows up at 3 AM.

He raises his hand to knock. Pauses. Drops it again.

Tries to find the version of himself that doesn’t mess this up. Fails.

Then he knocks—soft, but definite.

When you open the door, he forgets everything he practiced on the walk over.

Your eyes are tired. Or maybe just surprised. He can’t tell which.

“Hi,” he says, stupidly.

You don’t say anything at first. Just wait.

He swallows. “I couldn’t sleep.”

You nod once. Still nothing.

He shifts his weight, tries again. “About last night—I didn’t kiss you back. I know. I didn’t move. And I’m sorry if that made you think I didn’t want to.”

He takes a breath, lets it out slow.

“I did. I do. I just panicked. It hit me out of nowhere and I froze. But it wasn’t a no. It was never a no.”

You open the door a little wider, and Clark’s heart stumbles. He doesn’t take a step in. Not yet.

“I’m not really good at this,” he says. “Feelings. Or saying them. But I’ve been sitting in that room trying to figure out what to do, and I kept thinking—what if I don’t say anything and you think I didn’t care?”

He looks down. Then back up.

“I care.”

Three small words. Heavy in his mouth.

He means them.

He stands there, waiting. Hoping. Braced for whatever comes next.

x

You don’t say anything at first. Just look at him like you’re still trying to figure out what to do with the pieces of last night.

Clark holds your gaze. It takes everything in him not to look away. Not because he’s scared of you—he’s scared of hope. Of getting it wrong. Of wanting too much.

Then, slowly, you step closer. Close enough that he can see the tiny crease between your eyebrows ease up.

You reach out—fingers brushing his hoodie like you’re asking permission.

And he nods. Just barely. But it’s enough.

The kiss isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t need to be. It’s not fireworks or movie scores or a grand sweeping anything.

It’s quiet. Steady. The kind of kiss that feels like a beginning.

When you pull back, you’re both a little breathless. But more than that—you’re calm. Like the world has finally taken its foot off your chest.

Clark lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. The nerves curled at the base of his spine uncoil.

You smile. Just a little.

He smiles back.

And that’s it.

Two people standing in the middle of a hotel hallway, choosing—maybe for the first time—to stop running.

x

It’s nothing special.

Just a Wednesday. A lunch break long enough to breathe, sitting on the concrete ledge outside the office, the two of you watching pigeons fight over half a bagel someone dropped.

Clark doesn’t say much. He doesn’t need to. The air between you is easy now—careful, still, but not tense. Like walking on soft earth. Like something just beginning to take root.

You’re telling him a story—something about a printer jam and someone trying to fix it with a spoon—and he’s nodding along, grinning at all the right parts, but mostly?

He’s focused on what’s in his pocket.

He pulls it out without ceremony.

A tiny plastic astronaut. The kind you’d find in a vending machine. One arm melted just slightly, like it got too close to a candle or someone’s hair straightener. Its face is a shiny gold bubble—no features. Just space.

He sets it beside your coffee cup.

“I saw it and thought of you,” he says, like it’s nothing.

You look at it. Then at him. “Because I’m brave and heroic?”

He shrugs. “Because you launched me into emotional orbit and then abandoned me in deep space, obviously.”

You laugh—the kind of laugh that catches you off guard. That full-body kind.

And then—without even glancing down—Clark reaches for your hand.

And this time, he doesn’t hesitate.

His fingers brush yours. You curl them back.

The astronaut sits between you like a witness. Slightly melted. Slightly ridiculous.

Exactly right.

Clark looks over at you. You’re still smiling. Still here.

No fanfare. No grand declarations.

Just this:

A shared bench. A new trinket. Two people willing to try.

And for once, Clark doesn’t wonder if he’s messing it up.

He just lets it be.

Soft. Simple.

The photos of him online don’t do him justice. 

“It’s not bad. I know it hurts, but,” —his hand finds your shoulder, squeezes lightly— “it’s because it’s so high up, alright? They always bleed more. It doesn’t mean this is anything to worry about beyond fixing you up and getting you some pain relief.” 

“You– you’re real help.” 

He holds your gaze. “Yeah?” 

You wonder if he can feel the heat of your blush. It’s all over. He’s lucky your head wound doesn’t start spurting. “Yeah– yeah, I– Superman.” 

His smile is everything. “What?” he asks patiently. 

“I’m a big fan of– of yours.” 

“You are?” 

“You’re so brave,” you breathe out in a rush, though it hurts your head. “So brave. And– and…” 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, putting a little more pressure on your temple. “Thank you for being a fan. All I want is to keep everyone safe.” 

“You’re so gentle with everyone, even the aliens, and– you’re pretty…” 

“Pretty?” he asks, pure surprise in his voice, his hand falling off of your arm. 

You wince. “Yeah. Yes. Handsome. Sorry, you must get told that so much.” 

“It’s okay. I won’t hold you to anything you say. You’re injured, after all.” 

His teasing tone pretty much flies over your head. “No, I’m not lying. I mean it. You’re really lovely, and what you do, it makes you lovelier, it does–” You nearly choke on your enthusiasm. He has to know.

“Don’t get wound up, I’m sorry. I believe you. Let’s try to stay calm.” 

Your head is aching in a new way, now. Less the sting of a wide cut, more beating, like a whirl in your own brain twisting and shaking, dizziness alive behind your eyes and threatening to knock you over. You clutch at Superman’s arm and he knows what you need, slipping his free arm behind your back before you can collapse. 

“I don’t usually get crushes on people,” you inform him. “But it was hard not to get one with you. You’re even nicer than I thought you’d be.” 

“It’s easy to be nice to you. Easy as breathing.” 

Superman hugs you. You swear he does. But when the concussion begins to clear up and your confusion wanes in a hospital bed outside of the battle zone, you realise that he was holding you upright. Superman doesn’t know you, he never will, and you’re okay with it in the grand scheme of things. If you had to meet him, you’re glad it was while he was keeping you safe. He really is a good guy. 

—

A week later, Clark Kent is waiting for you at the doors to the Daily Planet. 

“Are you sure you don’t need more rest?” he asks, forcibly removing your handbag from your shoulder to carry himself.

“I’m sure.”

“It’s okay if you need more time to recover. You’re still wearing a dressing.” 

“It’s a bandaid, Clark, and it’s to hide the scar for now, it’s–”

“It’s still a wound.” 

“It’s fine! You saw it, you know it’s fine.” 

Your overbearing best friend had surprise-visited you the day after your injury despite a text to tell him to stay home. You’re fine. It was a cut and the mildest concussion you could’ve had. You didn’t throw up, or collapse, you’d simply gotten confused and bled all over Metropolis’ finest super hero until his hands were more red than white.

“It looked awful, it still does.” 

“It looks fine. Even the nurse said it was a small cut, in an unfortunate place.”

“Very unfortunate.” 

You follow him to the elevator bank with a frown. “Clark, you don’t have to sulk.” 

“I’m not sulking! I just don’t see what’s wrong with staying in bed for now.” 

“I have stuff to do, babe. I have to work. I have to move forward, it barely hurts anymore.” 

He likes being called babe, simpering accordingly. “Well, you’re sitting down all day. Doctor’s orders.” 

“Show me your oath and I’ll consider it.” 

“Please?” 

He looks like he could cry. Not that he will, but like he could if you keep saying no to him. And despite all your grievances with being treated like you’re fragile now, you decide to take it easy, if only to give Clark the peace of mind. “Okay, sure. You can wait on me all day.” 

“Yes. Thank you.” 

Clark’s your best friend because —no matter how much it might confuse you— he seems to really love you, maybe from the moment he met you. You started at the Daily Planet and he took to you like a duck takes to water. Everything you said made him laugh, every recipe you wrote was one he had to try. And you figured it was something boys tend to do, right? Pretend you‘re interesting until they get what they want from you, but Clark’s never asked for anything else, loving you wholly and expecting nothing in return. 

You let him swing an arm around your shoulders, a mirror of himself those few nights ago where he’d come shaky and sorry to see you. He apologised for not being there when you got hurt, as if he could’ve stopped it. 

“I’m sick of working already,” you say. 

“Then let’s go home.” 

“Clark. I’m being conversational.” 

“Don’t tease me,” he pleads, sounding all sudden and whiney. You squirm out of his arms to poke his side. Gets more solid by the day. Idiot boy. 

“Have you been working out?” 

“Can you stop?” 

“Can I stop? You’re a nightmare.”

Clark threatens to superglue you to your deskchair, but he titters around you hopelessly all day. 

— 

You’re laying on the gravel roof of your apartment on top of a sun lounger, trying to decide if getting some sun is worth all the noise. Beeping, birds, cars, doors, the wind, this high up and occasionally curving through buildings to kiss your skin —noise, noise, noise. Your phone is ringing while you ignore it, desperate to get through the last chapter of your book without interruption. You have thus far been foiled, and figured nobody’d be able to find you up here. 

The quick, awful zip of a high impact sounds somewhere close. You nearly topple from your lounger, a hand pressed to your chest, your heart racing near painfully at the surprise. You whip your head to the horizon looking for smoke, but there’s nothing. For a few minutes, you can’t hear anything at all. 

The shape of him descends before your mind can catch up. Then, he’s there in one piece. A touchable dream, Carol Ann Duffy at work and torturing you in passing. You’ve seen a ton of photos of him, hundreds, videos of girls recording to ask him sweet questions, and you’ve never seen him smile so shyly. You shiver violently down your arms, but Superman isn’t here to hurt you. 

“I’ve been looking for you.” 

“You were?” you ask.

“I wanted to make sure you were doing okay.” 

You sit up properly. The book in your lap makes a crunching noise that you happily ignore. “I’m fine. I’m fine, did you– You’re here to see if I’m okay?” 

His smile strengthens. “Is that okay?” 

You stammer, “Of course it’s okay!” A flush rises from your chest to your cheeks as he stays there. He’s not leaving until you answer. Holy fuck. “I’m great, Superman. All healed up.” 

“Are you sure? You still have–” He gestures to your bandaid. 

“It’s to keep it clean in the daytime. I take it off before bed.” 

“Does it hurt?” 

“No, of course not.” 

“Why of course not?” 

Your heart makes a funny pulse. Handsome isn’t the right word for him. There’s something special about it, otherworldly, literally, the cut of his jaw somehow sharp and soft at once, his pert nose, his eyes gone light in the sunshine and framed by dark lashes that beg to be touched. You imagine running a fingertip along them, gently brushing them up for no reason at all, and he narrows his gaze at you in your silence. The shorts you’re wearing have you worrying you’re underdressed in his eyes. They’re pajamas, pink with black polka dots and edgings. You’d had the forethought to wear a short-sleeve rather than a vest lest one of your neighbours find themselves up here with the same quiet idea. Superman’s fully clothed in comparison. 

His boots look formidable next to your puppy dog socks. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” you promise, half-lying and uncaring. Superman saved you. He’s perfect, so your head doesn’t hurt. 

“You seem a little flustered, is all.” 

“Oh. Oh, well, it’s hot out, and I’m not like, super used to being in your company. Or any company, um, like yours.” 

“You’ve never met a metahuman?” 

“No, never.” 

“We’re just like everybody else.” 

You laugh. 

“No, really,” he says, idling toward you, red boots treading the gravel down flat. “I’m just like you, you don’t have to be nervous.” 

“Sorry.” 

“Now what do you have to be sorry for?” 

You laugh again, a giggle you’d never admit to. He’s strangely intimidating; a presence, but not an imposing one.

“What are you reading?” he asks, nodding to your lap. 

“Oh, uh. Uh, it’s called The Ocean?” You straighten up the book to show him the cover. “It’s good, uh, the main character is a young boy who wants to find his father, I think it’s supposed to be a take on The Odyssey,” 

“Why is he looking for his father?” 

“He’s missing after a terrible war. It’s one of those ones that hurts the entire time but the ending has wrapped it up so nicely, it was worth it.”

“Maybe I’ll read it, too. You look like someone who has great taste.” 

“You can borrow my copy.” 

Superman’s gaze narrows again. “You’re finished?” 

“Yeah, I finished it before you got here.” 

He waits in the quiet. You’re sure he’s going to call you out for your lie. It's not as though a Kryptonian truth-radar would be outside of the realm of possibility. 

Superman finally smiles. “I promise to bring it back,” he says simply. 

“Sure. Well, take your time.” 

—

How long can it possibly take a superhero to read one book?

You shouldn't be thinking about it again. Poor Clark is sitting in the corner of the couch with your feet stuck under his thighs, telling you about the grocery store widow who asks him for help to take her groceries out to her car whenever she sees him. She’d spotted him at the produce section today and dibsed him, and Clark doesn’t mind (though she leaves her car at the back of the parking lot no matter the weather). In fact, Clark doesn’t bring it up to complain. He’s sympathising with her, how lonely she must be. 

You try to shake Superman from your head while Clark is talking, but the thoughts of him won’t budge. 

You’d made a fool of yourself on the roof. Superman had taken your book to be polite. He probably won’t come back. 

“Hey.” 

You lift your head. 

Clark’s looking at you. Big blue eyes in a classic face, the line of his glasses dark and heavy against his brow. They trace your expression, searching for the misery you’ve failed to hide, until he finds it in the creases of your eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks. His voice is weak with worry. 

“Nothing.”

“It’s something.”

“It’s really not.” 

“It definitely is. You can tell me about anything, you know. Or you don’t have to tell me, but I’ll be here for you no matter what. Some food for thought.” 

“Food for thought. Eat this, Kent,” you say, jabbing him at the top of the thigh with your heel. 

Clark grabs your foot. “Come on. I know something’s wrong, and I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me, but…” He lets your foot smack down into the top of his thigh to grab his tea instead.

“Isn’t that cold?” you ask. 

“It’s tepid,” he allows after a sip.

You laugh, so he laughs. It’s a lovely sound.

“Again. Again, you don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, but I’d listen if you wanted me to.”

“Don’t try and make out like you’re not keeping secrets.” 

Clark goes slack-jawed. “Sorry?” 

“You don’t tell me everything. I know exactly where you disappear to all the time.” 

“You do?” 

You climb up on your knees and settle in front of him. You’re wearing those pink polka dot shorts like you were on the roof with Superman, in hopes they’ll summon him to you like a talisman. Clark presses his lips together, watching you closely as you take his face into your hands. 

“You’re dating Lois Lane,” you say. 

His fingers dust your elbow. “What?” 

“You’re sweet on her, aren’t you? Plus, you’re busy all the time. You’ve cancelled movie night three times this month, did you know?” 

“I’m sorry–”

“I’m not. I’m happy for you.” 

Clark shakes his head. “But Lois and I… I mean, not for months. We were almost something, I think, but no. Not for a while.” 

You let your hands fall off of his cheeks. “Oh. Sorry, Clark.” 

“Don’t be. I should’ve told you, but it was new and then it was over.” 

“You should’ve told me,” you agree, “but I sort of get why you didn’t. I’m your girl best friend. That’s a thing.”

“You’re my best friend,” he promises, no ‘girl’ prefix necessary. “That’s not why it ended, Lois isn’t like that. It was… we disagreed on so many things. Looking back, I think she was right about most of it.”

“Well, she’s a girl.”

“That she is. You’re all the same, aren’t you? All dazzling.” 

He says it with an earnestness that reminds you of the other half of your friendship-equation. Clark’s your best friend because he loves your work and your jokes and your company, and you’re his best friend because he’s good as gold, inside out, just awfully lovable.

“You’re ’dazzling’ too,” you say. “You are.”

Clark offers you his mug of tea. You take a sip for something to do. 

“Not that cold,” you murmur. 

“I never realised you were such a liar.” 

“I don’t really lie to you, Clark.” 

He leans up to kiss your head, chaste against your purpling scar. “I know.”

—

“So, this book–”

You jump hard enough to send your groceries five different ways, oranges and kiwis for Clark flying up in the air. They never hit the ground —Superman catches them in two hands. 

Your loaf of bread lays cradled in his arm like a baby. 

“Fuck,” you complain. 

“I’m sorry.” Superman laughs at you. Laughs. “Sorry. But this book, is there a sequel?” 

“What?” you ask. Superman tips your groceries into your waiting paper bag. 

“I think I need a sequel.” He pulls The Ocean from a pocket and squeezes it unkindly. “I think it ruined my life.” 

“There’s no sequel. But–” don’t spoil the ending for me, you almost say. “Did you enjoy it at all?” 

“It was good. Do you read a lot, or are you down to the real heart-achers?” 

“Uh, I guess. Well, no, I used to read more, but I didn’t have time for a while ‘n now I’m usually too stirred up to settle down.” 

“You cook.” 

You blink. “You googled me?” 

“No, how could I? But I did see you on the third page of the Daily Planet. You have a little author’s window. You made pumpkin pie.”

“For Thanksgiving weekend, yeah. They only ever put me near the front or on the main page of the website if it’s the holidays.” 

“Is that true?” 

You shake your head. Not to say no, to say, let’s not talk about it. Silly insecurities are unnecessary conversation. At least, they are with him. 

Someone gasps from behind you. With one comes a few. The people near the crosswalk are starting to notice Superman’s tall figure standing in the sun, and though you’d wish he’d managed to hide in the shadows, you admit to yourself that there’s nowhere else he could ever be. He looks right in the sun. 

“Do you want to come with me?” he asks. 

Do you want to go with him? What the fuck does he think? said in your head ecstatically, not a lick of derision against him. Your excitement nearly blinds you. 

“Yeah,” you say, practically mumbling, wanting to come off nonchalant and instead sounding painfully shy, even to your own ears. 

“Yeah?” He offers an arm. “Come here.”

Your charmed little laugh makes him grin. “Alright?” he asks, locking an arm around you vice-tight. 

“Where are we–”

The air leaves your lungs in one fell swoop. There and gone, breathless and weightless in tandem.

The sky is more than blue when you’re in it. 

There’s nothing you can say about it. You’re terrified Superman is going to drop you, you can hardly breathe from the sudden speed at which you’d been taken up with him, but beyond that, there’s nothing to say. Wordless, endless sky. Blue, blue—

“It’s not as scary as you think, right?” he asks, his head angled down to yours. 

“I expected you to have to shout. I don’t know why.” 

“It’s windier in the air, but we’re close. I don’t need to yell.” 

“You’re lucky I didn’t get many groceries.” 

“You aren’t heavy.” 

You’re delighted. “This is a paper bag, you realise! I’m surprised it didn’t explode the second you got me up here!” 

“I’ll be careful. You’re precious cargo, and you deserve a better experience now than the one you got when you first came up here with me.”

“I don’t remember much of it.” 

“That’s okay. I do.” 

You should feel ridiculous, but strong arms hold you steady. Blue eyes like someone familiar pour over your face, as though they need to see you clearly, with all this perfect light. Your few groceries are squeezed between your chests as you squeeze him by the neck, desperate for the extra security, that he won’t simply let you go, and have you fall. 

“This is amazing,” you breathe, your eyes sweeping down to take in beautiful Metropolis beating away beneath you. The cars look like ants. The buildings cast shadows you’d never noticed from the ground. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s something.” 

You glance up to find him still staring at you. 

The girls on SuperClub would never, ever believe you if you tried to tell them what passes between you, then. (Not that you frequent SuperClub. Often. You see it while scrolling, and you tend to scroll past it with a fond eye roll.) They wouldn’t believe that Superman brings his hand to your head to touch your temple, as though your small scar is a personal affront to him. They wouldn’t believe the way that he pauses when you shudder. Wouldn’t believe how he lets his fingertip tumble down your cheek, or the soft incline of his head. The slightest kiss of his eyelashes meeting in the very corners of his eyes as they almost close. 

“Don’t feel guilty, please,” you say. 

“What?” He sounds as though he’s woken up from a nap. 

“About what happened. It wasn’t your fault that I got hurt. I wanted you to know that. You saved me.” 

Superman lets the distance between your two faces grow. “I…”

“If this is what that is, if you feel like you owe me something, well. You don’t… I don’t know you, Superman, but sometimes I think I do. It’s like… someone I've met before? I can see your bleeding heart.” You offer a brash smile. “But I’m just fine. You promised me that I would be, and I am.” 

“You’re not making this any easier for me.” 

You shift in his grasp, his hair tickling you and the little hairs on your arms. 

“I’m not a very easy person,” you say. 

Superman presses his nose to your cheek. 

“I think you’re giving me tachycardia,” you whisper.

He hears it. Doesn’t answer for a while, and when he does, it’s to neither of the things you said before.

“Let me take you somewhere new,” he says.

—

A day later, Clark asks if he can bring you dinner. Like and unlike himself, to care enough to ask but to forgo his usual boisterous lack of respect when it comes to taking care of you. Clark recognises that you like to be cared for aggressively. That you want someone to care so much that they won’t stop at the first hurdle. You want someone to take it at a sprint, and Clark’s a show off loser-dork who likes taking care of you. 

He meets you at the door, where you show him your small picnic basket kitted with two plates, knives, forks, and a hidden dessert. “Too hot in my apartment,” you say. 

“What’s wrong with the AC?” 

“It’s leaking.” 

“I’ll take a look at it. What happened to that fan I got you?” he asks, his fingers at your wrist trying to steal the basket. 

“Oh, Clark, can’t you just leave me alone?” you plead. 

He laughs like a kid. “I love when you do that.”

“What?” 

“I don’t know, is it sarcasm? I don’t think that’s apt. Whatever it is, when you act like that? You’re really convincing. It’s funny.”

“I can be funny.”

“I know, that’s what I’m saying. You’re really funny. Can you do it some more?”

“Now it’s not natural, though.” 

“Please?”

“Leave it alone, Clark. You’re such a beg.” 

He laughs again. It peters off to a quiet you’d like to live in. His takeout bag rustles, your picnic basket rattles, his fingers brushing the back of your arm as he follows you down the street to the wooded path. 

There’s a small park not far from your apartment that’s been divided into two halves. The playground for the neighbourhood kids, and the picnic tables made of strangely shaped wood. They’re all rounded. One table is shaped like an ‘S’. Another like a filled in ‘8’. 

You sit at the one furthest from the playground, coincidentally shaped like a ‘C’. “For Clark,” you say, pleased. 

“Adorable.” 

You set up your plates, dividing up the food squarely. Clark had the wherewithal to bring two cans of soda and a big bottle of water. He asks which one you want, cracking it open accordingly. “Gonna pour it into my mouth, too?” you tease. 

“Do you not want me to be nice to you?” 

And the night slips away. You eat your takeout at the picnic table and linger until your legs are numb. The grass around the park is damp, but you sit, and you shoot the breeze until the sun starts to go down. It must be hours out there together. 

Clark takes his jacket off and spreads it over your shoulders. “This is your only bad trait,” he says happily. “You never tell me when you’re cold.”

“I’m not that cold.”

“Sure you’re not. Look, come here,” —he pulls you bodily into his side, his voice turning silky as angora— “you act like you’re such a plague, like– I don’t know, like I wouldn’t wanna know that you’re cold.”

“I don’t act like that.” 

“You do. You could rely on me for more, you know? I want you to lean on me.” 

You lean on him.

Clark presses his nose to your temple, his glasses digging into your skin.

And you think, I know you. 

But you don’t know why. 

—

Clark can't believe this is happening again. 

He woke up this morning with a scary yet firm plan: he’s going to get himself together, pluck up what he has in the way of courage, and be honest with you about Superman. If only so he can stop lying to you. He should’ve told you months ago that he was Superman. Hell, he might’ve told you from the moment he met you, that’s how sure he was that he’d love you. As a friend —his best friend, half of his life. There’s this ease, like he’s known you for far longer than he truly has, like he could know you for the rest of his life. 

And lately. 

Oh, lately. Clark can’t get a handle on things. He hadn’t realised he was falling in love with you, isn’t even sure that’s the way to describe it; far from a sharp plummet downward into love, this has felt like a slow and steady ascent, but now suddenly he’s at the mountain top and the air is thin, and he’s looking for you, aching for relief, and you’re sitting in the snow with your book and your shy smile, cross-legged, just waiting for him to get there and open his cowardly mouth. 

Or that’s what he’d like to think. 

Fact of the matter is, Clark would like to kiss you. Hold your hand, have your head rest on his shoulder. He’d like to pull you into his lap and squeeze. Clark could die happy if he got just one shot at it, no matter the outcome. 

He knows he won’t lose you, but he’s worried you don’t want what he wants. He’s gotten so close to having you, he’s not sure he can take being any further apart than this. 

Clark takes the tramline to the rich part of the city with the best florist. There are buckets and buckets of flowers; orange tiger lilies and white orchids turned green in the sun; roses as big as his fist, unfurling; sweet peas kissing pinkest camellias all tangled up with baby’s breath. He chooses the sweet peas. They really are sweet, their hemmed edge petals curling in and nearly blue. They’re beautiful. He can see them in a glass on your nightstand by tonight if he’s lucky.

It’s on the walk to your apartment (tramline too busy to risk, lest your flowers get hurt) that the trouble begins. 

The light goes out. 

It doesn’t make logical sense. He’s outdoors. It’s the early morning, the sun should be shining for hours to come. 

He looks up and finds a singular dark rectangle over Earth. 

It blots out everything, disapears the clouds, turns the blue sweetpeas in his hand a tired shade of grey. 

Clark wonders if he should’ve told you how he felt when he had the chance. Then, he leaves his glasses, his jacket, and his sweetpeas in the hedgerow at the park with alphabet picnic tables and throws himself upwards into the sky.

—

What emerges from the spaceship (and it is a spaceship, made of an element humans aren’t want to touch) are creatures shaped like spinning asterisks, wisps of their angel-white bodies bending the shadows they’ve cast down onto Metropolis. It’s like smoke. 

The dark makes it hard to breathe. 

You sit huddled in your bedroom looking out through the window, despite a desperate urge to hide somewhere further inward. Sirens echo throughout otherwise quiet streets, discordant wailing that wavers for long, sharp minutes. There had been screaming and crying and the splintering sounds of glass. It’s not —not unseeable, out there, but anyone with poor vision will find themselves stranded.

You open your phone. Your theory is that the aliens have been able to dampen sound as well as sun, leaving the battlefield dangerously quiet. Clark’s not answering your texts because he never has his phone, but you’re sure he’s out there somewhere. He told you he was coming. The last message he sent this morning blinks at you from the bottom of your screen: Coming by soon if you’re not busy, do you want me to bring breakfast? 

You’d said, just some eggs please if you want eggs 

You’d said, hey, are you safe? What’s with the dark? 

You’d said, clark please text me back right now, I’m freaking out, do you need me to come get you? 

He won’t answer the phone. Outside, up in the sky where it’s darker still and the white shadows have begun to ripple, the occasional red beam of heat slices into whiteness, turning it to shadows again. There are two sets of red if you watch carefully. Green light flickers at the ground. 

And Clark Kent is out there all alone. 

You crawl to your shoes under the bed and put them on, pajamas and all. Clark’s blue hoodie lays on the back of your deskchair. You shrug it on. 

He’s gonna lose his entire mind if you do find him out there. Can friends ground you? Because Clark’s going to ground you. But you’d rather be grounded than all alone. 

—

Superman groans into the floor, his tongue coated in dust. 

He has far better vision than a person feasibly needs. He wore a pair of glasses once that are supposed to approximate what it’s like to have legal blindness, and he’d felt suddenly, achingly sorry for the human race. But then he’d found the glasses stand beside it with all their different prescriptions and shrugged it off. Humans are brilliant. He’s in awe of their persistence, their resilience, and their strength. He knows he can find it in himself to go on because they can, too. 

He has better vision, and still he finds himself batted away from the entities like a bothersome fruit fly. 

“Krypto?” he asks into the smog. 

His borrowed dog flies at him with impressive speed, pressing his snout straight into a bruise. 

“Ow!” 

Krypto snuffles and hits at his arms with both paws. 

“Krypto, stop! Jeez, stop. You’re such a pai– Ow! Get off.” 

Krypto nibbles his shoulder. 

Clark forces himself to sit up. At least he hasn’t killed the dog. Kara would probably eviscerate the planet country by country if something happened to her dog, not mentioning the aliens that started this whole thing. And he is good at bringing the suit when Clark needs it. 

He rubs at his eyes and drags himself to his feet, back aching, eyes like sand. Nothing is healing because he can’t feel the sun, but he’s not too hurt. He can take a bad landing. He can take twenty of them. 

“Krypto, stay.” 

Krypto tilts his white blurry head. 

“You’re not helping.” 

Arf! Clark rolls his shoulders and shoots back into the air. 

Krypto stays down, for now. 

Clark takes a lap through the air, searching for signs of life with his ears. The eery quiet is beginning to fill with catastrophe.

“Clark?” 

He stops dead in the sky. 

“Clark?” you call, ten miles below him, shouting all clipped and scared. “Clark Kent! Are you out here? If you can hear me, call back to me!”

He says your name.

“Clark? I’m here!” 

Clark looks up into melted-sugar shadows as they begin to curdle and makes a choice. Damn the aliens, they can have the sky, so long as Clark gets to keep you safe. 

He has to keep you safe. 

—

You’re watching a shadow plummet toward you when the sky opens up into shards of Technicolor. Concentrated around a single point of red and blue and moving so fast it turns puce.

—

There’s a scene in The Ocean where the main character realises his father has been dead before the beginning of the book. Dead for years. He goes searching for him because he’s scared to be alone, brave enough to realise it, and young enough to misunderstand the danger of the world. He treks sandbanks, ferries favour, turns in promises and follows the footsteps of a man long dead across the world. Clark told you once, privately, quietly, in a moment that immediately panicked him, that his parents had adopted him, and that his birth parents had left him with a letter after they both died.

What did it say? you’d asked. 

To be good. 

You find your copy of The Ocean cradled in familiar hands. You recognise its secondhand cover, the bends in the front where a previous owner had tented it for a long period of time. The spine is loose and lax with age. The pages are yellow with time. 

Clark is sleeping quietly in the plastic-wrapped chair beside your bed. He doesn’t have a bruise or cut. He doesn’t look anything like Superman had as he’d flung himself at you, two seconds too late, his body a shield against an explosion that lit your body with fire and colour alike. The whole world had been red, and then yellow, and suitably blue. There was pain. 

Not a darkness as people often say. Just hurting and now this. 

You take a scary breath. Hitching and pained, you search for comfort and find none of it. There’s a needle in the back of your hand secured with a teddy bear wrapping. The sheets have been drawn to your chin and choke you as you try to sit. 

After a moment of struggling, you sink back and try for another breath. Deep, aching breaths. You do it until your lungs burn, these awful, stringing breaths, eyes to the ceiling and fighting the spots of nothingness that cloud your vision. 

“Hey,” a soft voice says, softer hand pressed to the curve of your neck. “Oh, hey, sweet girl, hey… it’s okay. The pain won’t last, they gave you a little more morphine a few minutes ago, it’ll kick in.” 

“Uh–”

Clark makes a sound. “Oh.” 

You let your eyes slide to him. He’s checking his wrist where it’s resting on you. 

“I was sleeping for a long time, I… Honey, I’ll get a nurse.” 

“No,” you breathe. 

“Yeah, honey, I’ll get a nurse,” he repeats, stroking your neck with his thumb. His eyes are their usual calm blue, bearing down into your own with an emotion that’s somehow palpable and implacable. “It’s no good, you being in pain like this. I’ll come right back.” 

“Clark, don’t go,” you whine. 

It’s like the world has been placed heavy on your head. 

Clark offers you relief. “I won’t go if you don’t want me to. Tell me what’s hurting, and I’ll fix it.” 

You shake your head at him. Fuck, nothing hurts. It’s not pain you’re being smothered in. 

“Okay,” he murmurs.

For a while, you don’t talk. Clark stays stooped over you, too tall and careful anyhow to stay out of your light. He holds your cheek, rubbing at skin with his thumb until it’s tickled into numbness, your body begging you to move away from his touch and your brain knowing you can’t. You’ll never duck away from his fingertips ever again. 

Where he’d been unhurt, he isn’t unharried. His hair is in a complete disarray, curls in places pulled straight and greasy behind his ears. His face is pale. His eyes flicker obsessively between you and your monitor, as though he can decipher the information it displays. He must see something there that he trusts, sitting down again in the chair dragged quick and easy to the side of your bed. His hand stays at your face. He’s long. It’s simple work. 

“You read The Ocean,” you whisper. 

“I read all your annotations, too,” he tells you, turning his hand to run it down your cheek, his fingernails especially silky against the line of your jaw. 

You turn your face toward his touch. Your eyes flutter closed as he indulges your deepest fantasy. 

“I didn’t–” Oh, you can’t say it. You hadn’t meant to want him like this. You hadn’t known he was Superman, and isn’t that awful? Something cruel. Your best friend kept a worst secret. 

He doesn’t rush you. 

You’re ready to try again a few minutes later. His fingertips have started to draw a flower into your neck. 

“I’m embarrassed that Clark knows what I said to Superman,” you say plainly. 

“Superman didn’t tell Clark anything,” Clark says. His voice is light in contrast to your hesitancy. 

“But you know it all.” 

“I know you,” he agrees. 

“I’m really… sorry. I’m sorry, I–” You search for his touch and he immediately cups your cheek again. “Clark, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come out looking for you. I didn’t realise you could look after yourself and I made things worse.” 

“Do you even remember?” he asks. 

Mildly. You’d woken once before and found a less fixed Clark covered in blood above you. A part of you had understood that it was Clark, even without his glasses, and a different part knew it was Superman. Then things had blurred, half-replaced by a memory of his hand behind your back in the middle of a meadow halfway across the world, that beautiful quiet valley where the water had been ice and the grass emerald velveteen under your legs. 

In the dream, Superman (and this had been real until it wasn’t), turned to you, and said, with Clark’s dorky intonation, “That’s seriously beautiful, huh?”  

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“But–”

“You don’t. I won’t argue about it with you. You have no apologies to make, you did everything right and nothing wrong, and I lied to you, and I got you hurt, and…” He has the gall to pink in the cheeks, like you’ve taken the skin between your knuckles and pinched. “I wasn’t honest with you about my feelings. I almost kissed you as Superman, and that wasn’t fair.” 

“You really are… him?” you ask weakly. 

“Yeah, I am.” 

Clark sits up as a doctor opens your room’s door. 

“Everything okay?” she asks. When she sees you awake, she smiles broadly. “Hey, you’re up! Can we get you some dinner now?” 

“You skipped breakfast,” Clark tells you. 

“I was awake for breakfast?” 

“Barely. We had you on some pretty gnarly painkillers,” the doctor says. She adjusts her white coat. “I just wanted to check in with your nurses and your lovely partner here that you hadn’t thrown up again.” 

You flush. “I’m fine.” 

Clark simply rubs your chest like a wave of his hand against your heart. 

“I’m worried you haven’t gotten enough sustenance this past day, but we try not to hook you up with too many things,” the doctor explains, “much better for you to settle and then eat. And to drink some water!” 

“I don’t feel very hungry.” 

“The painkillers you’re on can make some people feel quite sick. But try your best, okay? I’ll come back after dinner to see what we can do about those broken fingers.” 

You follow your arm down to your hand. Your pinky and ring finger on the non-dominant hand have been splinted but not casted. 

“Oh.” 

The doctor takes her leave, abandoning Clark to your questions. 

“What’s wrong with me?” you ask. 

“You got concussed again. It made you sick, and your hand is very nearly broken, but they think it’s just your fingers from the look of your x-rays. And you have a long cut.” He puts his hand on your stomach gently. “Here. Almost as long as your arm, but it’s a surface cut. You landed on debris. I’m sorry, my– honey. Sorry.” 

You can’t fight the chills or your bewilderment. “What for?”

“I didn’t get to you fast enough.” 

“Clark.” Your mouth is dry. He’s pretty. Your head goes round and round and aching and then with a dash of clarity, the world snaps back into place. Your hospital room is empty and bright, with a vase filled to bursting with sweetpeas in pride of place on your nightstand. There are voices drifting in from the hallway, and Clark is handsome even as he tears himself apart. The silver lining his bottom lashes doesn’t go unnoticed. “I’m okay, babe.” 

He laughs wetly. 

“I’m fine,” you promise, quieter now. “How couldn’t I be? You’re so gentle.” 

Clark finds your hand, pulling it to his forehead, his body bending forward like a marionette on loosening strings. He shakes his head vehemently, his grip on your wrist tight but far from cruel. 

“You’re gentle,” you promise under your breath, “I told you that before, didn’t I? You’re kind, and brave, and– it’s not your fault I went looking for you.” 

“I should be comforting you. I should be helping you,” he whispers. 

“You won’t catch me crying on your shoulder twice, Superman.” 

His head flinches up, like he’s realising for the first time that you know who he is. 

Whatever he sees in your face helps him to settle down. He curls long, thick fingers around your hand. You can’t help noting how adversely tender they feel while he holds your hand. 

“What did you think of the book?” you ask finally. 

“I didn’t know you liked to read,” he says. 

You shrug. Let your head fall back into a thin pillow, wondering how you might go about getting a better one, and beginning to feel the effects of the painkillers they’d been talking about. “It’s not like it’s the most alarming secret, between us.” 

He lets out a wounded whine. “Why do you hate me?” he asks. 

“You’re due some hazing.” 

“Can’t you take pity on me?” he asks. 

You curl your fingers around his where they’d otherwise been limp. “I’m not really half as cool as I’m trying to act, Clark.” 

He sulks beautifully. “I think you’re lying to make me feel better.” 

Only a little. 

—

Being cool around Clark Kent lasts about as long as the morphine does. The reality is this: Clark Kent —best friend extraordinaire, sweetheart farm boy who’s vetted all your worst ideas, held your hair back in the smallest toilet in Metropolis bar history after a too-happy happy hour, knows all your holey socks and questionable medical queries— is Superman. 

And Superman? 

He’d been courting you. 

The word is antiquated and accurate. Superman had been cautiously courting you with his sparse visits, shy and brave at once, brash but remarkably put together. It is after you know the truth that you realise Clark had been not so secretly courting you simultaneously. 

“Is that why you were bringing me dinner and stuff?” you ask, lured into the conversation by accident, now deeply curious. 

“No. I did that stuff before I wanted you. It was hard to sort the feelings into boxes, like– platonically, I’ve loved you since you came into the office with your miserable laptop and– and romantically, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t realise until I tried to kiss you and you wouldn’t let me.” 

“Sorry?” 

“I tried to kiss you, and you thought it was a pity kiss.” 

You hold him by the shoulder. “That was real?” 

“Do you dream about it?” he asks knowingly. 

“It was really going to be a kiss?” 

He softens. Clark, big on your smaller couch, in his pajamas with his hair finally washed again and your hand in his lap, rests his shoulder into yours with a long-suffering sigh. “Best kiss of your life,” he promises. 

“Prove it.” 

“What?” 

It’s been four days since the hospital and Clark is horrifically chaste. “Do you not want to kiss me?” 

“You know I do.” 

“So kiss me.” 

He pinches your chin. “If you wanted a kiss, you could’ve just taken one,” he tells you, looking you straight in the eyes. 

“From Superman?” you ask with a little scoff. 

He moves his head from left to right. “From me,” he says. 

There has been so much to tell him. So little space to hide from him. Lines of books you’d underlined for him, lines for Superman, for both of them. The guilty way you’d watched Clark Kent take off his shirt at the public pool in summer heat and the loop of Superman under your thumb as you’d fallen asleep scrolling SuperClub. You’ve been more honest with him than you’ve dared to be previously. 

Clark has repaid you in kind. 

Did you know, he’d confessed, when you were still grody from the hospital and he’d demanded you let him stay, that night, that everything I’m good at is because of the sun? I can function without it. I can store up the energy in my cells and I don’t need much to stretch it far, but without the yellow sun, I’m just like you? 

How could I know that? you’d thought. Why are you telling me this? you’d asked instead.

I want you to know. 

Clark loves the sun, you realise now. He turns his face up to it often, soaking it in silently. He gets this look whenever he stops to take it in. Perfect contentment. Trust, that it will make him feel better. 

Clark tilts his chin against yours, nudging your face gently inward, giving you the shortest glimpse of that content stretched across a smile as it presses into yours.

You hyperventilate your way into an open-mouthed, gasping sort of thing, and find Clark a fiercer kisser than you could’ve imagined. All those daydreams about Superman saving you from another day copyediting your own messes, you’d never thought to picture the boy sitting at the desk across from you, how his hand might slide behind your neck like water. How he’d take the breath from your lips and offer his own in a shaky, wanting gasp. 

Superman, breathless under your touch. No one would ever believe you. 

“Did you want me to tell you how it ends?” 

You break away from him, panting, vaguely confused. “Sorry?” 

“The Ocean? You never finished it.”

“Oh. Maybe you can read it to me. You know, afterwards.” 

Clark grins. “After,” he promises, leaning down for another kiss. 

˚‧꒰ა ❤︎ ໒꒱‧˚

You tried to reset it, but your powers were weak and you were tired and too far away. You only made it back a few seconds and had to watch him snap again. Then, your knees gave way and the world turned black.

You had a strange dream. You were standing in a twilight realm with nothing but a shallow body of water surrounding you. It was quiet, the air impossibly still, and when you moved, the water didn’t make a sound.

"Still not good enough, I see."

Kaecilius looked the same as he did in your nightmares, a stern face and purple-rimmed eyes.

"You’re not here," you whispered. "You’re dead."

"For now," he agreed.

Your hands balled into fists by your sides. "I’m not afraid of you."

Your voice only shook a little bit.

"Of course not," Kaecilius replied. "Fear would be useful." He lifted his arms. "Look around. What do you see?"

"Nothing," you said. "It’s empty."

"Is it, now?"

You watched the shaking reflections at your feet. A dull greenish glimmer surrounded your mirror image, like something was shining at you from behind. When you turned to look over your shoulder, there was nothing.

"Untethered," Kaecilius said quietly.

"What?"

"That’s the price for freedom." He tilted his chin to look at you, and there was that familiar tug in your chest. "Tell me, was it worth it?"

"I lost everything once. I’m not doing it again."

"Oh, but you will."

You couldn’t tell if it was meant as a promise or a warning. Before you could say anything else, the world around you began to flicker at its edges and faded into true nothingness, once and for all.

When you woke up in the med wing, they told you Steve had gone.

"Gone?" you asked, confused. "Gone where?"

"Back," they said, but that was impossible. He was a man out of time, always had been, but he wasn’t supposed to get lost. He had found his place, right here, with his friends, with his family, now that everyone was finally back. He was supposed to be there as you all rebuilt the world.

After Nat, you hadn’t expected to lose him, too, when you’d already lost so many people, and so your body didn’t know how to react. You were stuck in shock and grief in a frozen universe for hours before sleep finally dragged you back down and the world resumed, as it always did.

Continuing, despite.

If this was victory, you didn’t want any part in it.

* * * * *

You’re so warm.

You blink into consciousness deliciously slowly, the midday sun tickling your nose. A steady heartbeat thrums right underneath your ear. You cannot remember the last time you slept this comfortably.

Bucky gently squeezes your side, his right hand continuing to trace invisible lines on the back of your neck. "Hey."

"Hi."

How strange to think that you might just be allowed to kiss him now. How adrenaline spiking.

So you do.

You’re still sprawled on top of Bucky, and nothing has ever felt as right as brushing your lips against his and having him hum into your mouth in response. Again. Again. Why couldn’t the rest of the loop have been just like this?

"We should probably get up," he says finally.

"Are you kidding? I’m never getting up from this couch again." You snuggle closer to him, your nose pressing against his neck. "Tell me something I don't know."

His soft laugh shakes your entire body. "There's several books I could fill with stuff you don't know about."

"Well, I'm starting to run out of things to read, anyway."

Bucky’s fingers keep wandering, brushing your ear, your cheek, careful, soothing touches. As if he’s not quite certain, yet, that you’re not just going to vanish between his hands.

"You were never afraid of me," he says quietly.

You keep playing with the collar of his shirt, the fabric softened with wear. "Why would I have been afraid of you?"

"Even when we first met, when I was awful to you—"

"You weren't awful—"

"No, I was. And you didn't care. At first I thought it was because of your powers, but …" He lets out a sigh. "It's been a very long time since a complete stranger's treated me like a normal guy."

You prop up your chin on his chest. "You are a normal guy."

There's protest in his eyes, but he doesn't voice it. "It was nice," he says instead, "to get to just be myself."

"Ah. So your true self is a complaining asshole."

A playful grin twinkles in his eyes. "Don't pretend like you've hated all of our fights."

You roll your eyes and kiss him again. "I much prefer this."

"Good," Bucky says into your mouth, his voice lower than usual. "Me too."

"Glad we’re agreed for once."

He smiles against your lips, deepening the kiss. You trace the ghost of his dimples underneath his stubbled cheeks, slipping your hands into his hair as he rolls you both over, his weight pressing down on you, your mind finally, blissfully shutting up. You could stay forever in this moment.

"Really? On the couch? Don’t you people have rooms? You know, with doors you could lock?"

"Busted," you stage-whisper.

Bucky’s pupils are huge as he stares down at you, lips red, his hair perfectly mussed. The sight makes you stupidly happy.

Sam clears his throat exaggeratedly, and when your gaze turns to him, he has a shit-eating grin on his face. "Nice to see the two of you … getting along."

"Shut up, Sam," you both say at the same time.

"Seriously though, this," he gestures vaguely at both of you with his spoon, "is good, and it's about damn time, but get a room."

"Don’t you have a speech to write?" Bucky says roughly.

"Get lost, Barnes," Sam replies.

Bucky's smile flickers as he catches your lips with his one more time before sitting up, pulling you with him. His fingers interlock with yours easily, like he's been doing it for ages, his thumb circling the back of your hand.

Something in your chest aches when he pulls away from you, half-expecting the world to fall away and for you to wake up alone in your bed again; but nothing happens. Still, you don't want him to stop touching you, and not just for reality's sake.

"Did you want something?" Bucky asks, talking to Sam while keeping his attention on you.

"Lunch. How do you guys feel about Italian?"

"God, no," Bucky says.

"Literally anything else, please," you say.

"Alright, subtle," Sam snorts. "What, then?"

Bucky raises his eyebrows at you. "I can make lunch," he suggests.

"Jesus Christ," Sam replies.

"Italian sounds great, actually," you add.

"Hey," Bucky says, frowning at you.

"I don't want flames erupting from the oven again."

"That was one time and also not my fault."

One time that he remembers, at least. "Then whose was it, the cat's?"

Alpine, who’s just entered the couch table, meows in protest.

"I can cook," Bucky says.

"Anyone can cook," you reply sweetly. "Doesn't mean everyone should."

"Bold statement from someone who burns coffee for a living."

"If I don’t get another suggestion in the next ten seconds, you can both starve," Sam interrupts.

You think about any options you’ve not grown completely sick of yet. "How about Korean?"

"Thank you," he says, going back to his laptop. The conversation stalls for a while as you try to ignore Bucky’s sideward glances. Finally, Sam looks back at the two of you again, his eyebrow raised. "So when exactly did that happen?"

You exchange a quick look.

"Now, come on, Sam," Bucky says with a smirk. "It’s not like it came overnight."

"You sure about that?" you grin.

"Ew," Sam says. "Whatever that just was, ew. I’m retracting my question. I’m going to make a call."

"Say hi to Sarah!" you call after him.

He makes a crude gesture with his spoon that makes you laugh.

"What was that about my cooking?" Bucky says.

"We’ll work on it," you grin. "We might need another fifty Fridays or so, but one day I’m sure you’ll—" You yelp when he abruptly pulls you into his lap.

"I’ll what?" he asks, and his breath brushes over your lips.

You swallow. "Get there eventually."

"Anyone ever tell you you’re awfully bossy?"

"You did." You lean closer again, lowering your voice. "I think you like it."

He doesn’t respond verbally to that.

Without breaking the kiss, you reach for his left hand and pull it around yourself, shivering pleasantly at the cool touch against your skin. He hesitates briefly before letting his metal fingers curl around your waist, grasping you tighter.

Finally, with a groan, he gently pushes you away.

"I hate to say it," he says, sounding almost wrecked, "but Sam might be onto something."

"You okay?"

He laughs breathlessly, a distinct blush spreading on his cheeks. "Give me a moment."

Alpine chooses that exact moment to claim her spot on the couch once again, meowing at both of you disapprovingly. You can’t help but grin, pulling her onto your lap as you move back onto the couch, careful to keep touching Bucky in at least some way or other.

"Dialing it back, Sarge. Understood."

"Don’t," he hisses.

You tilt your head in delight. "I’m learning so much about you."

He pokes your side and you snort.

For a couple of minutes, you scratch Alpine’s chin and play with her paws, leaning against Bucky’s vibranium arm. She seems perfectly content with all of it, not even extending her claws.

"How do you feel about coffee?" you ask when you feel Bucky relax behind you again.

"Why not," he replies.

"Perfect. One sec." You raise your voice. "Do you want something from Starbucks?"

"Something iced!" Sam shouts back from the other room. "Is the kitchen safe again now?"

"Shut up!" you both reply.

Bucky’s picked up on the fact that he shouldn’t let go of you so the universe doesn’t reset again, or he simply doesn’t want to. You can’t bring yourself to mind either way.

You’re almost delirious with happiness when you’re back in the elevator and he pulls you against him again. You’re still in your pyjamas, probably spattered with blood, and you couldn’t have given less of a shit.

There’s something solid peeking out from underneath Bucky’s shirt, and you frown. "What’s that?"

He hesitates for a moment before pulling on the chain of his dog tags.

It’s your ring.

The ring you used to wear on your pinkie. The one you thought had vanished many loops ago on the floor of your bathroom, threaded through the metal chain to rest above his heart.

"It kept appearing in my pocket," he explains. "I didn’t want to lose it."

You press your lips against his again, a soft, silent thank you. "Keep it," you say.

Something catches your eye like a glint of impossibility, a strange trick of holographic lighting: a tiny spec of green. Before you can take a closer look, however, the elevator pings and you have to step outside into the lobby.

You raise your free hand and look at the rings you’re still wearing out of habit. They’re all pitch black.

"You okay?" Bucky asks.

"Yeah," you mumble. "Yeah, never mind. It was just the light."

It’s busy outside, the midday sun frying the concrete. You don’t talk as you make your way through the crowd, sticking as closely together as possible. At a red light, you manage to steal another kiss and Bucky looks at you like you’ve hung the moon.

"They’re out of iced tea at this time," you tell him, enjoying the feeling of his hand on your lower back. "But if we get Sam a cold brew, I think we should be …"

Your voice trails off when you look around the store. Apart from the two people behind the counter, it’s completely empty. A shiver runs down your spine.

"Something’s wrong," you say.

Bucky tenses, grasping your hand more tightly and putting himself in front of you. The coffee grinder howls, the sound echoing in the empty building.

Slowly, you step up to the counter.

"Hi, welcome to Starbucks." Lucy looks past you like she’s talking to someone invisible standing right between you two. After a pause, she nods and taps at the register. "And will that be for here or to go?"

"Luce?" you say carefully.

"Alright," she smiles. Her colorful make-up is running down the side of her face like red-white-and-blue tears. "It’ll be right over there. Oh, careful about that spill, we’re working on it. Hi, welcome to Starbucks."

"Whole place looks deserted," Bucky tells you.

"Sorry, what was that?" Lucy says.

"It’s like we’re not here," you say quietly.

"It’s not just her," he says. "Look."

Over at the pick-up counter, there’s a pile of spilled cups on the floor. The second barista behind the bar doesn’t notice any of them. He keeps shoving them down by placing new cups in the same spot. Perfectly rehearsed and executed each time, except he’s performing for nobody.

"Like they’re stuck in their script," Bucky says.

"This is bad," you say, "this is really, really bad."

"Hey." He tugs you closer, his eyes locking with yours. "It’s probably just another glitch."

"No, Strange warned me something like this would happen at some point."

Reality folding in on itself.

You bite your cheek so hard it hurts. "The loop is at breaking point. We’re running out of time."

"But that’s good news, right? We’re getting closer to it being over."

"No, it’s not." Your voice is wavering. "I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do."

"Ask for a frappuccino and I will fucking murder you," Lucy says.

You turn towards her again.

"I swear," she continues, fixing her hair with perfectly mechanical movements, "if I see another child today, I’m gonna quit."

"That bad?" you ask quietly.

Her gaze focuses and she turns to stare right at you with clear, empty eyes. "Please kill me."

There’s not a hint of her usual dryness in her voice. You instinctively retreat, bumping into Bucky as you do. The steamer howls, the only noise in the sudden silence.

Lucy keeps looking at you, not keeping up with her own lines. Like she’s waiting for you, or something else.

Please kill me.

You shake your head, sick to your stomach. "I can’t."

An actual tear rolls down her face, and then she snaps her head back to stare at empty air again. "Usual," she says, but it’s not a question this time.

Useless.

You rip your hand out of Bucky’s, and the world around you vanishes in a stream of multicolor as he shouts your name.

* * *

"You talk to her," Sam says, his voice muffled through the door.

There’s a murmur too low for you to understand from where you’re hiding underneath your blanket, pressing the palms of your hands to the sockets of your eyes. The band around your wrist is whirring wildly.

One day.

You’d gotten less than a single day, a single morning of everything working out, of finally thinking that maybe things wouldn’t always be this bad. Of feeling something like hope.

It’d been foolish.

You’re still stuck on Friday, and reality is still crumbling around you, or fading away, or maybe melting into another one; you don’t even know anymore. You’re so sick of this.

You can hear the crunch of your lock being reduced to pieces, and then slow, soft steps into your room. With a soft click, the door closes again. You stay under your blanket.

"Y/N," Bucky says softly.

"I can’t."

He lets out a breath, and your mattress dips. Gently, he pulls the blanket off your head.

Geez, you hate the way he looks at you. Like you’re about to break, and he’s just waiting patiently to pick up each piece and mend them together again.

What the hell have you done to deserve to be looked at like that?

"Hi," he says, and your vision blurs.

You want to kiss him again. You want to wrap yourself around him and protect him from whatever bullshit this day decides to throw at you next.

"Everything is falling apart," you whisper. "It’s gonna keep happening until we find a way out. I’m nowhere closer to knowing what I’m supposed to do, and so we keep circling around, making everything worse. And what if—" You cut yourself off, pressing a hand to your mouth.

"What if what?"

What if it’s just you?

These past few weeks, it’s been a quiet thought, pushed to the very back of your mind with everything else going on. You know that you’ll make it out, which is some relief, but what if it’s just you?

Strange never said anything about Bucky, and you’re still beating yourself up over not asking.

What if this, all of this, will have been for nothing?

No, you can’t think like that.

You put one hand on Bucky’s chest, feeling his heartbeat underneath your palm, soft and steady. He’s still breathing, and that’s all that counts for now.

You’ve made it this far, right?

"I’m just so scared," you whisper. It’s the truth, after all.

"Me too," he says quietly. Both of his hands cup your face, his thumbs gently wiping the tears from your cheeks. "But we’re getting so close. I know it. We just need to keep going. You need to keep going."

A wet laugh bubbles up your throat. "You’re putting a lot of faith into someone who’s not been able to use her powers at all in months at this point."

"Is that what you’re worried about?"

Is it? Truth be told, you’ve gotten so used to the absence of time magic running through your veins. There’s an empty space at your core where you used to be able to feel it, tucked safely away, a reassuring connection to the flow of time itself.

Ever since your visit to the Sanctum, you’ve become very aware that you’re missing that link now. There’s a void inside you that’s been growing whilst you were looking away, a black hole that tastes like regret and loneliness.

All those years, and still …

"My powers were never something I wanted to have, and they’re … I used to feel like an anomaly. Like a mistake. But now …" You swallow a sob. "Everything is going wrong, and now they’ve been gone for so long, and I feel like a part of me is just missing."

It’s such a selfish thing to care about, but Bucky’s been nothing but honest with you, and you owe him as much.

"And so I keep wondering, what if I can never get them back? Or I do, just to stop the loop, but the price to end all of this is giving them up? I mean, what am I going to do then?"

What a waste of time.

You’re so tired, and weary, and sick of having to lean on other people. You should be able to do this, of all things, on your own.

Even when you couldn’t properly control your powers, at least they were yours and yours alone. There was a certain merit in being the only one of your kind, too; no one knew how to control you.

And yet, looking back, it all seems like wasted time you could’ve spent doing good, learning to understand them more intricately, to use them for more important things than getting out of awkward conversations and keeping yourself safe.

Without them gone, would you ever have honestly stopped trying to avoid situations that left you cut open and vulnerable, just as you are right now?

Untethered.

"Hey," Bucky says again and you blink back into the moment. "Didn’t you tell me that the Winter Soldier doesn’t define me? Well, your powers don’t define you."

"But I don’t want to lose them," you say quietly.

Despite the chaos they’re brought. Despite all your mistakes and shortcomings, despite the loop, despite everything that would never have happened without you having these powers in the first place. Because you’re just starting to accept them for what they really are: a gift, and a curse.

It doesn’t have to be one or the other.

"You’ll get them back," Bucky says. Sometimes, you do wonder where he gets his relentless confidence in you from.

"You don’t know that," you say quietly.

He huffs. "You hate clichés. Stop thinking you’re doomed to live in one. That’s not like you."

"Then what is?"

He presses his forehead to yours, and your eyes flutter closed. "You fight."

You can’t help but laugh. "I’m not a fighter."

"Didn’t say you were. I said you fight. You don’t give up so easily."

"Maybe I should. Might save me a lot of racing thoughts."

"You would be bored in five minutes." The knowing smile in his voice is really annoying. "You’re not so bad the way you are, you know."

"I’m not that great, either, though."

"Look at me?"

You do, his hand gently tipping your chin. He’s always so gentle with you.

"Powers or not, doesn’t matter. You’re still you. I wouldn’t want you to be anything else. It’s more than I … it’s more than enough."

His heart is pounding underneath your palm, and there are too many emotions written across his face to make sense of them all, but you feel them. Heartbreakingly so.

"It shouldn’t be," you say. "It’s killed you. Multiple times."

"I don’t care. I’m still here, and so are you. I’ve watched you do great things with and without your powers, time after time, and you’re gonna continue doing that over and over again." He smiles at you in that way of his, soft and sure. "We’ll be okay."

You love him. The thought rushes through you without a shadow of a doubt, a knowledge so certain it might as well be written across your forehead. You love Bucky Barnes with every fiber of your heart.

The problem is, he’s right. You hate clichés.

And so you’re afraid that in the grand scheme of things, love alone won’t be enough.

You lean in to hug him again and his arms envelop you perfectly, like this was where you were supposed to be all along. You bury your nose in his neck and inhale deeply, and you’ve never wanted to freeze a moment in time more than you do right then.

"I want to kiss you so bad right now." A whisper against his skin, another teardrop on his shirt.

His hand comes up to your neck again, pulling you back.

The look in his eyes is devastating, and you wonder how it’s taken you so long to recognize the longing in it. He lets you see it so clearly now, but it’s been there for a long, long time, in flashes and stolen moments, barely concealed behind a veneer of indifference. You’re sure he can see it mirrored in your own gaze right now; you’re almost bursting with it.

You nudge your nose against his, once, twice, and he shivers.

"We need to stop," he whispers, even though he sounds like stopping is the very last thing he wants to do. You can relate. There’s a hair’s breadth between your lips and it takes every single ounce of self-control you have not to close that distance.

The memory of how he kisses you is still too fresh in your mind. The way he perfectly molds into you, the way he holds you like you’re something precious, even now. Like he’s got all the time in the world.

Except you don’t.

There’s still so much you haven’t figured out, and no telling how many loops you have left before reality collapses entirely.

Reluctantly, you pull away from him once again, wrapping your arms around yourself instead. No matter what you do, it always seems one step forwards and two steps back with you and Bucky.

"Okay," you say quietly, letting out one long breath and then nodding. "What’s the plan?"

The corners of Bucky’s eyes crinkle with a grin.

* * *

"What do you want with Redwing?" Sam asks skeptically.

"Repair it." Bucky leans against the kitchen counter. His hair is still damp from his shower, and your eyes keep getting drawn to a single curl that’s hanging into his face.

Sam scoffs and continues his typing. "If it were that easy, I’d have fixed them already. One’s sensors got fried in that explosion, and the bullet that hit Two splintered into about five million tiny pieces."

"Sorry about that," you say.

"You didn’t shoot at him." He pauses, narrowing his eyes at you. "Tell me you didn’t shoot at him."

"I did not shoot at Redwing." You didn’t reset it happening, either, but you feel like now might not be the time to fess up.

"It’s going to take forever to patch them both up again, and I’ve not had that kind of time lately," Sam says, tilting his head at his laptop as a case in point. You feel awful.

"Let me take a look," Bucky presses.

"No offence, man, but you’re not exactly MacGyver," Sam grimaces. "And it’s not like there’s spare parts just lying around the place."

"Redwing’s Stark tech, right?" you ask thoughtfully.

"Wakandan. But the hardware’s still similar enough."

"I have an idea," you say, checking the time. "Either of you guys hungry yet?"

"I don’t know about this," Sam says about forty minutes and one time loop explanation later, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "How old did you say you are?"

"He’s a great kid," you tell him. "He’s a candidate for MIT."

Peter blinks. "I didn’t say—anyway, I, uhm. I used to intern at Stark Industries, so sure, I could take a look at it."

"Did you now," Sam says dryly.

"Yup. Just one summer though. Before the …" He swallows. "I was gone."

Something softens a little in Sam’s expression. "Same here, kiddo."

"Yeah, I know. I mean, I heard, I wasn’t there." Peter clears his throat, tucking his hands into his armpits. "So where’s the bird?"

"Why are you trying to fix your archnemesis?" you say, catching up with Bucky.

"It’s not my—" He cuts himself off, rolling his eyes when you grin. "I’d like an audio recording of the crowd when Sam gives his speech."

"Why?"

He hesitates. "It’s probably not even about the loop. It’s just …"

That frown you can recognize. That inkling suspicion, that 'it’s probably nothing, but I’d like confirmation'. It usually means he’s onto something.

"A clue?"

"Sure. Maybe. A clue."

"Okay then." You slip your pinkie into his.

"What," he chuckles, squeezing back, "no criticizing my plans?"

"I am nothing if not out of ideas," you sigh. "And who knows, maybe it’ll help."

You don’t usually go into Tony Stark’s old workroom. Most of the interesting stuff got packed up before the move to Avengers Campus, leaving a sterile looking, well-lit room with a large work bench and a single old rolling chair that Peter plops onto.

The Redwings are a rather sorry sight, laid out in their cases with all the extra pieces collected in small plastic bags. All of you watch as Peter cracks his knuckles before he carefully unscrews the busted top of Redwing One’s casing. Sam is hovering over his shoulder like he’s about to grade his efforts.

Waiting’s the worst part. At your request, FRIDAY puts on a 70s playlist that makes Sam tap his foot while he questions whether Peter’s declared his major yet—"no, uhm, they want us to do that at the end of our first year and I’ve not been admitted yet, so"—and his most recent eye appointment—"my vision’s 20/20, sir"—until they both finally let out a deep breath.

"Getting the spare parts won’t be the problem," Peter says, swiveling around in his chair. "I have that sorta stuff at home, it’s just a question of replacing the nanosensors and soldering the PCB."

"Sure," you say, understanding most of those words individually.

"The problem is, it’ll take me a couple of hours. There’s no way for me to get it done until, what, 2 p.m.? If we rush, dust could get into the circuit and it’ll all be a worse mess than it is right now."

"Told you," Sam says.

"What about the other one?" Bucky asks.

Peter grimaces. "That one’s gonna need a proper cleaning, ideally with ultrasonic equipment to get all the particles out. Sorry, Sarge."

Bucky just nods, then leaves the room without another word.

"I got it," Sam tells you when you start after him. "Put that lid back on and step away, MIT."

Peter holds up both of his hands, eyes flicking towards you. "Can’t break it if the loop resets, right?"

"You’re good," you confirm, still looking at the door.

His shoulders lose some of their tension as he leans back in his chair, clearly still impressed with everything going on. "So, how does it work?"

Your laugh comes out a little shrill. "I wish I could tell you."

"There was an episode of Star Trek TNG where they got stuck in a collision loop." He plays around with the screwdriver he’s still holding, his hands surprisingly quick. "Have you tried sending yourself messages as well?"

"Kind of," you say, thinking of Bucky’s writing on your arm and the tally marks on your legs.

"So cool."

"I don’t know about that," you reply. "It’s been weeks, and I still don’t understand how this loop is working. Especially now that there’s two of us who are aware it’s happening. Does that mean it’s still just one reality on repeat?"

Peter shrugs. "I dunno, I don’t know much about it, but in my experience, reality’s just what people remember. Who says there’s much more to it?"

"Right," you say. "It’s just us two getting looped. Your reality is mostly fine, it just happens over and over. But if you don’t realize that it does, it’s not actually a loop."

"I mean, maybe, maybe."

Maybe.

You can’t just separate one from the other. There’s that thing called the first law of thermodynamics.

"You know much about thermodynamics, Peter?"

"The, uh, basics, I guess? Perpetual motion is impossible, energy consumed by a system must be resupplied by an external source, everything is balance, that sorta stuff?"

Magic, as a whole, is always a balancing act.

You massage your stinging temples. "Top of your class, were you?"

Something flickers across his face before he smiles. "Nah. I’m more of an applied physics guy."

Once all of this is over, maybe you could introduce him to Bruce. He might enjoy the pop culture references as well.

Before you can suggest as much, Peter takes a look at his phone and curses under his breath. "Shoot, I’m sorry, I gotta go, I got a—photography club."

"Sure, don’t worry about it," you say. The symbols around your wrist tingle again, and you distractedly trace them with your thumb.

Funny, you think, how the timing of your intervention seems to completely derail his day. Last time, he said he was visiting his aunt.

* * *

Here’s the thing: When you’re able to travel through time, looking at the past becomes surprisingly emotionally taxing. Remembering what could have been, what might have been, what should have been in another, better universe is, you suppose, hard on everyone.

For someone with the ability to theoretically do something about all these what ifs, it’s ulcer inducing.

These are the kind of things, therefore, you force yourself to suppress most of the time. Ironically, it’s mostly the sort of moments that, at the time, you want to freeze and preserve forever. Looking back, they’re the ones that hurt the most.

Sometimes, though, you can’t help it. Some routines, some rituals that were established during happier times demand to be maintained, even if you’re the only one who remembers them anymore. Even if there’s other, more pressing things to do, secrets to work out, realities to stabilize.

Your hands know this rhythm.

You’ve let FRIDAY put on some music from one of Sam’s favorite playlists again, and you watch him nod along as he’s typing away on his laptop with a faraway focus. You smile as you wash your hands again, preheat the oven, grease your pan.

It takes him a little while to consciously notice what you’re doing. "Really?" he says. "It’s in the fricking nineties today and you’re baking?"

"We have a functioning AC," you reply. "I thought we should celebrate that."

"The planet is dying."

Be that it were only the planet.

"I’m making turtle pie," you say. "And cinnamon rolls."

That seems to placate him for the time being, because he moves to the living room area without further complaint.

You grimace in concentration as you transfer your pie crust to the pan for prebaking. You’ve never been particularly skilled at pies, but you’ve been living by the motto "trying counts for something" in all other aspects of life lately.

"You’re hovering again, Barnes," you say without turning.

"You’re baking." The surprise in his voice makes you smile.

"I am," you say. "Notice how there aren’t any flames erupting around me."

"Yet," Bucky says, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. "I didn’t know you could bake."

"You never asked." You dust your hands off the excess flour. "It’s easier to think when I have something else to focus on, you know?"

"Can I help?"

You’re tempted to make another dig at his baking skills, but the way he looks at you makes you reconsider. "Can you knead with that arm?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Is that a challenge?"

"I won’t be blamed if you malfunction. Are you dishwasher safe?"

"Give me that." He frowns slightly, looking at the ingredients you’ve started to measure out into your mixing bowl. "I thought you’re making pie?"

"I am. Well, and these."

"Ambitious." He swoops a finger through the mixture to try.

"Lots of thoughts require ambitious projects to procrastinate with."

He nods, and you fall into a sort of companionable silence you’ve not felt with him in a while. Sometimes, your arms brush as you work, and it sends a warm shiver up your entire arm.

You want to interlock your fingers again, pull him towards you, see if you can taste a hint of cinnamon on his lips.

"During the Blip …" you start, immediately unsure whether you want to share this particular story or not.

You watch Bucky’s hands, continuing to slowly and methodically fold the flour into the dough.

"Nat wasn’t allowed in the kitchen at all. She was so much worse than you." You laugh when he elbows you. "But there’s this stress-relief in baking, you know? In doing something with your hands, and by the end of it, you’ve got something you can give to others."

"I get that," he says, scraping at a particularly sticky piece of dough.

You nod and measure out your sugar. "Steve had a lot of late nights, especially those first couple of years, and there was only so much to do at all when you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with everyone blaming you for half the globe being gone."

"How was he?" There’s a careful fondness in Bucky’s voice that he usually hides. It makes you think about your answer.

"Lost, I think," you say, even though it seems lacking. Steve’s out-of-timeliness had always been very different to Bucky’s. You used to think he’d managed to rearrange himself over the years, to reorient himself in this new reality.

You didn’t realize he’d used an old compass before it was too late.

"I mean, everyone was," you add, even though you don’t really know why you’re defending him.

"Were you?"

"Desperately," you huff. "Turns out, though, when the world around you is upside down, it’s really nice to have some fixed points to look forward to."

"Like what?"

"Bath towels. Or making cinnamon rolls on someone’s birthday."

Bucky stops kneading, calculating in his head. "Is it—"

"Yup."

He curses under his breath.

"Yup." You sigh and grab the mixing bowl again. "Hand me the butter?"

"You need to add a pinch of nutmeg. And … cardamom, I think."

You stare at him in surprise.

"That’s ma’s recipe. I used to beg for these when I was a kid. I’ve not had them in ninety years or somethin’."

A warm feeling spreads in your stomach. "About time, then."

Usually, you’d get to skip over this part; the waiting. It’s your least favorite, when you’re stuck in between tasks, your crust in the oven, the other dough still proofing. You’ve never been very good at waiting.

You start scrubbing the counters furiously, your thoughts returning with a vengeance as soon as there’s a lull in your blessed distraction plan. The loop on your wrist is particularly itchy again today.

"Talk to me."

With a frustrated groan, you drop your sponge. "I keep thinking about physics. Like, maybe there’s some sort of equation or quantum experiment that’ll help us out."

Past and present and future all folded into each other and wrapped into one.

But how does any of that make sense with what you’re experiencing?

Humans can only be in one state at one particular time.

"You reckon we’re gonna be spacetime experts before the universe implodes?" Bucky remarks.

"They should just hand us our doctorates right now."

"James Barnes, PhD. My ma’d lose her mind."

"Eh, not as impressive as a racecar driver in the family if you ask me." You turn on the hot water tap to let the bowls soak and yelp when you’re pulled back against his chest.

"That so?"

"Hmm." Your heart is beating wildly as Bucky interlaces your fingers. "I’m still not convinced you should be allowed to drive with that flimsy piece of paper you call a license."

He rests his chin on your shoulder. "That’s pretty hurtful, doll. I’ve never had any complaints about my driving."

"Maybe everyone else you drove had a danger fetish."

You should probably turn off the water again. For the environment. But Bucky’s laugh fans across your cheek before he inhales, deeply, and you are so sick of pulling away from him.

"God, it’s so unfair," he whispers, leaving a trail of goosebumps running down your neck.

"What is?"

"You."

The oven timer starts beeping and you want to smash it with a baseball bat. Reluctantly, Bucky releases you from his hold to retrieve the pie crust while you prevent the imminent flooding of your kitchen sink.

It’s not even noon yet, you remind yourself. You’ve been over this. You don’t know how many semi-stable loops there are left, and you can’t afford to waste another one of them.

No matter how much you want to.

There’s a tense sort of silence between you as you finish up the pie and let Bucky revise your cinnamon roll ingredients.

"You know," you tell him, wiping another bowl clean, "Steve’s tried to recreate these for years."

Bucky crosses out another measurement. "That’s what you get for stealing a family recipe."

It’s started to smell heavenly in here; like dish soap and warm cookies. By the time the rolls are finally ready to bake, you’re sweaty and excited, and Sam’s checked in on the status of the goods twice. The air’s turned giddy with sugar and anticipation, the silence shifting into something more comfortable, almost peaceful.

How lovely to know a day like this can have pockets of lightness, you think; even if they’re fleeting.

Bucky’s hair has started to stick up in the back a little as you move around each other in a routine so easy it feels choreographed. Whenever you look at him, he’s already watching you, and it makes your heart jump every time.

"Hold on, you have a little …"

With a small grin, you reach out to wipe away the trace of glaze on his cheek. He catches your wrist, his eyes darkening.

You don’t breathe.

He pulls your hand closer to his mouth, licking the icing off your thumb without breaking eye contact. Fire rushes down your spine.

"Now who’s not playing fair?" you whisper.

"Fuck fair," he says. It comes out like a plea.

You despise yourself for shaking your head. "It’s too early."

You’ve agreed. There’s too much left to sort through. You’ve not even been to the astral plane today.

"Feels late to me," Bucky says, keeping hold of your hand. "Couple weeks late, at least."

Every part of you aches to close the distance between you, reality be damned. So what if it all unravels? No one but the two of you would remember, anyway.

It’s just you and Bucky, in the end, and doesn’t that count for something? You’ve already lost so much time getting stuck in this single day, time you can’t ever get back, because unlike everyone else, you can’t just go back to the beginning.

Not as long as you’re in the loop.

And just like that, with a sudden, crashing sense of clarity, you know how to finish this.

* * *

"Space and time and reality are related," you explain, drawing a bunch of overlapping circles and labeling them. "That’s what Strange said, that’s what Wong said. Even Peter."

In my experience, reality’s just what people remember.

"Dimension’s all a question of perspective. Right now, for Bucky and me, time is experienced as a loop, but for Sam here, it isn’t. Because he is physically in a different space than we are."

"No, I’m not."

"Yes, you are. This here," you hold up your arm, letting the green runes shimmer in the sunlight, "is breaking down the barriers between dimensions. If reality was stuck in a loop for everyone else, everyone else would remember, but they don’t. It’s just us. It’s just our reality."

"I’m getting a headache," Sam groans into his pie.

"Your timeline is normal," you tell him, drawing an arrow pointing to the left. "July fourth today. July third before that. No detours or anomalies. Your day always goes the way it’s supposed to. It just happens to intersect with our loop." You draw an infinity symbol cutting through the line, then point at its center "We meet right here, at this junction, and then your reality continues the way it’s supposed to and ours resets."

"I thought I’m the one that’s getting reset."

"So did I, at first. But we’re the ones continually jumping back to when Friday begins, over and over, with our memories intact. All of this," you trace over the infinity symbol multiple times, "is one linear timeline that’s weeks long, but been compressed to a single day."

"So then, if my reality continues …" Sam starts. "That means, for every single time you’ve been through the loop, there was a different version of me that just went on from there?"

"Exactly," you say, relieved. "Infinite versions in infinite universes."

"Sometimes I miss the simplicity of a good government conspiracy," he mumbles, grabbing another cinnamon roll.

Bucky frowns. "What does that mean for us?"

"There are versions of us outside the loop—obviously, we don’t just stop existing on July fifth. But because of the time loop, we can’t access them. Our consciousness can’t move on from this day, if you will."

Thus, Friday ad nauseum. And because the universe isn’t built to sustain all of this excess energy in just one single point, reality’s started to fracture; trying to relieve some of the added pressure through cracks and TAGs and inconsistencies.

"Then how do we get out?" Bucky asks.

You rub the empty spot on your pinkie. "That’s the part you’re not gonna like. As long as I’m stuck in the loop, my powers have to keep it upright. They’re tied up in it, that’s why I can’t use them. It’s perpetual motion in a closed system."

"So?"

Your wrist tingles. "So the only way to stop it for good is for me to be on the outside. I need to be the external source of the equation."

"How are you gonna do that?" Sam asks.

All the color drains from Bucky’s face. "No."

"You know I’m right," you say softly.

"No," Bucky repeats.

"I’m not liking this," Sam says, looking between the two of you.

"There’s no guarantee it works."

"It’s the only thing we’ve not tried." You look at Sam with a feeble smile. "I have to die."

"What?"

"I’m not watching you die," Bucky says loudly. His hands are balled into fists so tight they’re shaking. "There has to be something else we can try."

"And what would that be?"

"I don’t know! Maybe we need to go back to the astral plane, try something else."

"It’s not enough. It’s a liminal space."

"It has to be enough!"

"Bucky—"

"I’m not losing you!"

With a single slam, the couch table breaks straight down the middle. Bucky’s breaths are heavy, every muscle tense. A cursory glance would tell you his walls are all the way back up, but his eyes … his eyes tell a different story.

"We’re running out of time," you say gently. "If we do nothing, we’ll inevitably lose. And then we’re all fucked. We don’t know what a disintegrating reality is gonna do to the multiverse at large."

"To be honest, I don’t really give a shit."

Sam reaches out a hand. "Buck …"

"No, Sam. Why don’t I ever get to be selfish?" He shakes his head, his eyes welling up. "Why is it that every time I get a little bit of good in my life, the world’s about to end?"

"It’s going to work," you tell him.

Again, he shakes his head. "You can’t know that."

"No, but I do." You bite the inside of your cheek, hard. "I know because Strange told me I make it out of the loop. I’m the one who tells him how to find me. I can’t do that if I’m dead. It’s going to work."

For a while, Bucky just stares at you, shoulders drooping.

"When were you gonna tell me?" he asks quietly.

You shrug helplessly. "It never seemed like the right time."

"We’re stuck in a goddamn loop, and it never seemed like the right time?"

"Be angry with me all you want, but it doesn’t change the facts. We’ve been going around in circles, because that’s the very nature of this timeline. I need my powers back to set things straight." He refuses to catch your eye. "The only way for me to break the loop is not to be in it."

"How are you even going to know you have to do that if you don’t remember anything about today?"

Your mouth opens, then closes again. It’s a very good question, one you don’t know how to answer. How do you finish something you won’t know you’ve started?

"Plus, the loop’s still there and bound to you, right?" Sam cuts in, nodding at your wrist. "Regardless of perception. Who’s to say it’s not gonna implode if you can’t remember it?"

You let out a long sigh. "Because it’ll have to be bound to Bucky instead of me."

"Then just do that," Bucky argues. "I can handle it."

"I know that," you say. "But I still need my powers back."

"There’s another problem, too," Sam says frowning at the whiteboard. "Say it all works out like you’re saying and you get out of the loop while Bucky’s still inside. That means you have one shot. And if it doesn’t work …"

Yeah. You’ve seen it, too. It’s the biggest risk of your plan, and there’s no safety net that you can put up.

If it doesn’t work, Bucky’s going to stay stuck in the loop forever.

* * *

On the day you’re gonna die, you wake up on the couch in the living room area, alone. A deserted cup of coffee sits on the couch table. Everything is quiet.

You sit up slowly, stretching your aching limbs. Sam must’ve already left for Madison Square Garden, because the shield is no longer propped up against the counter. It gives you a nice window of time.

You bring your cup to the sink and finish the washing-up, carefully setting everything on the rack to dry. You wipe the counters. You check the fridge. You write a post-it for Bucky, just for the hell of it.

Right when you’re about to leave, there’s a meowing at your feet. Alpine stares at you with her wide, solemn eyes, like she means to impart long forgotten wisdoms on you.

More likely, she wants a treat.

"Hi, hellcat," you say fondly and she accepts a couple of scratches under her chin. "You seen your dad?"

She purrs for a bit, then bumps her head against your legs and occupies herself with the leftover tuna in her bowl. You sigh, deciding to leave her to it before she decides you need to be reacquainted with her claws.

"Bye, kitty," you whisper.

Her tail twitches.

You’re not surprised to find Bucky on the roof, looking out over Manhattan with an unreadable look on his face. It’s another perfectly sunny day, cloudless cerulean skies and too many degrees to be wearing a leather jacket.

He doesn’t turn when you step up next to him, and it makes your heart ache a little.

Look at me.

"Are you angry with me?"

He lets out a bone-deep sigh. "No."

"Could’ve fooled me."

It’s been a couple of days since you realized what you’re going to have to do, and to say the bubble has burst would be an understatement. There’s been more arguing; more negotiating; both of you clearly seeing where the other one is coming from and yet unwilling to accept it without a fight.

In the end, it’s made no difference. No matter which way you twist it, you need to stop this loop. And he’s not been able to come up with any other ideas towards that goal, either.

"I’m worried," Bucky says quietly.

You reach out for him, intertwining your pinkie with his metal one. "I’m not going to leave you in the loop. I promise."

He shakes his head. "I don’t give a shit about what happens to me."

"Well, I do."

"I’m worried about you." He tucks his chin into his chest. "That’s a helluva lot of pressure you’re putting yourself under, and you won’t even remember where it came from."

"You forget I thrive under pressure." You cast a sidewards glance at him. "Besides, I’ve got you on my side. So I’ve got nothing to be scared of."

It’s a half-truth. You’re terrified. You keep thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the ways you could fail and condemn him to an infinity of loops in which he’s gonna die and you barely even know him yet.

And yet, when you look at him, your worried mind is soothed, every doubt replaced by something much more certain: He’s going to have your back.

You trust him with your life and you trust him with his, and that’s just going to have to be enough.

"If I—" you start, your voice cracking. "If I don’t get my memories back, when it’s done, I just … I should probably tell you now, right?"

For a few short, unending moments, Bucky doesn’t say anything. Your hands are getting sweaty.

"You know," he says quietly. "We never did try the Groundhog Day option."

Your hand tightens on the railing as your heartbeat kicks up. You glance at him from the side. His face is still hard, but determined. And there it is; that little glint of a challenge in his eyes.

A beat passes.

Your gaze drops to his mouth and he surges.

There’s a new edge to the way he kisses you this time. He holds your face in his hands like you’re something precious, and you can feel him pour all of his desperation into the kiss.

Tears spring to your eyes. You want nothing more than to just melt into the moment, forget everything else and keep kissing him forever. It’s not that simple, though.

"Just in case," you whisper, pulling his mouth to yours again.

You kiss him like it’s the last time and Bucky responds with the same urgency because you both know, deep down, it might well be.

"Just in case," he repeats against your lips as you come up for air, his voice dark and rough and full of fear.

You nod, almost imperceptibly.

He picks you up in one quick, fluid motion, and you rub your nose against his, breathing him in before you find his mouth again.

Again.

More.

You lose your shirt somewhere on the stairs. Your hands are shaking as you attempt to lock his door behind you.

His belt won’t unbuckle. He snaps it in two without taking his lips off your neck, and you let out a surprised laugh as he drops you on his bed.

Despite the growing heat, neither of you hurries this; quite the contrary. It’s a slow, reverent dance. Every inch of clothing that gets removed feels like peeling back another layer, leaving you both fully exposed for the very first time.

You kiss every single scar on his chest as he watches you through half-lidded, glassy eyes, his heart beating so wildly you can feel it just as well as your own. You interlace your fingers and pull him even closer, and when you press another kiss to the palm of his metal hand, he lets out a shaky breath.

When he finally sinks into you, you can taste yourself on his tongue, and your eyes roll back in your head because yes.

Nothing in your whole life has ever felt this right before.

I love you, you think, and the words are at the tip of your tongue when you tumble over the edge as Bucky mumbles sweet praises into your mouth. I love you I love you Iloveyou.

You think that maybe he knows, anyway.

* * *

"What are you thinking about?"

The sun is setting outside, leaving a reddish hue on Bucky’s hair. Your voice is rough after hours of talking and sex. You’ve spilled so many of your secrets you’ve lost count, and he listened to all of them.

Just in case.

You curl your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and Bucky shudders. He presses a kiss to your forehead.

"Nothing."

His eyes betray him, like they always do.

"You are the worst liar I’ve ever met, Barnes."

"Being a good liar isn’t something to be proud of, you know."

There’s something so devastating about the way he looks at you, like he’s watching something shatter right in front of him. He kisses you again, softly, and it makes you forget your next thought.

"You …" He sighs. "I don’t want to lose this."

"Do you still trust me?" you ask him, voice quiet.

Bucky looks at you, huffing breathlessly, hesitant in a way that only lends more conviction to his answer. "Of course I do." Like there’s no doubt to be had.

It sends a thrill through you.

"I think it’s a good plan in theory, but it puts everything back on you again." He cups your cheek in his hand. "You’ll go back to hating me, and then I won’t be able to help you."

"I never hated you," you say. "I mean, you drive me up the walls sometimes, but I never hated you."

"Why not?" he asks. "I would."

You sit up a little to look at him straight, one hand pressed to his chest. "James Buchanan Barnes, you are more than worthy of all the good things in the universe to happen to you. I’m only sorry it took me that long to tell you."

The saddest little smile curls at the edge of his mouth as he evades your eyes.

"Hey," you say. "We’ll be fine."

"Yeah."

You lean in to kiss him, short and sweet. "I need you to promise me something."

"Hm?" A vibration against your lips.

"Don’t do anything stupid."

He grins, and it’s almost honest. "You know me."

"I do. That’s what I’m concerned about. When I do this, we get one try, and if I fail …"

"Don’t worry about me, sweetheart."

As if he’s not made that quite impossible.

"Fuck you, Barnes," you whisper.

His eyes melt a little, and you trace the little lines in their corners. "There she is."

You roll your eyes. "Bucky?"

He looks at you questioningly, and the words die on your lips. Instead, you pull him in for one more kiss, trying to pour everything you’re not able to say into it, your heart beating wildly.

He presses you deeper into the matress, and you savor every second of this feeling. His stubble scratching across your cheek, the way your fingers slip perfectly into his mussed hair, the low, soothing hum of his arm.

This, you think. This should have been the kind of day that got stuck all along.

You roll on top of him again. His hands catch your waist, warm and cold against your skin, and you shudder as he smiles into your mouth.

One more, you think, sinking back into the kiss. One more. Just one more.

You bring him even closer to you with one hand as the other one slips under his pillow, carefully angling yourself forwards.

Just in case.

"It’s strange," you whisper. "Somehow I wish we had more time."

A hot tear falls on Bucky’s cheek. His eyes widen.

It’s the last thing you see before you put his gun against your temple and pull the trigger.

chapter twelve

Sam snorted.

"Seriously," you said, taking your place between him and Bucky again. "Rent is outrageous, the streets are crowded, and every other week another catastrophe happens that insurance companies will weasel their way out of covering. So what’s the point?"

"You didn’t grow up here, did ya?"

You weren’t used to Bucky reacting to your rhetorical questions at all, let alone without venom in his voice. Most of the time, you were sure he tuned you out entirely.

"Why," you said in lieu of answering.

He shook his head. "I’ve been gone a long time and there’s a lot of things that changed, but there’s a feeling you get … that’s still the same. Can’t find that anywhere else."

Like home, you thought with a familiar pang in your heart.

"Can I ask you something?" you asked, kicking a pebble as you were walking. It flew across the sidewalk, landing just in front of Bucky’s shoes. He stepped over it.

"Is there a world in which you’re not gonna if I say no?"

"Do you believe in fate?"

He frowned, clearly not having expected that kind of question. But it tugged at you still. Always had, like a whisper in the back of your mind; what if you chose wrong? What if you irreparably ruined the way things were supposed to go? What if—

"I don’t," Bucky replied.

"Me either," Sam said. "I mean, millions of possible worlds and this is the one we get? I don’t want that to be fate."

You turned towards him. "What if the other options are way worse?"

"Like what? Wait, no, don’t answer that. I’m having an alright day."

"Don’t wanna think about how we might all be puppets pulled by invisible strings with no free will to speak of?"

"Y/N," Sam said, the levity from his tone missing now, tilting his head.

To your right, Bucky’s hands were clenched at his sides, his back very straight. Shit.

A wave of guilt rushed through you, unexpected and brutal, thoughtless, "I didn’t—"

"It comes down to choices," he said, very calmly. "What we are and aren’t able to do. What we know. Who we trust."

You swallowed heavily and dropped the idea of attempting a redo. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t have worked, anyway. "You know, Steve said something similar when I asked him once," you said instead. "About people and choices."

Bucky pushed his sunglasses up his nose. "I bet he did."

Maybe fate, in that one case, would’ve been a kinder option.

For a second, you tried to imagine a universe in which the past had worked out differently; where the Soldier never inhabited that dark place at the edge of Bucky’s mind.

You would’ve gotten along great, you know.

You tried to imagine it for a moment; meeting him back in a time before, walking through the streets of New York City side by side in silence with an easy smile on his face. You doubted he ever smiled at all now.

Besides, there was no point in imagining universes that never would’ve been, anyway. Out there, there was a world in which he’d died a happy man, years or decades ago, and you … you’d still have been alone, just as you were now, floating between realities. Staring at thin air and wondering about what could never have been. That was the only thing constant in your life, the one certainty amidst mediocre decisions and timeless space.

Maybe fate was just an ugly torture; or a sorry consolation.

"Right," you said as the wall of journalists rounded the corner. "I’ll see you back at the Tower."

Bucky clapped Sam on the back. "You got this, Cap."

"You’re both assholes."

You dispersed in opposite directions, and you pulled out your headphones as you headed towards the nearest subway station, putting your playlist on shuffle.

"A long, long time ago … I can still remember how that music used to make me smile …"

It punched the air out of your lungs, and for a moment you stopped in the middle of the street, the world around you pausing in shock. Your vision blurred as slowly, movements and noise returned around you, people bumping into you and cursing as you stared at your screen, the song stuttering back to life note by note.

To your own surprise, you found you were smiling.

Happy accidents, indeed.

* * * * *

It’s never happened, you tell yourself. You’ve gotten quite convincing over the past half hour. Dodge Sam’s kicks, feign to the right, ignore the fact that you just kissed Bucky.

Your rush of Sanctum-induced energy has burned down to a simmer at the very back of your mind again, and even though you should probably examine that and its implications, you’ve not been able to focus all morning.

It’s fine. It’s fine. He’s not going to say anything about it because it’s never happened.

Why, then, when he says your name, does it make you want to bolt?

"Y/N," he says again.

You let out a breath. "Barnes."

This was a mistake. You should’ve just stayed in your room. Should’ve packed your things and just left, moved to Canada, or maybe asked for asylum in Kamar-Taj. Surely, Wong would’ve taken pity on you a second time.

Then again, what good would any of that have done? The loop would never let go of you that easily.

The symbols around your wrist tingle, and you fight the urge to scratch. You can feel that Bucky is staring at you, but you can’t look at him. You can’t.

"You done?" you say with faux lightness. "Don’t worry, I know which towel to take."

Pretend is what you’re good at. No matter how tiring it is, you’ve done it all your life. There’s no other way to cope with realities that are no longer real.

Unfortunately, Bucky’s never been inclined to let you get away with lying. "Stop it," he says now.

He sounds tired.

You slip out of the ring, keeping your head down, refusing to yield, "I’ll see you for coffee?"

His hand closes around your wrist and you freeze mid-step. "We need to—would you please look at me?"

You square your shoulders and finally turn to face him. His eyes are wide, intense, pinning you down like you’re a rare kind of butterfly. Your heart skips a little, and you hate yourself for it.

"We need to talk about this," Bucky says.

You hide a wince. "Do we have to?"

"Yes! You—" His cheeks are tinged a soft shade of pink, but you can’t tell if it’s from his run or frustration. You’re certain he’s never looked at you like this before, bewildered and almost betrayed—"You kissed me."

The sentence drops a chasm between you, reality mended against its will. It’s not real, but it was; and you’re not the only one that remembers.

"I know," you say quietly.

The admission conjures the memory again in even more horrific detail. You can still feel the way his entire body froze up against yours, blood curdling in your bones as the scene replays over and over again. You’ve only just started to become friends on equal terms, and now you’ve gone and thrown something like that at him.

What a colossally stupid thing to do.

Bucky’s hair is mussed, like he’s run his hands through it repeatedly. He searches for something on your face, and you cannot tell for the life of you what he sees. "And it reset the loop."

You blink. So that’s what this is about. Inadvertently, you’ve found the most ill-timed literal loophole of the century. No one died during the last Friday; you didn’t even have to go on the mission or throw yourself off a building. The solution, it appears, is as simple and as complicated as a kiss.

Truly, there couldn’t have been a worse way to make him aware of your feelings.

Then again … what does Bucky know, really? Nothing. He’d caught you in a moment of weakness, is all. A temporary madness. Not a big deal at all. So why make it one?

Your feelings aren’t his burden to bear.

"Look at it this way," you say, with a too-bright smile. "We found a way around you catching a bullet at the end of every day. It’s not like it has to mean anything."

You want to take it back almost as quickly as it comes out, but there’s no way for you to take back the things you say anymore. You both know that, and you let it hang in the air for a while.

Bucky swallows. "Well, did you know that this would happen?"

You want to laugh. Out of all possible reactions he could’ve had, you didn’t see this one coming. "How on earth would I have known that?"

His eyes flit between yours, confirming your honesty. "I don’t know, I’m just—this is a lot to process."

Ah. Ah.

You bite the inside of your cheek so hard you can taste iron. "Take your time, then," you say and turn to leave, but he still doesn’t let go of you.

"Twe—Y/N, come on, give me five seconds here."

"No, it’s fine." An odd kind of hurt rushes through you, making every sentence come out sharp and poisonous. "I love the fact that you were immediately willing to jump off the roof every day but the thought of us kissing is something you need to think about. It’s not like I’m asking you to marry me."

"I know that," Bucky says, his flush darkening, "but call me old-fashioned in that I don’t generally like kissing people transactionally."

So you’re people now.

"You’re old-fashioned," you confirm, freeing your hand from his grip. "This isn’t fun for me either, okay? But since this is literally a matter of life and death, I think it’s a damn good compromise. We don’t have to make this a whole thing."

"Well, maybe it should be a whole thing."

"What does that even mean? This doesn’t change things, not really."

"This changes plenty. You think you like me, don’t you." It sounds like an accusation.

You take a half step towards him. "Why are you saying it like that?"

"Because you don’t, actually."

With a pang, you remember before. The constant bickering, the passive-aggressive notes, your rolling eyes and his glaring. Before, when your feelings were easy and surface level, when developing a crush on James Buchanan Barnes would have seemed as likely as receiving a Nobel prize.

Or unraveling reality because he took a shot that was meant for you.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t have taken you this long to decipher what had tenderly started a very long time before Bryant Park. It was there already, in every time you’ve waited for him first thing in the morning, in every cup of coffee and desperate attempt to save him. You see him stone-faced in the quinjet, picking the lock of the public library, guiding you over broken pieces of glass on your bedroom floor, sitting down on the couch next to you, every version of him on this day already so deeply nestled into the very core of your heart that it’s hard to believe it might’ve ever been otherwise.

And so you say, "Of course I do."

"No, you don’t," Bucky says, that tick in his jaw reappearing. "This is just—I don’t know, trauma bonding."

For the first time since the loop started, you actually do want to kill him. "Oh, get a grip, Barnes."

"We’ve never spent this much time together—"

"We fucking live together—"

"—let alone the fact that this whole situation is a nightmare—"

"—and even if we didn’t, I don’t understand what your problem is right now—"

"—so you’re bound to think there’s more to it than—”

"—and also can you stop telling me what I think?"

You stare at each other, unblinking, both of you daring the other to break the silence. Finally, Bucky relents.

"I’m just saying that you wouldn’t be … acting this way if we weren’t the only two people that are aware of what’s happening to us."

You shake your head, slowly. "That’s not true."

His logic is flawed, but can you fault him for that? You’re used to being the person that remembers; you’ve had so much more time to make up your mind, on Friday and all the days that came before.

"You can’t stand me, remember?" Bucky maintains, his back straightening. "Because I do."

"Things changed."

"No." He presses his lips together. "No, not this. You’re wrong. You don’t … like me."

Your shoulders slump, but you don’t look away from him, even as your cheeks burn. "I do."

Even as he backs away from you and your heart aches so badly you want to scream, even as his wide eyes freeze over, slowly, as he regards you in all your fucked-up, sweaty glory. Expecting rejection doesn’t take away from the pain as it happens in real time; and yet, you find yourself meeting it with your head held high.

Somehow you know that even if you had access to your powers right now, you wouldn’t reach for them.

"You can’t do this to me right now," Bucky says, voice devoid of any emotion. "It’s not real."

You let out a joyless laugh and step up to him again. This time, he doesn’t retreat; only watches you with careful, vacant eyes as you put a hand right over his heart. It’s racing under your touch. "Does this feel not real to you?"

He swallows. "It’s temporary. This world is falling apart."

It always is, you think. You don’t say it out loud, though. Instead, you blurt, "We should go out, then."

Something flashes in Bucky’s eyes, gone as quickly as it appears. "What?"

"Out," you repeat, your cheeks flaming. "While were not getting shot at."

"Are you—are you asking me on a date?"

"I’m not actually sure," you say, dropping your hand. "But I can’t keep letting you die, I just can’t. And if that’s the way that you … that we …"

You’re being stripped naked under his unwavering eyes, and you just don’t know what it means. The band around your wrist hums lowly through your blood as you dig your nails into the flesh of your palms.

"If we want to figure this out—whatever this is—we should spend more time together."

"Time," Bucky repeats tonelessly.

"You know what I mean. I mean, maybe you’re right. Maybe we’ll find out we’re never going to get along, but at least I don’t have to watch you die for a couple of loops. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be a big deal," you reiterate, your throat tightening. "Other than you not having to get shot every day. And who knows, maybe we’ll end up as friends after all this."

"Right," Bucky says, frowning. Not budging. The tips of his ears are burning.

There’s a flicker behind his eyes, like he’s keeping himself from saying something else.

Tell me.

Hope is a terrible, dangerous thing, and it only gets people hurt.

"Fine," he says at last. "Let’s try."

* * *

"Big lesson number one: All the time travel in the world can’t make someone love you."

Out of the corner of your eye, you steal a glance at Bucky. He doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes calmly focused on the screen, his expression neutral, his back very straight.

You keep twisting your rings around your fingers and waiting for the blood to stop rushing quite so loudly in your ears.

Your run of terrible ideas, it seems, continues on as you pretend to be invested in the movie while hyperaware of Bucky’s presence next to you. The two of you are next to each other on the same couch, much like you were during the fireworks; only this time, you’re very careful not to touch.

This is what you get for stupid suggestions: awkward silence and the sinking feeling of regret. After all, isn’t more time stuck together kind of the last thing the two of you need right now? Shouldn’t you be doing something to try to end this, once and for all?

Because although you’ve already spent a lot more time with Bucky during these past couple of Fridays, you’ve not done it aimlessly since you lost an afternoon at Bryant Park.

That look on his face he got during that loop is long gone, lifetimes away, and you can’t decide if it’s better or worse that he doesn’t even remember getting it in the first place.

Still, it’s remarkably similar, in some ways. The quiet ease you feel next to him, despite it all. The slight frown between his brows as the movie continues blabbering on in the background. This mix of uncertainty and reassurance rushing through you, making your heart rate go up.

Tell me. What? What did it mean, then? What would it mean, now?

It doesn’t matter. This doesn’t mean anything. It cannot mean anything. You’ve established as much.

Alpine slinks around the couch table and jumps up onto the sofa next to you, pawing at your arm until you let her climb into your lap. She doesn’t settle, exactly, but she keeps tracking the movement of your hands with her head. It distracts you for a while, and you smile as you readjust your position to scratch her head.

She smells a little like Bucky.

"This is so stupid," you finally say. Normally, it’s easy for you to poke fun at the inaccuracies of time travel movies, but this one is … different. You’ve always had a soft spot for it, even though you could never point out why. Maybe it’s the underlying melancholy of its rules that connects to the very core of you.

Right now, though, the characters on screen are having marathon sex and you want to die.

"You’re the one who picked it out," Bucky reminds you, taking a sip of his coffee.

And yeah, fine. In your defense, though, all of his suggestions were at least seventy years old and you had to veto with something to avoid another Hitchcock, or worse, a silent film.

Alpine is still restless in your lap, tapping the inlets in Bucky’s arm like they’re a piece of thread she’s playing with. Without warning, she jumps right over, landing in the crook of his elbow with feline precision.

Unexpectedly, Bucky winces, picking her up with his other hand and putting her down on the floor. She lets out an accusatory cry, bumping her head against his leg.

"Are you okay?" you ask.

"It’s fine," he hisses, looking the opposite of fine. "It happens sometimes. It’s the, uhm." He rolls his shoulder. "Not all the connective tissue healed properly."

"Can I do anything?"

"No, it’s okay. You might wanna just … this is kinda gross."

He grabs the metal arm by the joint and gives a sharp twist. With a whirring, metallic sound, it detaches from its socket, fingers frozen in their strain. It thumps onto the space between you on the couch, and Bucky sighs as the weight disappears from the old scars hidden under his shirt. He doesn’t look at you as he rubs the aching muscles, his jaw tensing even more at the pressure.

You watch him as softness blooms painfully in the pit of your stomach, warm and fond and impossible.

"I’m disappointed," you say at last, your voice cracking ever so slightly.

His fingers halt for just a moment before digging into his skin even more tightly. "I know it’s not—"

"I’m waiting for the gross part," you interrupt him. "I thought you’d have blood bags installed that were gonna explode or something."

An incredulous huff of a laugh escapes him. "That’s your definition of gross?"

"Don’t forget I’ve watched you die literally dozens of times," you remind him, tracing the golden lines laced through the vibranium. It seems less invasive, now that they’re not attached to him. "And I like your arm," you add quietly.

Bucky keeps looking at the screen, but you know he’s watching you out of the corner of his eye. You can feel it.

"It’s grotesque," he says.

"It’s impressive," you correct, absent-mindedly reaching for his pinkie. "But that tracks."

He stays silent for so long, you almost start to believe he’s not heard you at all. Finally, though, he clears his throat and asks, "Is he ever gonna tell her he’s a time traveler?"

It takes you a moment to remember the movie. "I don’t think so."

Bucky nods, producing the small notebook he always carries from his back pocket. "He’s a dick."

You snort and return to your side of the couch. "I know, right? We can watch something else if you want."

"Nah, it’s fine." He flicks through his notebook, jotting something down in the back.

"Do these keep?" you ask when he pockets it again.

"They don’t," he says simply, redirecting his attention to the screen.

You hum, attempting to lure Alpine closer with a shiny bit of chocolate wrapper. She’s decidedly uninterested.

"Were you so bored with the play you decided to ask me to marry you afterwards?"

"Something like that."

"I haven’t even asked," Bucky says and you flinch.

"Huh?" you say, a little shrilly.

"How are you feeling?"

"Oh. Yeah. Mostly normal again, I think."

His gaze flits to your hand as it goes to play with the pendant around your neck before returning to your eyes. "Anything … weird?"

You kissed him you kissed him you kissed him you—

"Not really." You clear your throat.

"I think you’re right, by the way," Bucky says.

"About what?"

He keeps staring straight ahead, his pen tapping against his thigh. "It doesn’t have to mean anything."

Even though it was your suggestion in the first place, it stings a little. You can’t help it.

"If Wong’s right, we’re already running out of time," Bucky continues. "We can figure everything else out once we’re out of this loop, but for now we should just focus on getting this right."

You hesitate. "You’re making it sound like we haven’t been doing just that all along."

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don’t know."

There’s something you’re missing staring you right in the face, but the problem with going through the same day so many times is that you’re running out of things to do. There’s only so much to do in these limited few hours you get before it all starts over again, because everything apart from the two of you stays the same every time.

Bucky’s arm glints in the morning sun like it’s threaded with gold string, his shoulders relaxed, and a different memory stirs in your mind.

That’s a lot of dedication when you could’ve just asked.

"What would you normally be doing right now?"

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "You trying to get rid of me already?"

"No. I’m saying you’re usually more unpredictable."

"Thank you."

"Not really a compliment. Sam has more going on on every given day than the two of us combined, but at least he’s consistent. You’re the one with no hobbies."

"What do you do for fun then?"

"I … Fuck you."

If you didn’t know better, you’d think he blushes.

"So, say there’s no time loop today, no mission, you have no memory of any of this shit. Normal July 4th. Where are you going?"

"Where am I going?"

"Before you remembered, when I didn’t tell you that you were going to die, you always disappeared for hours every morning. And then after Sam’s speech, you were gone again until the mission."

It’s another piece of the puzzle that you’re still missing.

Bucky contemplates you, taking another sip of coffee. His mouth does the little twitch again. "And you’re telling me you’ve never asked me that before?"

"Oh, I did," you reply. "A lot. I also tried following you once and you called me a shit spy."

"Well, you are." There’s a hint of a smile in his voice when he reaches for his arm. "Get your shoes, then."

* * *

It’s a long train ride down to Brooklyn, but it doesn’t feel like it. You manage to get a seat after a few stops, and because Bucky hasn’t said a word to you since you were standing on the platform, you take to watching the people around you.

It’s exciting, in a way, to be in a new space for the first time in a while. Not to know exactly what’s going to happen next. You’ve been making little pockets of time for yourself every now and again, walking different routes home after getting coffee or varying the time at which you leave, but it’s not the same as venturing into a different part of the city. There’s been too much going on for you to have even considered that.

"Are you going to tell me where we’re headed?" you ask after a while, when he has to step over your legs to make room for a stroller.

"Now where’d be the fun in that?" he answers, and then he turns silent again.

A small child is hugging a Mickey Mouse plushie to their chest and pointing at the window, wailing loudly. A girl with a septum piercing and at least three tote bags over her shoulders manages to maneuver a cello case and a scooter onto the carriage, leaning both against the back of some seats before taking out her phone and calmly starting to scroll. An elderly lady watches the whole affair, mumbling to herself disapprovingly, then resumes her knitting.

You catch Bucky already looking at you when you glance up at him. Something about it makes your cheeks heat and turn away quickly.

You remember that his government-issued apartment used to be somewhere near Flatbush, and you have a fleeting thought that this might be where you’re headed, even though that doesn’t really make sense. He still doesn’t make any attempt to move when you pass it by, continuing to stare out the window, his gloved hand wrapped tightly around the handrail above your head.

Finally, the train rolls to its last stop, and you make ready to get off with the rest of the passengers.

"Coney Island, huh?" you say as the heat on the platform slaps you across the face.

"Coney Island," Bucky repeats affirmingly. His hands are back in his pockets, and he doesn’t elaborate, even though you notice the significance in the way he says it.

Two words titling another subchapter in the mystery book that is James Buchanan Barnes.

You follow the masses streaming towards the water and a sigh dislodges from your throat. It’s been way too long since you’ve properly heard the ocean.

The beach is already swarming with people despite the fact it’s not even noon yet, filled with raucous laughter and music playing, but the sound of crashing waves is unmistakable. It fills you with a sense of longing, though for what you’re not sure.

Bucky keeps his hands tucked away as the two of you stroll along the boardwalk, dodging people left and right, until you have to grab hold of his sleeve in order to not get pulled away. His shoulders tense slightly, but he lets you, leading you towards the pier as if he, too, feels the pull coming from the sea.

You can’t figure out the look on his face. It’s like a weight has fallen off him when you left Manhattan, despite the crowds being considerably more dense down here, and yet there’s an anticipatory tension to his frame that you’ve only seen him assume in combat.

You clear your throat and he washes his face off it. "Is it usually like this?" you ask.

"It used to be not quite so bad," Bucky says, which isn’t quite what you asked. "Not this loud at least."

"What?" you shout teasingly. It earns you an eyeroll.

Thirty, you think. Took him long enough.

"We used to come here every summer," he continues, bending down to pick up a perfectly round pebble from the side of the road and weighing it in his hand before slipping it into his pocket. "Ate hot dogs until we were sick. Rode some of the rides if we could afford it. You know them fortune teller automatons? My sisters were obsessed with that."

Maybe you should recount the days you’ve been stuck in the loop, because this feels like an early birthday present. You hold on tightly to his sleeve, not wanting to interrupt the unusual flow of words. Bucky’s smile is miles away. Decades away.

"Becks came with us every year on the fourth, even when she was little. The twins never liked crowds much, but Rebecca loved it all. The noise and the excitement." His mouth tilts up in a grin. "One year, she was desperate for one of those giant stuffed teddy bears you can win," he says, nodding at one of the booths up ahead, "but we were all down to our last couple’a dimes, so she pretended she didn’t want it after all. Steve went, 'Hold on a minute', and he somehow won her that damn bear with two shots."

"Always the hero," you say quietly. Somehow, he hears you through the commotion.

"Yeah." He stops walking, then, leaning against the metal railing of the pier, letting the people flow past you. "The two of us would come here every year before the war, rain or shine, unless one of us was sick."

Nostalgia makes him seem younger, despite the tired eyes and the stubble on his cheek; or maybe this place is its own sort of time capsule and he’s just filling in that space he used to occupy.

"He kept it up." You’re not sure if you should tell him at all, if it helps or if it only makes this day a little more painful. But you figure that if it was you, you’d want to know. "During the Blip, he was always gone for his birthday. Only came home in the evening, I never asked why, though. I figured he just wanted—what?"

Bucky’s snickering. "You know today isn’t actually Steve’s birthday, right?"

"What?"

"He panicked during one of those press tours they had him do in ’41, said his birthday’s on the fourth. Everyone just ran with it without double-checking." He shakes his head. "I mean, Captain America born on Independence Day? The headlines practically wrote themselves."

"But—when’s his actual birthday then?"

"January 4th. Punk made himself half a year older than he actually is."

You laugh. "Of course he’s a Capricorn. That makes so much sense."

Bucky looks at you with raised eyebrows. "Was that a cap pun?"

You shove his arm and immediately regret it when your elbow hits vibranium. "That was terrible," you say. "The point is, he didn’t forget about your tradition."

"That was a while ago, though. 'Specially for him." He ducks his head. "I don’t know. I just wanted to see if …" He huffs mirthlessly. "Don’t think I’d even really want to see him. Not sure what I’d say to him if I did."

"How about, 'Hey, I’m stuck in a time loop, nice to see you?'"

He smiles as you lean against the railing next to him, your shoulders almost touching. "He’s done with that life. It’s fine."

You don’t know how he bears it. Being left behind already hurt bad enough for you, and you only knew Steve a couple of years, or maybe not at all. It sounds too painful, to be forced to keep wondering what if.

"I disagree," you say.

The silence that follows should be heavy, but the sea swallows it up; and so it floats. Around you, life goes on. People are shouting and fighting and laughing. Over at the boardwalk, a couple of buskers are just starting their set. A familiar melody drifts up to you, and it makes your heart ache a little, even though it’s not sad at all. It reminds you of Nat’s smile.

You watch the shadows that you cast over the water and you think, Dance with me, but you don’t say it out loud. You don’t want to ruin this moment.

So instead, you close your eyes and you breathe it in.

* * *

You spend what feels like hours at the pier, ebbing and flowing alongside the crowd in companionable silence, the only two people alive that are aware this day is like a snake biting its own tail; beautiful and sharp-teethed.

"Do you think we should head back?" you ask finally.

"You wanna head back?" Bucky says in lieu of an answer.

"We should. What if something happens to Sam again?"

He watches you, contemplating something for a moment, before he says, "He’s not gonna go without us today."

Torres’ message comes back to your mind, the lack of urgency in it. It seems, in the beginning, you’ve gotten a lot of things wrong, and you’re only just starting to chip away at those miscalculations.

Another memory, again of that day in the park.

I’m good, I didn’t end up going …Wanna just go home?

Home.

If the mission doesn’t have to happen today but you always go anyway …

"Do you ask him to go?"

He doesn’t answer, but you know his face so well by now.

"Oh, Bucky."

"Mission’s the easiest way to shut my mind up." He laughs dryly. "So, you see. Nothing about this is your fault. I pushed the first domino. Everything else happened after that."

You tug on his sleeve until he looks at you. "If I’m not allowed to blame myself, then you aren’t, either." Something twists in your gut. "Does that mean we’re not going on the mission today?"

The other question, the one you’re not asking, hangs in the air. Bucky swallows.

"It’s still early," he says.

"Right." You turn around and lean against the railing, looking at the booths on the other side of the pier. "Well, we’re here."

"I’m not riding the Cyclone with you."

You shudder. "Yeah, no thanks. Do people actually willingly go on that death trap?"

"Some idiots do," he smirks.

"Well, that’s not how I’m gonna go down, so no. I was thinking something like that." You point in the direction of one particular stand you walked past earlier.

Bucky follows your line of sight. "I thought you didn’t want any shooting today."

"That was before I saw that I could win a giant stuffed dragon."

"You know you can’t cheat, right?" He falls into step besides you with familiar ease, his hands back in his pockets.

"Let me rephrase that. That was before I saw that you could win me a giant stuffed dragon." You smile innocently and he laughs.

"I got banned from these things in ’36 but I’m sure you got this, sweetheart."

You nearly trip over your own feet as heat spreads in your chest. Bucky turns and looks at you in amusement.

You force yourself to ignore it, even though your heart is beating wildly. "That’s such a brag."

"Maybe I just want to see how your aim’s coming along."

Not at all, as it turns out. You walk away from the shooting gallery fifteen minutes later with a little plush keychain that looks like a sleeping bear, pouting.

"You could’ve helped me out," you grumble. "Instead of acting like they have your picture still up there ninety years after the fact."

"You never know. Besides, this is … cute."

"Oh, shut up, Barnes."

The keyring clacks against the back of his hand as it magnetically sticks to it. Your fingers brush as you keep holding onto the little bear. Bucky shakes his head.

"Besides," he says, gently tugging you along with the keyring still stuck to him. "You couldn’t have kept him."

He’s not wrong. Everything around you is set in stone in a way that permanence itself has lost all meaning. How can things ever be expected to change in a closed experiment?

You look around and marvel at all these lives around you, happening in just this way every single day in this loop, and yet this is the first time you’re truly aware of them. All these small, magnificent people around you, and yet it still boils down to the two of you.

"Listen, Y/N …" Bucky clears his throat, not looking at you as you keep walking. "There’s a dance to these things, and I’m not … you and me, we’re not …"

His cheeks are a dark shade of pink.

"I don’t think I follow," you say slowly.

"No. Of course. It’s just that … you should know …" He trails off again, mumbling something in Russian.

Your head is already whirring from the constant noise of the past couple of hours, but your heart is pounding faster again, something irrational like hope spreading wild and dangerous in your chest. He regards you with a sidewards glance, his eyes darkening like you’ve seen several times before now, the corner of his jaw twitching in that way of his; and so it’s easy to say it.

"Tell me."

You’ve asked him over and over, time after time, and you still haven’t gotten an answer. Weeks, months of this question that’s entirely meaningless in the grand scheme of things and yet refuses to leave the back of your mind.

Bucky’s mouth opens and closes, like the words are on his tongue but he needs to contain them just a little longer. His eyes trail over your face and off to the side, settling on something with a frown. "You have a …"

Thinking it’s a bug, you look at your arm and blink.

There, just below the elbow, someone has written four words in careful, slightly wonky letters. You don’t have to twist your arm to read them; you’ve done it many times.

No self-deprication. Скажи ей.

Familiar and slightly smudged under the heat of the afternoon sun, like they’ve been there all along. Like you’ve never washed them off your skin at all.

Memories meant for other timelines.

"Sorry." Bucky exhales slowly, then drags his other hand through his hair. "Think you’re up for another stop?"

Once again, you’re no closer to finding out what on earth he’s wanted to tell you all these times.

"Depends," you say, reminding yourself that you have no right to be disappointed. "Is there going to be coffee?"

"I’ll buy you some on the way." He takes a look at his wristwatch. "We have one last stop."

* * *

When you get to the cemetery, the sun is just setting on the horizon and the gates are locked. It doesn’t faze Bucky in the slightest. He just continues walking along the fencing until he reaches a couple of newspaper boxes lining it.

"After you," he says.

You stare at him. "No."

"Yes."

"You realize this is so illegal, right?"

Bucky shrugs. "I’ve done this dozens of times and they’ve not caught me yet. I’ll give you a lift."

"Again, I hate your ideas."

You place your foot into Bucky’s interlaced hands and only wince slightly when he propels you up. You come to a wobbly halt on top of the box, grabbing onto one of the spikes to keep your balance.

Bucky’s arm brushes your side when he climbs up next to you and nimbly jumps down on the other side of the fence. You sigh.

"You couldn’t have just busted the lock?"

"Probably." He opens his arms. "Come on. I’ve got you."

With a murmured curse, you take the leap. You crash into him, stumbling, his hands steadying your shoulders. You inhale involuntarily, letting yourself be surrounded by his presence for a moment before stepping away.

"I got it," you mutter.

You walk in silence as Bucky leads your way. Above your heads behind you, a passing N train rattles by.

It’s a beautiful sight, even though it’s sad. Rows upon rows of gravestones lined up as far as the eye can see, with paths crisscrossing between them.

Finally, he halts close to a spot in the shadow of an evergreen tree. You step up next to him to read the names on the stone, recognizing only the last one right above the inscriptions on the bottom.

REBECCA PROCTOR BARNES, 1926-2024

You remember the time right after he moved into the Tower; the odd hours, the baking, the candles, the silence, the long hair. The tear in his shirt. Your heart twists in regret, your mouth dry.

Bucky’s lips move with words you don’t hear, and then he pulls off his gloves and takes something out of his pocket, bending down. You recognize the pebble he picked up at the beach. He puts it down on the gravestone, then straightens again.

You reach out for his hand and squeeze it in silent condolence. Instead of letting go, he interlaces your fingers. His hand is warm.

Several minutes pass before he tugs on your hand again, pulling you to a bench a few steps back. You’re not sure what to say, and so you stay quiet, biting the inside of your cheek until Bucky bumps his shoulder against yours.

"I think this might be the longest time you’ve shut up since I met you."

You scowl at him. "I was trying to be respectful."

A small grin flits across his face. "There’s a first time for everything."

Another train passes resoundingly, an oddly mundane sound in such a solemn place; still, it adds to it, in a way. It makes you think of putting your loved ones on a train, then waving them good-bye; just for now.

"Where are your parents?" you ask softly.

"Back in Indiana. They moved to take care of my dad’s parents and then stayed to manage the house and all that." He closes his eyes. "I’ve not been there since I was fifteen years old, but I still remember the way the trees smell in summer right after it’s rained."

"And the twins?"

"Mira got married, moved out of state, died while I was in cryo. Jo was in a car crash in ’58. Apparently, she drove races."

You settle your head against his shoulder. "Did they have children?"

"Miriam did. I have a great-niece who’s an architect in Seattle."

"Fancy."

"Right?" He sighs. "It was always Becks and me, though, when we were kids."

"Do you come here a lot?"

"Not as often as I thought I would. But it’s good to remember things."

"Tell me about her."

You can hear his smile when he speaks again, and it’s almost better than seeing it. "She was exactly the kind of little sister you’d read about in novels. Pigtails. Sweet. Annoying as hell." He chuckles. "One time when she was nine, she ate so much cotton candy she was sick all over Steve’s shoes. And that made him sick."

"Gross," you comment, which makes him huff in amusement. Good. "You must miss her a lot."

"Yeah. I do." He hesitates for a moment, then adds, "You’d have liked her."

The admission blooms in your stomach, warm and wistful at the same time. "Somehow, I don’t doubt that."

"Do you have siblings?"

You sit up straight again. "What?"

Ask me tomorrow.

"What?" Bucky asks.

"Why did you ask me that?"

He looks at you like he just can’t figure you out. "I don’t know, it seemed appropriate."

"It’s just … you asked me before. In the loop."

"I have?" His brows knit. "Is it important?"

You hesitate, then shake your head. This day has been full of surprises you can’t make sense of; what’s one more? "I guess not."

"Well?" He looks at you expectantly.

"When I grew up … let’s just say super powers don’t exactly run in the family."

It comes out slower this time, your memories of the past, and Bucky listens just as carefully. You twist your rings around your fingers, over and over again.

"When you can do what I can do … even with my family around, I never felt like I could actually be a part of them. They never really understood what my powers meant and I … I think it scared them. Which I get now, after a shitton of therapy, but try explaining to a six-year-old why her dad never really talks to her."

"That’s horrible."

"I know. But I’m fine now." Strangely, unexpectedly, you find that you really mean it, too. "And then after that … I mean, you know. Those five years I had at the Compound were the first time I felt like I had a real family. We were all kind of broken together."

Bucky stays silent but you can tell his attention is still focused on you.

"I wasn’t in a very good place when you and Sam found me. I’d just lost everything. But then … that mission happened, and I was needed again even though you despised me—"

"I didn’t—"

"—but the truth is, fighting with you was the most fun I’d had in a long time."

"Ditto." He’s still looking at you as if he’s searching for something. As if he didn’t know all your secrets now. Finally, he looks away, clearing his throat. "It’s getting dark."

You nod. "Give me one second."

He watches you let go of his hand and walk back towards Rebecca’s grave, pulling out your keychain and setting it down as well. It looks like the little bear is resting its head on Bucky’s pebble.

The look on his face is heartbreakingly unreadable when you return, and it makes your insides clench in desperation. You come to a halt in front of him, wrapping your arms around yourself.

"We won’t make it ’til midnight," you say.

"Probably not," Bucky agrees.

"And I don’t want to have to go on that mission."

"Me neither."

Your eyes lock.

"Are you going to lose your mind again?" you say quietly.

He looks at the ground between you, hands hidden in the pockets of his jacket again. "No promises."

You swallow heavily. The anticipation makes you near dizzy, even though you’ve agreed that this doesn’t mean anything.

Your breath still hitches when his lips fan over yours, barely touching at first, just hovering, testing the waters. Like either of you have anything to lose. It’s making your stomach flutter.

In the end, you’re the one who leans in properly. You intend for it to be a short peck, but it’s just too tempting to linger, careful, soft, slow. He tastes like your coffee order: a little sweet and a little bitter.

You could see yourself becoming addicted to it.

The thought makes you break the kiss, your hands still on his chest. You can feel his heartbeat through the fabric of his shirt.

Bucky’s eyes open heavily, dark and blue and confused. His cheeks are flushed. "We’re still here?"

You are. You’ve made a fool of yourself. He’s going to die, anyway.

In a panic, you take a step backwards, blinking, wrapping your arms around yourself. Between one blink and the next, you realize you’re sitting in bed, the sun in your face, FRIDAY blasting The All-American Rejects at full volume.

Your lips are still tingling.

* * *

Something has shifted.

You can feel it in the air, humming like it did at the Bleecker Street Sanctum, vibrating with something akin to anticipation. The colors of the astral plane, warped and peculiar as they always are, feel sharpened, more insistently vibrant in their hue.

What now? the walls seem to ask, curling towards you as soon as you’re not looking at them directly; a presence hovering over your shoulder, close enough to feel its strange, otherworldly heat.

You reach for your necklace and feel its magic pulsating slowly and steadily, reassuring you. These ghosts cannot harm you in here; not yet, at least.

And yet, you feel this place quivering with kaleidoscopic impatience, straining against some invisible malevolence unraveling its very core with needle-pointed talons.

Playing with the fabric of everything is a dangerous pastime.

The symbols around your wrist are prickling, and when you examine them more closely, you notice they have started to lift off your skin, sitting there loosely like a worn-out bracelet.

"Y/N!"

Between one blink and the next, you’re squinting at an unforgiving midday sun, and you tumble backwards against a solid chest. Bucky’s arms come up to steady you as you take a gulp of air. It feels like you’ve been holding your head underwater.

"What are you doing up here?"

Slowly, confusion settles into your bones as you take a look at your surroundings. Somehow, you’ve gotten up to the roof again.

"I don’t know," you gasp, twisting in his hold. You can feel your pulse rushing through your ears. "I don’t remember."

You’ve not been able to forget anything in decades, and now it’s like that easy cord of memory has been snapped at some point between the astral plane and here. Gone, like that time has never existed in the first place.

Bucky studies you carefully, his face sober. His hands firm around your forearms, grounding you. It’s what does it, you’ve realized. The loop doesn’t snap back as long as you’re touching.

That doesn’t mean anything, though.

The important thing is, you’ve not woken up blood-soaked in nearly a week.

"You wanna go back downstairs?"

For a moment, the sky turns wild behind his head; you smell magic and fire as purples and greens and oranges swirl around in lazy, misty clouds, the stars glittering impossibly at the corner of your vision.

Bucky’s grip on you tightens and it all fades away until nothing remains but the intense blue of his eyes. You wonder if he might’ve noticed the colors, too, if he’d just looked away from you.

"Yeah," you whisper. "Yeah, that’s a good call."

His gaze flickers down and then leaves you, and it makes you want to restart the loop right then and there. Or at least have him look at you like that again.

It can’t mean anything and you know that, but if hope kills him, then let it break your heart into a million pieces. You welcome the ache. It’s much better than the alternative.

Curious, how you used to feel like you’ve known him for so long, through textbooks and newspaper articles and anecdotes told on long Campus nights. It’d always been hard for you to recognize the person from those stories in the man who was living just a few doors away from you and emptying your fridge. Hell, most days it was difficult to even imagine him capable of a smile.

But things are different now.

Over the course of this one, endless day, you’ve met a side of Bucky you’d barely believed existed before. A gentler person than he usually lets on, even towards you. Funny, too. Stubborn and capable, vicious, loyal, brave. So much more than meets the eye at first, not just the memory of a person, but a real, breathing, flawed, wonderful human being.

He’s got no clue, you think, how easy it is to fall in love with him.

"You wanna go back downstairs?"

You stare back at him, and a shiver runs down your spine. His brow starts to furrow, and so you nod. "Sure."

There’s no time to overthink this, especially not if time starts acting up again. And so you ignore the nausea in your stomach and the fact that, when Bucky holds the door up for you, the sun catches one of your rings in a way that gives it a soft emerald sheen for just a second. When you try to reach out for your powers, anyway, there’s that same surge of emptiness you’re already so familiar with.

Another fluke, then.

Or even more things that are starting to slip through reality’s cracks.

"So you’re both stuck in a time loop," Sam says skeptically.

"No way," Peter pipes up, eyes wide and astonished. "Like Palm Springs?"

"Really? Palm Springs? What’s wrong with Groundhog Day?"

"What, like—like the musical?"

Sam looks at you accusingly. "Who’s the kid again?"

"You gotta get with the times, bud," Bucky smirks, absent-mindedly scratching Alpine between the ears.

"That’s the million dollar question," you reply, turning to look at Peter. He’s tapping his fingers against his leg, his gaze flitting between the three of you. "Because whenever we tell you about this, you’re not surprised that we know you, you’re surprised we remember you."

He chuckles awkwardly. "Is there a difference?"

"There is," Bucky says.

"You’re not aware of the loop," you continue, tilting your head, "so you might be a symptom of it starting to break down."

"Thank you?"

"It would explain why you think we would know you. Maybe you’ve slipped in through some other part of the multiverse."

"Oh," Peter says, blinking. "Oh. Sorry, I didn’t—no, that’s not what’s happening here."

"I know this is a lot."

"It’s not. I mean, I get what you’re saying but this is not a multiverse problem in—the way you’re thinking."

You’re starting to get a headache. "So you are aware of the time loop?"

"No! That’s all—wow. I’m, uh, look …" He coughs, sitting up a little straighter. "So we’ve actually—it’s a bit more complicated than that because, well, there was this—"

"Ever been to Germany, kid?" Bucky interrupts.

All three of you turn to stare at him. Alpine continues to clean her paws.

"I … yeah, once," Peter replies, a curious look on his face. "Through an internship, why … why?"

Bucky nods, his expression unreadable. "He’s a dead end."

"Hey!"

You glance at Sam, but he frowns at Bucky, too. "How do you know that?"

"Call it a hunch."

"Wanna share with the group?" Sam deadpans.

"I’m good."

You rub your temples with an exhausted groan. If Peter doesn’t have anything to do with the loop brushing against other realities at all, you’re quickly running out of ideas. And time.

You manage a vaguely apologetic smile when Peter comes up with an excuse to leave, then continue to stare blankly at your own hands, twisting your rings around your fingers over and over again. They remain relentlessly black.

What’s the point, you think, and not for the first time. What the hell are you supposed to do when every path you start on leads you back in a damn circle like that stupid snake swallowing its own tail?

It used to be a comfort to know you’ll make it out of the loop somehow, but geez, you’d love to be as certain you’d succeed in not destroying the whole multiverse in the process.

Unfortunately, that outcome seems less likely with every Friday that passes. You’d have to make your move soon, but you don’t know what it is. You don’t know how. Even with the majority of the pieces of this day laid out, you still can’t make out the big picture. You don’t have all the answers.

So what’s the fucking point?

"Okay," Bucky says, leaning over the back of the couch until he can look at your face upside-down, "what the hell is going on with you?"

* * *

"I really don't think this should be our priority right now."

"And I think I definitely want a distraction," you say. "How do you feel about sage green?"

"I don't recall," he says pointedly, and you immediately regret your new honesty policy.

"I'm fine, I promise," you say, putting another paint bucket into your shopping cart. You’ve decided that since nothing fucking matters, you’re going to repaint the living room. "Careful, or I'll start thinking you worry about me."

"Will you stop pretending like you don't know I do for one second?"

You ignore him, staring at the shelves intently. "How about lilac?"

"Y/N," he says in that tone.

"Bucky," you echo.

"You're doing the thing again."

"What thing?" you ask, choosing a particularly ghastly shade of canary yellow just to spite him.

He grabs the wiring of your shopping cart to stop you from escaping into the next aisle. "Look at me."

So you do. "I’m fine, Buck."

It’s just that you’re skirting towards an emotional breakdown the likes of which this loop has never seen before. No big deal.

"What are we doing here? Literally, why are we here?" The metal squeaks as it dents between his fingers. "What are we even trying to do if you won't let me in?"

"What do you want me to say?" you ask in exasperation. "That I'm terrified? That I don't know what's happening? You know that already. I've never been an enigma to you. I remember every detail of my life in full technicolor, and it's been exhausting, but this … forgetting things, that's worse."

"You think I can't relate to that?" Bucky says, and your fingers twitch. Old habits.

"That's not fair."

"Neither is you saying we’re in this together and not acting like it. Why are you still trying to carry everything on your own?"

"Because it’s my responsibility—"

"No, it isn’t," he interrupts. "Even if I did die that first time, it still wouldn’t be your responsibility or your burden."

"Burden?" you say thinly. "You think your life is a burden?"

"Twelve."

There's a pull in your stomach at the old nickname, even though you know its intended meaning now. It's making you realize he hasn't used it since your trip to Avengers Campus. "Don’t Twelve me right now."

"Where is everyone?"

You turn around.

The aisles surrounding you are completely empty, like the few other shoppers that have been in here with you have just vanished off the face of the earth. You frown, leaving the cart behind to look around the corner. The store feels bigger, somehow, now that no one else is here. Your steps echo on the laminate flooring; in the distance, there’s some tinny music playing through the speakers, but there’s no other sound.

"I don’t like this," you say.

"Stay right there," Bucky says, stepping up next to you.

You scowl at him. "Did you just pull a gun out of your pocket? Do you always bring that thing when you go shopping?"

"I don’t," he says. "Do you usually wear your tac suit?"

"I’m not—" You look down. "Okay, something is very, very wrong here."

The aisle has grown in length, like you’re walking through an endless, brightly lit tunnel lined by bare shelves. When you look back, it stretches just as far in the other direction, the exit barely visible on the horizon. In a way, it’s very dreamlike, reality warping to create this odd alternative of itself.

"Stay behind me, at least," Bucky says, raising his weapon. He’s still in his civilian clothes, but a stern look has washed over his face.

"In your dreams, Barnes."

He rolls his eyes.

There’s only one way to go and so you continue walking, the aisles crossing yours continuously seemingly leading nowhere. Finally they disappear altogether as the shelves morph into a sort of avenue which shrinks down even more, the lights dimming. Your feet hit granite.

"This is impossible," you say.

"I think this is what Wong meant," Bucky replies grimly.

"We need to go back right now," you say, but when you turn to look over your shoulder, there’s only darkness and stone. "Bucky—"

He pushes you out of the way as a shot sounds through the tunnels, and one moment later you’re swarmed by white jackets on all sides. You curse, rolling to the side and reaching for the knife on your thigh. It’s not there.

"We need to get out of here!" you shout, using your fist instead. Your pendant pulsates around your neck, but when you reach for your powers, there’s still an invisible wall barring you from using them.

"I thought you wanted to pick out paints," Bucky yells back.

"I don’t understand why you’re so mad about the—"

"I watched Groundhog Day."

If it could, time would freeze. You’re begging it to. "No."

"Yeah," he says, shooting at a white jacket. A spray of blood speckles their uniform. "It’s funny. A little fucked up, if you asked me, but when you get to the crux of it—"

"We’re not having this conversation again," you say, punching another one of them in the face. "We’re not."

"Why not?" Bucky demands. "I’d love to have been a part of it as well."

You let out a frustrated scream. "It’s not gonna work like Groundhog Day."

"You don’t know that. Unless you’re not telling me something."

"For fuck’s sake," you yelp, barely evading a knife aimed at your stomach, "do you really think I’d keep it from you if I had slept with you?"

Bucky twists the gun out of someone’s gloved hands and shoves it into yours. "You’re keeping something from me and I want to know why."

You’re back to back now, both of you trying to catch your breath. With the moment of surprise gone, your opponents are circling you now, waiting for your next move.

And you find yourself breaking.

"Your ma liked Voltaire," you say. "Your favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip and your favorite coffee order is mine. If you drink it black, you do this thing with your mouth that I’ve never seen anyone do, and it’s weirdly sweet." You let out a breath. "You have a fucked-up sense of humor, which I think is great, and you watch Hitchcock movies even though you don’t particularly enjoy them, which is just so stupid, and I’ve never met anyone who gives better hugs than you. Satisfied?"

You can feel him straighten behind you. "You’re deflecting," he says.

With a frustrated groan, you shoot at the next white jacket breaking formation. "Maybe I want things to be as simple as a damn movie as well, but they’re not. It’s fictional. Four o’clock!" You duck and Bucky hits the one coming from the side over the head with his arm. "It’s a bunch of writers coming up with a bullshit idea of love saving everyone’s problems once again. The girl falls in love with the guy, the loop ends, la-dee-dah-dah, day over."

"Yeah, that’s way more absurd than what’s happening here."

"Well, clearly it’s not fucking worked out so far, so if you have any other suggestion, I’m all ears."

A beat passes.

You bite the inside of your cheek hard, forcing yourself to stay vigilant. It’s out there now. You need to get out of here.

Bucky sounds very far away, even though he’s right there with you. "What are you saying?"

Your vision swims slightly, and you blink through it. Shoot. Kick. Protect. "Don’t," you say, shaking your head. "Don’t play stupid with me right now, I swear—"

"Y/N—"

"It doesn’t matter, alright? It doesn’t change shit because we’re still stuck in this nightmare that keeps getting worse, and it doesn’t matter what I feel because you don’t feel the same way anyway, and I’ve just been trying to—"

"I do."

You fall silent, staggering on your feet at the emotion in his voice.

"I do," he repeats. "I have."

"What?" Your voice cracks on that single word.

His magazine runs out and he throws the gun away, cursing under his breath. "You think every movie should be ten minutes shorter, as a rule. You don’t really like your job, but you’ve also never sat still for a minute in your life and you’d rather be miserable than ask someone else for help when it comes to money or, well, anything. You hate being alone with your thoughts, but you also wouldn’t admit that with a gun to your head."

Like magnets, you turn at the same time, reaching for each other. There’s blood on his nose. Your hands are shaking.

"I’ve been in love for you for months now and it’s been literally fucking killing me."

Tell her.

The tear falls.

"So stupid," you whisper.

He looks at you in that same way he has countless times before; you’ve never been able to put your finger on the emotion in his gaze, but now you know. You know.

And then a shot rings in your ears and you sit up in bed, the sun in your face, music blasting,

"—when I’ve known this all along—"

Your door slams shut behind you as you run across the hall to the elevator, repeatedly hitting the button to go down.

"Are you okay?" Sam shouts from the doorway just as the doors ping open.

"Fine!" you shout back, naked feet almost slipping as you hammer on the button to go to the lobby.

You can’t wait for Bucky to get back. You’re going to have to find him. Surely, he can’t be that far from the Tower anymore. Maybe you should’ve changed out of your pyjamas, you think on your endless way down, besides, you don’t know at all which direction to go, unless—

The doors slide open to reveal Bucky on the other side, panting. His blue eyes lock onto yours immediately, mirroring your own feelings of terror and hope.

"You still remember, right?"

"Yeah," he says, and your last resolve crumbles to pieces.

You both move at the same time.

It’s a little like having your powers back, because the world around you stops and ceases to exist. Nothing else is real except Bucky’s arms coming around you and pulling you into him, his mouth crashing into yours, your back pressing against the elevator wall.

Nothing about your previous brief, careful kisses could have prepared you for this one. It’s desperate. Neither of you is holding back anymore, all things laid out in the open and expressed in every starving touch. You want to live in this moment forever, breathing him in, swallowing every sound he makes.

When you finally have to come up for air, you involuntarily tighten your grasp on his hair, your eyes shut tightly, afraid you’ll be zapped right back to your bed. Instead, you feel Bucky chase your lips with his own, breathing heavily, his arms still steady and firm around you.

You look at him through heavy-lidded eyes, soaking all of him in. "Don’t let go," you whisper.

He steps even closer until your chests are fully touching, and he catches you easily when you wrap your legs around him.

"Never," he mumbles into your mouth, and then he kisses you again.

* * * * *

There was a package on the kitchen table.

It was addressed to you, which was concerning since you hadn’t actually ordered anything. Even if you had, you’d have used a fake name and had it sent to a p.o. box.

You’d rather be overly cautious than risk getting caught over a clothing delivery.

It wasn’t a very large package, only about the size of a shoe box. Still, you didn’t know what to make of it. You just stared at it from a safe distance.

"Are you gonna open it with your mind?"

You flinched slightly at Bucky’s voice right behind you. "You did this," you said sharply.

He crossed his arms, looking at you with something like a challenge in his eyes. "Do you wanna look inside before you kill me?"

Frowning, you ripped the package open to reveal a metal container. When you put it down on the counter, the locks unlatched with a low hiss. Inside, there were six simple, perfect black rings in differing sizes.

You turned to Bucky again. "What is this?"

"They measure fatigue. At least that’s what they’re supposed to do. May I?"

You were stunned enough to nod without thinking, watching him take one of the smaller rings out of the box. He reached for your hand and slid it onto your pinkie. It was a perfect fit, cool against your skin, just like his vibranium palm. You could feel your pulse rushing in your ears.

The ring turned a beautiful emerald green on your finger.

"Mazel tov," Bucky said. "You appear to be awake."

Your mouth was very dry. He was still holding your hand. "Who did you tell about me?"

"No one. Only that I know someone whose abilities are tied to their energy, and who could use a way to track that more easily." He dropped your hand and leaned against the counter, observing you. "So you’ll be able to tell how many redos you can manage without fainting."

Your thoughts were racing, confusion and awe taking the place of your left-over anger. You put another one of the rings on and watched it turn green on your finger.

"Thank you," you finally whispered. "You don’t know what this …"

Bucky nodded as if he did. "Consider it a peace offering."

"You—this is—can I hug you?"

He looked stunned for a second, stunned and maybe something else, but then he tilted his head and you wrapped your arms around him before he could take it back. It was a bit weird at first, awkward and stiff, until then he carefully put his arms around you, too, gently pulling you in.

Oh, you thought, this is nice.

Bucky’s head was touching yours and the scent of his shampoo made you slightly dizzy. When you let go of him, there was a strange look in his eyes, one that made you take half a step back with an embarrassed chuckle.

"You’re a good hugger, Barnes," you said.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look away, either.

That’s what made you do it: that look. You didn’t know what to make of it, and suddenly you didn’t feel ready to let go.

"Consider it a peace offering."

You looked at your hands. The ring on your pinkie had maintained that glorious shade of emerald green, but the other had turned black. You laughed a little.

"This is incredible," you told Bucky earnestly. This time, you didn’t stumble over your own words. Instead, you watched his face. "Can I give you a hug?"

It wasn’t just surprise that passed over his features, but you couldn’t pinpoint the other thing. His arms enveloped you again and you sighed a little, burying your nose in his shirt until the warm smell of him was all you breathed in. It was just you and him in that moment, and your ever wandering mind was strangely soothed by that thought.

You didn’t let go when you had last time. You just stayed where you were with your eyes closed, letting Bucky rub the lightest circles on the flat of your back. He could probably feel your heartbeat, but for some reason you didn’t care.

"For the record," you mumbled after a while, "I’m thankful, but I’m also still annoyed with you, so this doesn’t change anything."

You could feel him hold back a surprised chuckle and it made you giddy even as he drew away.

"Wouldn’t expect anything else, doll." He takes another step back as if he’d only just noticed how close you were still standing. "Anyway, at least now we’ll know whether bringing you along will actually be useful."

And there it was, albeit with the usual venom in his voice. Maybe he really did mean it as a peace offering. You were willing to believe it for the time being.

"You’re a strange man, James Buchanan Barnes," you said quietly, shaking your head. Hiding your smile.

"Says the time witch."

You gasped in mock surprise. "Did you just call me a witch? Does that make me one of the Big Three?"

Bucky groaned. "It’s not a thing."

You ignored him. "I want a giant black hat for my birthday so I can scare little kids on Hallowe’en. Ooh, and a cauldron. Sam!" You turned to face the opening door. "Bucky finally admitted it!"

"Admitted what?"

"That I’m one of the Big Three!"

"Big three pains in my ass, maybe," Bucky muttered, the tips of his ears turning red.

"There’s just three?"

"Shut up, Sam."

You slipped on the rest of your new rings in delight and watched them each turn a slightly darker shade of green. The one you’d put on earlier stayed black, though, at least for now, as if to remind you the moment had happened.

It wasn’t breaking your promise, you told yourself. After all, he hadn’t shared anything with you at all. If anything, it had been the other way around.

It was just going to stay yours until you figured out what it meant.

chapter eleven