Eddie Munson In Chapter One: The Hellfire Club "This Year's Different. This Year Is My Year. I Can Feel

Bucky and queen song

Waving Your Banner

This drabble is part of JJ’s Mixtape - a mini series based on my followers’ favourite songs and characters. You can read more of them here!

Song Prompt: We Will Rock You - Queen

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader (flirtatious, no pronouns used)

Word Count: ~1300

CW: swearing, some flirting, suggestive jokes, a bit of tickling

minors dni: this work does not contain smut, but does contain a flirtatious/suggestive interaction between the reader and an adult-aged character. I am not comfortable with engagement from anyone under the age of 18. Thank you for your understanding and respect.

Note: Thanks, anon! My initial note-to-self from when you first sent this was, verbatim, "okay but dodgeball would be fucken hilarious with we will rock you" - so we've gone with an Avengers training game vibe with this one

The woods hummed with tension, broken by the occasional crack of a branch or the muffled thud of boots. The Avengers had turned what should’ve been a simple training game into an all-out war, and your team was desperate to gain the upper hand. Somewhere ahead, in the shadow of the tree-line, stood the final obstacle: Bucky Barnes, silent, brooding, and lethal, guarding his team’s flag, the White Wolf circling his den.

You crouched beside Sam behind a cluster of bushes, your pulse steady but sharp as you surveyed the terrain. Bucky was right where you expected him, leaning casually against a tree just outside the flag's perimeter. He looked calm, detached even, but you knew better. The slightest flicker of movement would set him in motion, and if he was after you, there’d be no escaping. Flag perimeters were a no-fly-zone, so you and Sam would have to take it on foot.

“Alright,” Sam said, breaking the silence. “We need a plan. And by we, I mean you, because I’m not getting anywhere near the Winter Soldier.”

You shot him an incredulous look. “You’re faster than me.”

“He’s a wall. A brick wall with trust issues and superhuman reflexes.”

You sighed, pressing your back against the thick trunk of a tree. “Then we need a distraction. Something that’ll actually make him move.”

Sam raised a brow. “Oh, yeah? What’s your genius plan?”

“You,” you said, giving him a pointed look. “You could bait him. Taunt him. Goad him into leaving his post.”

“And get steamrolled by the murder machine? Hard pass.” He scoffed. "Besides, you’re obviously better bait.”

The heat rushed to your face immediately. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, come on,” Sam teased, his grin widening. “You’ve got that whole… thing going on.”

“What thing?”

He waved a hand vaguely at you. “You know. The whole ‘badass with a secret soft side’ thing. He’ll eat it up. Hell, I think the whole team’s noticed the way he looks at you.”

You glared at him. “You’re out of your damn mind.”

“He does,” Sam interrupted, revelling in your reaction. “Come on, you could probably get him to do whatever you wanted. Just say something like, ‘Oh, Bucky, is that a vibranium arm or are you just happy to see m-”

You shoved him into the bush.

Sam tried to silence his little grunts as he pulled himself out, yanking the twigs from his armour plates. “Fine. You wanna argue about this all day, or should we win?”

You sighed, rolling your eyes. “Just send in Redwing.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

The plan was simple enough: Redwing would create a distraction in a bush behind Bucky, luring him away from the flag, giving you and Sam time to move in and grab it. You moved carefully, keeping low as you crept through the underbrush. The tension in the air was electric, every rustle of leaves amplified by your own awareness of how close Bucky was.

But, true to form, Sam couldn’t resist screwing with you.

As you crept closer to the clearing, Redwing darted toward you and made a ruckus in the bush partially shielding you from view. It was more than enough to give you away, and before you could even curse Sam’s name, you heard it - the unmistakable sound of boots crunching leaves, closing in fast.

Your head whipped around just in time to see Bucky moving toward you with the kind of speed that made your heart stutter. His expression was sharp, predatory, and - gods help you - just a little amused.

“Shit,” you muttered, bolting from your hiding spot.

“Running won’t help you,” Bucky called after you, his voice dark and smooth, laced with amusement.

You didn’t bother responding, too focused on dodging tree trunks and low-hanging branches. But it didn’t matter how fast you ran; he was faster. In seconds, a strong arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you clean off your feet.

“Gotcha,” he murmured, his voice low in your ear.

“Not yet, you don’t,” you growled, twisting sharply in his grip.

You elbowed him in the side, breaking free for a split second, but he was faster. He blocked your next move, his vibranium hand catching your wrist and spinning you around. You didn’t go down without a fight, aiming a kick at his shin and struggling against his hold, refusing to make it easy for him.

“Feisty,” he muttered, almost admiringly, his grip tightening as you wrestled.

You managed to get one arm free, landing a half-decent shove against his chest. He staggered back slightly but recovered in less than an instant, his smirk returning, sharper than before.

“Alright,” he said, his voice edged with amusement, “you wanna play rough? Let’s play rough.”

Before you could react, he was on you, trapping you between his body and the wide trunk of a tree. His fingers darted to your ribs, pressing against your sides with infuriating precision.

You jolted, a startled laugh bursting out before you could stop it. “What the fu- hey! No, that’s cheating!”

“Cheating?” he echoed, his grin widening as he tickled you again, this time catching your waist. “You’re the one trying to fight dirty.”

You squirmed, trying to slap his hands away, but the tickling was relentless, and your traitorous laughter left you weak, your arms useless.

“No! I- dammit, Barnes!”

Seizing the moment, he stepped back, grabbed both your wrists and yanked you against him, hauling you effortlessly over his shoulder. You kicked your legs in protest, but his grip was unyielding, his hand steady against the backs of your thighs.

“Put me down!” you demanded, pounding your fists against his unfairly muscled back.

“Not until you’re in jail,” he said, his voice low and smooth, the vibration of it sending a shiver through you.

“This is cruel and unusual punishment,” you grumbled, your cheeks burning as you felt his arm tighten around your thighs.

He chuckled, the sound warm and agonising. “Unusual, maybe. But I’d say you’re enjoying it.”

“Barnes!” you snapped, squirming harder.

His laughter deepened, and he carried you with an ease that was both infuriating and maddeningly attractive. When he finally stopped, he set you down just outside the jail, his hands lingering at your waist.

“Let me go,” you said, though the bite in your tone had softened.

He stepped closer, his body a looming presence as his eyes bore into yours. “Say please.”

You scowled, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

“Didn’t think so,” he said, his smirk widening as he stepped forward, forcing you to step back - straight into the jail’s boundary.

You glared at him, your chest heaving as he stood just inches away, his gaze dark and intent. “Happy now?”

“Not yet,” he murmured, his voice a low rasp, “but close.”

Before you could fire back, Sam’s triumphant whoop echoed through the trees. You turned just in time to see him flying above your team's base with Bucky's team's flag, waving it over his head like a trophy.

Bucky groaned, his head falling back briefly before he levelled a sharp glare at you. “Distraction,” he muttered under his breath with a shake of his head, the word practically dripping with accusation.

Your lips curved into a coy smile despite yourself.

“You’re too damn good at it,” he said, his tone darker now, his gaze lingering on you for a moment longer than necessary before he turned and stalked off.

Flushed, you called after him. "This isn't over, Barnes!"

He chuckled, the sound sending a shiver down your spine, turning to face you as he walked backwards towards his next mission. "Not by a long shot."

---

Neighbors Masterlist

Main Masterlist

◍ smut/18+ fics ⌾ angst ◌ pure fluff

Neighbors

⌾ Banana Bread | Dinner For Two | ◌ Movie Night | Teach Me? | ◌ The Diner | ◌ Hairpins | Knead You | ◌ Golden Afternoon | Old Friend | ⌾ New Exhibit | Red Henley | ◍ New York | ⌾ March 10th | ◍ Panties In A Twist | A Couple Drinks | ◍ Backwards | to be continued…

Prologue: The Holiday season catches Bucky by surprise, but after a less-than-ideal morning, a friendly invitation from his new neighbor is more tempting than he would have anticipated.

Summary:

"He didn't know how it had happened, how he'd gotten so comfortable around you, how he'd let you in. At first, everything was quiet. Bucky was adjusting to this new life, his pardon, his therapist, his amends, and everything they'd gotten him into. Sure there was Yori, but that was like one old man to another, and far more complicated. You were different."

Your friendship with your neighbor across the hall, the James "Bucky" Barnes, blooms as you get to know each other. And as a new extremist group - the Flagsmashers - make their mark on the world, the two of you are left to figure out what that means for your blossoming relationship.

A domestic, sweet, and spicy romantic comedy based on the characters and events surrounding Marvel's series, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.

Neighbors on Spotify:

Side A: songs they listen and/or dance to in the series Side B: songs that fit their vibe, describe their relationship, or otherwise remind me of them 50s Friday Night: a playlist inspired by chapter 9 (Old Friend)

Also Read on Ao3 and Wattpad

---

Your Muse

Eddie Munson x Artist!reader

Summary: Eddie finds out what the little secret you’ve been hiding in your sketchbook is.

Warnings: Just fluff I think

Wordcount: 2,332

Eddie knows that you love to draw.

Since the day he met you, you have always had a pen or pencil in hand, doodling whenever the opportunity presented itself. Worksheets, no matter the class, filled to the brim with messy sketches of whatever came to your mind. Palms covered in hearts and flowers from when you got bored listening to your teachers' lessons. But most of the time you would dig into your backpack to retrieve the mysterious little black book that you spent most of your time drawing in.

It was a thing that you never let anyone look at what filled the pages of your sketchbook, not even Eddie had seen the inside of it, and as your best friend he'd be lying if he said he wasn't curious about what exactly you were hiding. On more than one occasion, though he hates to admit it, he had thought about taking a peek at the, what he presumed were promiscuous, pages of art you spent so much of your precious time working on but the thought alone made him feel an inkling of guilt that he just couldn't get passed.

“What are you drawin’ this time, huh?” Eddie’s question ends in a prolonged yawn; he’s laid back comfortably in your bed trying to take a nap but the scratch of your pencil against rough paper keeps his curiosity piqued enough to overcome his exhaustion from school for the time being. He stretches like a cat along the length of your bed and his feet dangle off the edge, toes wiggling after being still for so long.

You're sitting at your desk hunched over in a way Eddie is sure must be uncomfortable, but he doesn’t say anything because he knows his posture isn't much better. He tries to glance over the top of your shoulder for a chance to see what exactly your drawing but he wasn’t nearly quiet enough because you’re quick to shut the book before his eyes can even break over the hill of your shoulder and all he can do is grunt in annoyance in correspondence to your secrecy. A deep rumble releases from the depth of his chest before he roughly plants his face into your pillow. The smell of your shampoo is enough to make him forget his previous irritation.

Spinning in your chair to face him you smile in amusement, “Why are you so nosey? Wayne didn’t teach you to mind your manners or somethin’?” You're teasing him and he knows it, he lifts his hand just enough to flash you his middle finger and the melody of the giggle you let out in response to his antics makes the beat of his heart accelerate to an alarming rhythm and his stomach flutter with the most vicious of butterflies. He's never been more grateful for a pillow because he’s sure that the heat that’s spreading along the skin of his face is causing his cheeks to redden an embarrassing amount. He can’t believe that just the sound of your laugh has him practically falling to your feet in absolute devotion. He turns his head to glare at you but finds that the glowing smile stretched along your lips, lifting the apple of your cheek which further rounds your face, has his own face softening into a gentle grin that almost matches the brightness of yours. 

Eddie continues to look at you even as you turn away to gently guide your fingers along the worn leather of your sketchbook, there is a look of uncertainty that flashes in your eyes and if Eddie wasn’t paying close attention to you like he always does he wouldn’t have noticed. He makes an effort to change the subject, “We should order in some pizza or something, I’m fuckin’ starving.” 

“Aren’t you always?” Eddie swats your thigh just barley from how you spin your chair to avoid his hand, grumbling words you assume to be comebacks.

You laugh again and despite your previous comment you get up to make the call for your usual pizza with no argument, somewhat of a tradition when Eddie comes over, and dig into the bag Eddie had haphazardly tossed on the foot of your bed when he first got to your place for his wallet; you paid last time so it’s his turn.

The door to your room creaks almost eerily when you open it to step out and creaks again when you close it; he hates that sound. For a while Eddie doesn’t move, just lays comfortable listening to the faint sound of your voice in the kitchen as you order the food. Eddie wishes you had made the call closer so he can hear the sound of your honeyed voice even if it wasn’t aimed at him.

He looks around your room regardless of the fact that he’s been in there more than his own room as of late. His probing eyes find their way to your desk and on your desk, just as you had left it only moments ago, is the little black sketchbook he was always so curious about.

It was wrong, his desire to grab it so he could selfishly get a glimpse of something that was absolutely none of his business. It was a breach of privacy but he had never had such an opportunity, the book was almost always in your line of sight never fully giving someone the chance to open it. He looks at the door, ears straining to see if you were on your way back to the room, but he hears nothing and so, with shaky hands, he stretches his arm across the gap between your bed and the desk and gently grabs the book. The guilt pours in almost immediately and he sighs in frustration. In truth he doesn’t know why he’s so adament on finding out what’s in it, he guesses that maybe he doesn’t like that you feel the need to hide something from him- or maybe he was just greedy, wanting to know everything there was to know about you so that he may keep you closer to his heart more than you were to anyone else's-, he was pretty sure you trusted him he just wasn’t sure why you didn’t with this.

You’ve had no problem letting him have his quick glances at other drawings; the little butterflies you’d draw with precision along the lining of homework, or the randomly drawn eyes in between sections of your notes, why was this so different?

Eddie sighs once more before placing the book back onto your desk, taking care to place just as it was. 

The door opens just as Eddie lays back down and his heart almost bursts out of his chest at how quickly you did it. He still feels that sliver of guilt when you move to giddily plop yourself beside him, letting your fingernails rub at his scalp and rake through the tangles in his unruly hair with a pretty little grin sat perfectly etched into your face. He face plants into the pillow again.

“I almost looked through your sketchbook,” for some reason Eddie’s never felt more full of shame, “I didn’t though.” He says the last part sternly as if to reiterate that you can trust him enough not to try again. 

You stay relatively quiet, hand still making its way through the frizzy waves, fingers curling the hair around themselves in an attempt to create curls. Eddie usually enjoys your random spurts of touchiness, revels in it, because it only happens once in a blue moon- when you’re too comfortable to register the way you’re touching him so intimately, but right now it does very little to quiet his nerves in the way he hoped it might. He wonders if you're mad at him.

The silence is deafening, he’s not sure why he said anything at all, the undeniable need to hold himself accountable when it comes to you is aggravating. Even with the reputation of someone like him it was incredibly hard to lie to you. The time he snuck a bite of your lunch abruptly crosses his mind, he remembers how it took all of ten seconds of your frowning stare for him to give in and stop blaming Henderson.

The thought is thrown out the window when he feels your body cuddle up to him, “It’s you.” you whisper the words so quietly he almost misses it.

His head turns to you, for what seems like the nth time tonight, only to find you already looking at his face close enough he can feel the warmth of your breath against his shuttering lips. You’re so close, maybe too close because he’s sure you can see the way his pupils dilated and the way his nose goes a little red in correspondence. 

Eddie’s brows furrow, “What’s me?”

Your eyes dart to look at everything but his eyes, you look at the crease formed from confusion between his brows and the way it makes his button nose scrunch a little, the smile lines that are prominent even without his usual smug grin, you look at the pink of his lips and the way the skin peels from how often he bites at them, you do see the way his pupils dilate and how his nose gets red, “The drawings in the sketchbook- their all drawing of you.”

At first he just watches you, brown doe like eyes looking for signs of deceit or sarcasm as if he thinks you’re seconds away from laughing in his face and telling him “It was a joke” because he doesn't want it to be. He wants to know if you look at him the way he looks at you. He needs to know if you notice how the corner of his eyes crinkle when he laughs the way he notices the way your eyes shine like gold in the light of the morning sun. Do you take notice of the beauty mark that lays hidden under the shield of his eyelashes the way he takes note of and admires every visible mark and scar that litters your face and body? Do you see Eddie the way he sees you? He hopes you do.

The breath he takes before speaking is uncharacteristically shakey compared to the usual confidence he holds in his chest, “Yeah?” 

Your confirming hum, even with it being laced with uncertainty, has his heart soaring to heights of tenderness he has never felt before. He brings his hand to your face and lets his ringed fingers, calloused and scarred, delicately trace the features he swears were sculpted by some sort of deity before letting it settle against your warming cheek with an adoration that could make even the coldest of hearts leap. His touch is so filled with irrefutable love that it could be mistaken for worship in the purest of forms and God does it make your heart ache with a passion like no other.

The euphoric feeling of exhilaration that fills the both of you and the room has you both giggling like children, pressing your foreheads together at the ridiculousness of the situation, everything not having fully settled in your minds.

This natural feeling of contentment between the two of you is all Eddie ever craves. He hoped almost everyday for moments like this- to be the reason you light up with laughter even in moments of seriousness.

“So… Am I like your muse or something? Cause y’know I’d be totally flattered.” The words are muttered as to not disrupt the intimacy of the moment but the teasing tone of his voice is there and a smirk that has his smile lines deepening, a sight you treasure, inches across his flushed face. When you jokingly begin to roll away from him in response to his mocking his hands press firmly into the dip of your waist to keep you close, he couldn’t even possibly think of being more than a foot away from you right now and he’d never pass up the chance to hold you close.

Eddie rubs his nose against yours, his hair tickles your collarbone, “I think you basically confessed to me by the way, sweetheart.”

You think your best friend is the only person in the world who would still crack jokes during times like this. You cuddle your face closer to his letting your lips brush against his just enough to make his breath hitch, “Oh yeah? Maybe you just have an ego and think I confessed to you. I gotta admit Munson, that's a little presumptuous of you.” Your fingers brush a little of his dark hair out of the way.

His hand moves from your waist to your cheek to the back of your neck to tangle his fingers into the hair by the base, “Well maybe I’m feeling a little egotistical.” The kiss he then places on your lips is nothing short of intoxicating, a gentleness that doesn’t exclude the devastating hunger he feels for you. It’s all consuming and all him. His lips are softer than you imagine and as his tongue slides against the seal of your lips for permission to enter you can taste the faintness of the cigarette he had smoked before getting to your place. His tongue dances with your own sensually instead of dirtily and slowly instead of frenzied like he wanted you to feel every ounce of absolute passion he felt. You pull him impossibly closer, hands clenched tightly into the tattered fabric of his metallica t-shirt, only pulling away when you’ve both run out of breath.

Heavy breathing fills the silence of your bedroom and even with his exasperation Eddie trails his lips across your cheek and along your neck like he never wants to stop. “You should pose for me the next time I draw you.”

“I could pose naked.” He giggles immaturely just at the thought.

“Never mind, you ruined it.”

---

It’s been a long fucking day, and Eddie’s back is killing him. The boots he wears for work don’t quite cut it anymore. He’s been secretly thinking about buying inserts for them, but he can’t force himself to go and actually buy the damn things. As if admitting that he needs the support would result in the rest of his body giving up its battle against middle-age. 

He ignores the way his shoulder clicks when he reaches into the back seat to grab the few bags of groceries and the gallon of milk that sits in the passenger’s side back seat. He offered to run out after work, knowing you’re likely just as exhausted and sore as he is. Probably more. You’ve already given up the fight with your body, having bought a pair of orthopedic sneakers 2 years ago for your shifts at the hospital.

Eddie sees the light in the living room is on. Even now, all of these years later, his heart misses a beat when he thinks about seeing you. It’s a relief to be in your presence, the time apart always leaves him feeling like a piece is missing. Like he’s forgetting something important. He only feels completely at ease when you’re within eyesight or ear shot. When there is indisputable evidence that you exist, and that you’re safe.

Eddie keeps his keys out just in case as he approaches the front door of your tiny home. He puts his hand on the knob and turns it. He’s not mad, he’s just disappointed. He sighs heavily, and pushes open the door. He’s ready to lay into you about forgetting to lock the front door, again.

He kicks off his boots, the relief he feels is immediate. That deep ache in his toes lessens a little with them on the soft carpet of the entryway. He peeks his head into the living room, a lecture already on his tongue when he lays his eyes on you. You’re curled up like a cat in his armchair. You’re wearing your readers with the silver granny chain around your neck. A needle is held between the fingers of one hand, and the other holds an embroidery hoop. You have a piece of embroidery floss caught up in the hair that’s peeking out from under your beanie - it’s bright blue. It doesn’t quite match the orange t-shirt and brown afghan you have thrown over your lap.

You fix your gaze on him over the rim of your glasses and indelicately work the floss off of your lips with your tongue before saying, “Oh! Thank you, Baby. I really didn’t want to have to go out looking like this. Can you believe how much that milk cost? It’s gone up at least 25% since this time last year. Oh, yeah, did you remember the super pads? I swear, I think I ejected my entire uterus last night.”

Eddie stands there, forgetting what he was so ready to say as he was walking through the door. He can’t help it. How could he remember anything when he’s in the presence of the most beautiful person in the world?

---

Bucky Barnes | One Shot | Rebound

Part two to Underground

Pairing: Fighter!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Plot: You lose your last tether to the normal world and Bucky has to make a decision. You’re officially part of the Underground. Does he help you, or not?

Warnings: 18+. Angst, violence, fluff and smut.

Words: 5OOO

The demanding throbbing in your feet nearly feels delightful as you drag yourself home to your cramped apartment. As the sun rises and the city turns pink and orange, your building starts to come alive. Though you can barely manage to keep your eyes open.

You can tell the Underground is starting to toughen you up. You make longer days, are a bit paler in your face, making your features sharper, and the bravado you muster as you survive every night is surely something that has started to cling to your face and posture permanently. The people that start their days at sunrise, the ones that weren’t blipped from society and still have a life to return to, they walk around you in a big circle now.

It only makes you feel smug. The society slowly casting you out – starting to fear you.

However, your confidence has a short lifespan when you walk up to the front door of your apartment. The fresh paper with red capital letters stamped on it shouldn’t come as a surprise. You have tried to hold this moment off for as long as possible, going even as far as to take small side jobs in the fighting dome to make some extra money.

You suppose it was only a matter of time before you’d have the words ‘EVICTION NOTICE’ stamped across your door.

And your adrenaline spikes again, realising the time has come that you are officially homeless. You have been well and truly cast out by society, something both you and Natasha had been trying to fight and hold off for as long as possible. This is why the spy had introduced you to the Underground, to make some sort of living. And Nat had never judged you for staying in denial a little longer, even though you knew you would have to get used to the Underground fast, because it was only a matter of time before it would be your new home.

So no sleep for now.

You rip open the door and start packing, leaving all the old furniture that was already there and ending up with one big, stuffed duffel bag and a smaller bag. And then you stand in your place that is no longer your place and truly has never really felt like your place. You look around and feel angry …and hurt. After all, you have been chewed up and spit out, like so many before you.

You stuff that feeling far, far away and vacate the building right as de evening rolls back in. Evening already – since you have tried to put off this moment for as long as possible, have extended packing for hours. Since you don’t have a clue where Natasha lives, if she even resides in the country right now, you are forced to step to the one person you do not want to go to…

As you enter the dome, the place eerily quiet since the nightlife is a long way from commencing, you mildly greet the bartenders and crewmembers readying for the night. You scrunch your face at the stench, wondering if the place ever really gets cleaned. In the darker corners you see things that you decide are none of your business and you drag yourself through centre of the Underground, the capitol of dodgy business.

Making your way to the locker room, you breathe a sigh of relief when you find it empty. Finding a locker in the far back, you stuff it full with your last belongings and pray that none of it gets stolen. Maybe you can find a place in this building to sleep in. You have definitely seen other people crash here for the night, though you debate how safe you’d be. You hardly think you’d close an eye in a place like this.

Then, all the hairs on your body stand up straight.

You slowly turn to find Bucky staring at you, one brow quirked and that being the only sign of his curiosity. “Why are you already here?”

You swallow, “Just trying to get some extra work in.”

Neither of you have talked about what happened nearly a month ago. How you rode his leg with his fingers inside of you until you had one of the most intense orgasms of your life. And how that had been enough for him to come nearly untouched. Well, you say untouched, but you had felt just how heavy he was on your tongue and that’s where you wanted him coming next. Badly.

And you can’t exactly say the tension between you has shifted much. Something that made you realise just how high tensions between you already were. But you dropped it, so had he.

“You have to be careful with those side businesses,” he tells you as he turns to his own locker, one that does have a lock. “People will take advantage of a woman like you.”

“I can take care of myself just fine, thank you,” you snap at him and move to find your bag of supplies for the fight. You try to calm your breathing as you find the bag, kneel down and rummage through it, checking if you need to restock any of your supplies, if only to give yourself something to do for the upcoming hours.

But your spine stiffens again and it’s a little darker around you. So you turn and immediately stand up with you see Bucky looming over you. His eyes rove over your face, peering straight through to your soul, where it quivers before him.

“If you could take care of yourself,” he drawls, “you wouldn’t be homeless right now.”

You startle, “What? How do you know?”

He smiles, but it feels more vindictive than smug. “Because word travels fast, sweetheart, and a pretty girl like you on the loose is gold in the Underground.” He pauses and then his smirk turns smug, “Especially when she’s desperate.”

“I’m not desperate!” you squawk in outrage and he takes a step closer, close enough to feel his breath fanning over your face.

He clenches his jaw, eyes hardening. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“How?”

“That is none of your concern.”

Bucky lets out a humourless laugh, tilting his head up and running his tongue over his teeth in annoyance before he lowers his gaze back to yours. “You see, it seems like I’ve signed a stupid fuckin’ contract where that is my concern. So please tell me you have a plan and I don’t have to intervene.”

“Intervene?” you sneer and roll your eyes. “Please, it’s not like you can offer me anything out of this place. You’re not here by choice.”

He quirks his brow, seemingly intrigued by that assumption. “Is that what you think? What if I was here by choice, huh? What if I chose this life?”

You fall silent at that, and decide to keep it like that. An argument with him won’t be worth it. Besides, what are you going to tell him? You have nothing and no one. You are officially at your wit’s end and for you, that is saying a lot. The silence stretches… and stretches…

“Give me something to do,” you tell him quietly –deflated– when he doesn’t break the silence either. You don’t see Bucky’s face soften when he watches the defeat in your face before you stare down at the ground.

Bucky’s skin prickles like there is electricity in the air. Because he’s angry. He’s pissed and furious and so fucking angry. That the world can spit out a woman like you, like it has let down so many good people after the Blip.

And the anger doesn’t cease. It only gets worse, like magma bubbling under his skin and boiling his bones. That night, he beats up opponent after opponent in what seems like a record time. People get killed in these fights all the time, they fight to the death all the time. After all, there are too many people and they know what they signed up for when they enter this place. Yet, it’s a line Bucky has never crossed, never will cross. Not anymore.

It’s difficult, to stay of this side of that line tonight. He wants to kill. He feels the soldier crawling under his skin, flipping knives in anticipation, begging Bucky to unleash him. And he thinks he has hardly been this angry before. Bucky yanks on that leash and fights, each punch and kick doing nothing to quench his thirst for justice.

Win after win, Bucky ruins everyone who dares to take it up against him. But he doesn’t hear the crowd – the screams for more blood and sensation, the cheers that he is the most dangerous man in the Underground. He only hears the rushing of his blood in his ears as he thinks about the woman the world has abandoned – as he thinks about you.

…

“Grab your bags. You’re coming with me.”

You gape at your two bags sitting on the leather bench and peer back at all of the lockers, each of them seeming like they have been ripped open with brute force, some of them dented in a manner that looks like a metal hand gripped its edges. You briefly glance at his metal hand and then up to his face.

Unflinching. His command and his face.

So you grab your bags and follow after him silently. Through countless of alleys and wild crowds that seem to think the night of violence has only just begun, even though the sky is turning lilac with dawn. You sometimes hobble to catch up with the soldier, your arms quaking under the weight of your duffel bag. But you keep marching onward, the last dregs of your energy fuelled by what is to come.

The stairs of the industrial building are almost too much, but you try not to stumble since Bucky is walking behind you and that would severely hurt your pride. The fatigue is making every step feel like torture, like you’re climbing a sandy hill and you have to move carefully to keep from slipping into the dark depths. When you do stumble slightly, the weight of your duffel tipping you backwards, you feel the faintest nudge of a warm hand at your lower back, just enough to tip you back and let you continue your trek up the stairs.

Bucky overtakes you at last and opens a door with around twenty locks attached to it, all of them unlocked. He walks in like it’s habitual and you trudge after him, your energy spiking enough to take in the sight. Bucky walks over to the floor to ceiling windows and rolls down the beige canvas curtains. Just as the sun peaks over the horizon of the city and orange light pours into what you can only assume is Bucky’s home.

It's big. Simple and imposing, but cosy nonetheless. There are plants, a fact that has you fighting to keep from smiling. And brown leather furniture, a beautiful and clean kitchen… You turn your gaze back to the man of the house, who is now standing beside a massive bed with cream sheets and fluffy pillows. Your eyes become bleary at the sight, sleep fighting its way to the surface and threatening to drag you to the floor.

Bucky panics slightly at the look on your face and strides over, grasping your bag from your trembling arms. He has to hold back from cursing at the thought that you must not have slept for over forty-eight hours and how dreadful the past day must have been for you.

He guides you to his bed and lets you collapse into the sheets as he pulls off your boots. Bucky knows you would have put up more of a fight if you weren’t so exhausted, but he won’t use it against you. Just like you didn’t use his weakness against him when you were massaging him.

That massage.

He cannot cast the thought from his brain. Never mind what followed the massage. The woman that was on his knees for him, that came around his fingers and was moaning for him so beautifully – she seems like such a far cry from the woman before him. How you can be so careful and feisty, yet such a dream when it comes to his most sinful fantasies. What you did to him in that locker room that day has been playing in his head on repeat. And he wants to slap himself for wanting to crawl beneath the sheets now, drag those clothes off your body, spread your thighs and bury his face between them–

He quickly stands from the bed and clears his throat, casting you one more look before he’s off to the kitchen area and refill his energy in other ways.

…

When you wake up, it’s dark again. It takes you a while to orient yourself, your body fighting off the heavy blanket of sleep you have been swaddled in. The bed below you is more comfortable than anything you have ever felt and the smell–

Pushing up to a seat, your body becomes alert of your surroundings just in time to hear the rattle of about twenty locks opening. In walks Bucky, slumping as he moves his bruised body across his own floors. He notices you, doesn’t pay you any mind, and then plants himself to sit at the edge of the bed you are laying in. He bends down with a quiet grunt, unlacing his boots and peeling them from his feet.

He seems exhausted. And judging by the darkness, he has called in an early night. You push off the sheets and crawl towards him. Bucky tenses almost imperceptibly, but you gently put your palms on his wide shoulders. You swear you see him shudder, before his back bends over more in relaxation.

“I lost tonight,” he tells you as you slowly circle your warm palms over his back.

He lost. That’s unlikely. Something must have happened for him to lose. He must have been distracted. Or someone new has joined the Underground. Something’s maybe different. Shit, you were supposed to take care of him yesterday. He’d fought harder than you’d ever seen him fight. He must have been broken this morning– But, no. He has fought fights without your care for God knows how long. It couldn’t have made a difference now.

“What happened?” you ask, doubtful he’ll open up to you.

His head snaps backwards and you flinch at the look in his eyes. “What do you mean ‘what happened’? You happened. Can’t fucking focus with you being all dramatic with your personal bullshit.”

You draw back. “Excuse me?! I don’t recall making my problems yours!”

“Well, they are now, aren’t they?” he snipes back and runs his hands through his hair in frustration.

And you think maybe it’s not you he’s frustrated with.

“What do you want from me?” you ask quietly. Timidly.

You barely hear him, his voice muffled by his hands as he speaks, “I want you on all fours.”

But you did hear him. Some part of you heard him, that’s for sure. The heat that left your body after your endless sleep is returning to you in a different form, pebbling your skin with anticipation. You swallow hard and barely manage to get out, “What?”

Bucky takes a deep breath and slowly turns to you.

“Lie on your stomach.” The order is soft, but so, so clear and not gentle by any means. You search his eyes frantically, but only find his immovable self. Your traitorous body lights on fire at what she finds. So you do as you’re told.

And you wait.

Two large, warm hands travel up your clothed legs. Kneading your calves, your thighs, until they knead your ass. You cannot help but push your hips back to seek the pressure. You feel his looming presence crawl over you and you hold your breath. Soft lips press to your shoulder that got exposed after your shirt slipped slightly.

His hands slip around your hips and under them. The feeling of your jeans popping open, makes your core throb with need. He pulls your jeans down, but not off. No, just far enough down for access and to keep you in place, barely enough give even allow you to squirm.

Then, you feel his weight press into your body and you could have never imagined feeling his weight would be enough to make you want to moan. That’s when you register the feeling of his hard bulge against your ass and you push up against him again. Bucky answers with a muffled growl against your shoulder, followed by a gentle bite as a warning.

“Careful,” he drawls, one hand holding him up slightly as his other spreads over your side and slips under your shirt to feel your bare skin. You shudder at the feeling and bite your lip, your fingers curling into the pillow below your head.

How is this even possible? How can you deteriorate so quickly when he has barely touched you? His breaths turn heavy against your neck and you twist your head to hear him better, your mouth so close to his now. You wonder why it is that his breathing is coming out more laboured, but the only thing you can come up with is that it’s plain old restraint that is stiffening his body, his lungs.

One of your hands reaches back and up, and you scrape the pads of your fingers over his stubble. Bucky’s grip on the sheets tightens and his hips roll down into you in response. His mouth attaches itself to your neck and he hums as he grazes his teeth over your skin, his tongue soothing the pain instantly.

“Bucky,” you whisper and he rolls his hips again. The hand under your shirt slides to your front and grabs your breast, kneading the flesh in his hand. Desperate, clingy. He groans.

Something is shifting between the two of you and you feel a rawness coming to the surface. You remind yourself Bucky is requesting this for a reason, but he might be lost in it. In you. Then, you hear him mumble against your skin. Something you’re not sure he wants you to hear, but you give a soft coo to urge him to repeat himself.

“Please,” he moans softly. “Please.”

His hand slides down and wastes no time before slipping into your underwear, his entire hand cupping your cunt as he rolls his fingers through your folds. You gasp and let out a moan, writhing your hips when you cannot choose between moving up or down.

He’s rutting into you like a starved man, his fingers indulging in their exploration like he’ll find salvation between your legs. You open your mouth to ask him what he wants, but he rolls his fingers over your clit and you let out a whimper instead, making Bucky nuzzle his nose right below your ear.

“You’re all warm,” he mumbles and kisses your neck, your jaw – so close to your lips. His fingers are torture, so devious yet so innocent. As if he’s completely content playing with you like this for hours. Your belly flutters and tightens and warms at the sensations he coaxes to the surface.

It’s selfish, what he’s doing. This is all him, trying to console himself.

“Don’t,” you breathe desperately and roll your hips into his hand. “Don’t tease, Bucky.”

“ ‘M not. Just feeling you,” he whispers and you open your mouth to fight him on it, but then his warm mouth covers yours and the moan that spills from your throat is sinful. His tongue immediately invades you and you melt as he consumes you everywhere that he can. One finger slips through your wetness and into you and Bucky inhales the response you give him, groaning in response.

He grinds down, so do you, completely out of sync and with mouths moving desperately over each other. You cling to your pillow with one hand and bury your other in Bucky’s hair, pulling when he adds another finger and his weight keeps you from moving into him more. You whine against him, sensations at war within you when he keeps playing with you like a selfish cat.

“I’m so fucking wet,” you whimper and Bucky grunts in agreement, nibbling on your bottom lip. “Just stop playing–”

Bucky laughs then – laughs – a manly chuckle as he nudges his nose against yours. You want to cry for mercy and your toes curl when his fingers do, making you clench around him tightly. Your orgasm is being dangled in front of you like a carrot and you wonder if he just wants you to feel the way he feels. Frustrated, angry. Like he has no control whatsoever.

But what he does next goes so fast, it makes your head spin. Your body goes cold when his fingers leave you and when his body rises from yours, leaving you behind. But your hips get lifted and the pillow below your head gets snatched and shoved beneath your hips. You try to move, if only to accommodate his inexplicable actions, but your jeans are keeping you from moving.

You feel him crawl over you again and this time, you do moan at the pressure, bending your back to press up against him. He grinds down in response and you feel the pressure of the pillow against your womb, shooting tingles through your limbs when you realise what he’s done.

One of Bucky’s hands slides over yours and pins it to the mattress, your fingers automatically curling around the security of his. And it’s nice, the feeling of him engulfing you. It feels safe and warm and insanely intense. You turn your head, hoping to find him near. Your heart swells when he presses a kiss to your cheekbone.

“I want to fuck you,” he murmurs against you skin and you nod frantically, making him chuckle again. “I’m not against begging for it at this point.”

And apparently, you’re not entirely gone, since your lips curl into a smirk and your voice drops to a low purr when you tell him, “Please beg for me.”

How ironic, to beg someone to beg for you. Though, your brief confidence doesn’t falter. If anything, it is about to skyrocket.

“Come on, baby,” he murmurs against your ear, his soft lips moving against the sensitive skin. “Let me inside you. Let me make you feel good.” He sounds so genuine, so depraved and full of longing. You have to swallow down the carnal desire that crawls up your throat. You nearly choke when you feel the tip of his bare cock nudge against your folds. “Open up for me. Let me slip right in and I’ll fuck you into the mattress, okay? My mattress.”

You nearly whine, all ready to completely cave for him. And then he finishes it with a whisper in your ear, “Please, sweetheart. Let me have you.”

Yeah. Yes. Oh, yes. You mouth the words, but no sound comes out. You might be slipping outside of your body. The way Bucky sounds – his voice so deep, yet needy. You can only nod your head and squeeze his hand, rubbing yourself up against the tip of him.

“Hm, good girl.”

He slides home with one easy thrust, pressing you down into the mattress and skating his cock over each of your swollen walls. You cannot form a sound, or a thought, or catch a fucking breath. Especially not when he rotates his hips slightly and presses down even further.

You nearly choke, quiet for a long second, before you heave in all the oxygen that you can manage, “Oh my god!”

He pulls out slightly and rolls back in, keeping you full and stuffed and only nudging your spot with the tip of him. Over, and over, and over–

“That’s the spot, huh?” he pants against your ear and ruts into you further. “Right… there.” You gasp on a whine and he presses a kiss to your temple. The pillow adds a delicious pressure and you wish to put your hand there, just to feel him move in and out of you.

It’s so perfect, so sating, so much and deep and– You didn’t know it could be like this. Didn’t know it was possible to suddenly realise how screwed you are for the future. How nothing and no one will ever be able to compare to this. To him.

Your orgasm crawls closer and it feels like nothing you have felt before. Your clit is throbbing and aching and your walls are hugging Bucky like he’s never allowed to leave. Your hips tighten and your shoulders scrunch as your orgasm clamps down on you like a snake ready to strike.

“Bucky, I’m–”

He tightens his grip on your hand and latches onto your hip. “Yeah, I know. Me, too.”

You hear the strain in his voice, the hint of disappointment and you scramble to get your brain back in order. “Come in me, Bucky. Come inside me,” you rush out through quick breaths. You can’t elaborate. You just need him to fill you.

He leans back over and slows his thrusts, his breath fanning over your flushed skin. “Yeah? You want me to make a mess of you? You want proof that I fucked you deep enough?”

You let out a grumpy whine and he laughs beautifully as he drops his forehead to the back of your head. He picks up his thrusts, slow and deep and steady. His swollen cock slides over every cushion inside of you and you shudder at how sensitive your are so close to your orgasm. But it comes quicker than you anticipated. You wanted him to go faster, but with this tempo, you feel the orgasm that is coming closer might drown you.

You open your mouth to protest, to tell him to speed up, but the wave has already reached the shore and your ears hollow out.

The tremors seem to start from within as you swell with pleasure, seizing around Bucky and threatening to curl up. You think you might be grasping for something to hold onto as Bucky remains consistent through your orgasm, fucking into you with a steady rhythm and meeting you with every contraction of your high.

It is so completely overwhelming that you barely feel it when he comes, if it isn’t for the litany of beautiful moans and whimpers from him against your neck. He bites your skin to ground himself through his own orgasm and then melts over your body, pulling your hand to his lips.

Bucky quiets his own breaths to make sure he hears yours and is happy to learn how sated and satisfied you sound with your soft pants. He crawls off of you and gently tugs you over on your back, smiling as he watches you bend to his will.

Peeling off your jeans, he keeps his eyes on you, mesmerised with the sight and the feeling of having you in his bed. A feeling he had yesterday, too. Not just lust…

Your eyes peel open and you peer down at him while he strokes his sweaty palms up and down your calves and thighs. “Is this part of my ruse as a physical therapist and personal nurse now?”

Bucky quirks a brow at your wit and you feel something unfamiliar at the relaxation on him. How he seems more expressive and gentle and less guarded.

“No, this is private.”

Bucky’s eyes rove over your body and you flush with warmth, both from his words and from his assessing stare. You feel him drip from between your legs and swallow, fighting the urge to close your thighs. But Bucky, ever the trained assassin, immediately notices and lets a smirk crawl over his face.

He leans down and presses his lips to your left knee, eyes narrowing in on your cunt. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack when you told me to come inside of you.” You freeze at his words and keep a close eye on him. “I fucking knew the sight would be good, but–”

He lets out a starved groan.

You sound wary, “Bucky.”

He spreads your knees and crawls down to kneel at the foot of the bed, tugging you towards the edge. Surely, he wouldn’t–

You throw your head back when Bucky dives head first between your legs, running a flat tongue through your folds. You’re not sure if it’s the taste or simply the idea of him licking you clean of himself, but Bucky growls and hauls you closer, nudging his nose against your clit like he’ll never find anything better than what’s between your thighs.

You cannot help but bury your fingers in his hair, the wild throbbing between your legs pushing your mixed essences out and onto his tongue where Bucky drinks it up appreciatively. His fingers dig into your flesh and it takes a while for Bucky’s ministrations to have any other purpose than to taste you. But when he sucks your clit into his mouth, you tug on his hair with warning, making him chuckle.

“You don’t fight fair,” you choke out and he grins up at you.

“Oh, sweetheart, if you knew what the prize was, you wouldn’t fight fair either,” he murmurs and moans in delight as he continues his feasting. “Now how about you give me that prize and come on my tongue, huh?”

No, Bucky didn’t lose tonight.

---

A Private After Party

Summary: You've been invited to a very special afterparty with your rockstar boyfriends. "Sweetheart, you are the after party."

Pairing: Rockstar Stucky x Reader, Steve x reader, Bucky x Reader, mentions of other band members x reader

Warnings: Choking (reader and Bucky), Pussy slapping, implied group sex, public sex, fingering, smut, 18+, minors DNI, cream pie, oral (fem rec) exhibitionism, voyeurism, masturbation, praise kink, overstimulation, belly bulge, size kink, sir kink, dom/sub vibes, Buckys a switch

Word Count 2.4K

A/N: Beta'd by the wonderful @whisperlullaby and @sparkledfirecracker. But all mistakes are my own. Do not copy, repost, rewrite or translate my fics. I appreciate every comment, like and reblog so please let eet me know you think.

For the @star-spangled-bingo Rockstar AU and inspired by @nix-akimbo edit

The deafening roar of people shouting and clapping swells into a thunderous chant of Buc-ky, Buc-ky Buc-ky filling the arena.

Bucky’s a rock star, a talented musician with a wicked reputation. It's hard to tear your eyes away from his lean tattooed chest, his abs flexing as he stretches his arms above his head, his intricate tattoos weaving across his muscular shoulder down to his wrist.

The drumsticks twirling through his fingers as he launches into his solo making the crowd go wild as his bandmates watch the shirtless drummer live it up.

The air filled with chaotic energy. The sea of people moving as one, phones, signs, and lighters swaying above their heads as they scream.

You survey the stage, rainbow-colored lights glittering across them, fans blowing discreetly from the edge of the stage. Nothing like an up-close view of one of the greatest bands of your time.

Natasha swings her bright red hair as she holds onto the mic with her long manicured nails. The pit of dancers enraptured by the sultry singer swinging her curvy hips.

You laugh at Steve winking at the row of girls staring up at him in awe as he lightly strums his guitar.

It's the final show in this city and they always give their fans a little extra.

You lean on the wall, arms folded across your chest as you watch your man flip his drumsticks in the air, catching them with one hand, his head turning to find you.

20,000 people screaming Bucky’s name and all he cares about is his girl standing just to the side of the stage, wearing his ripped leather jacket over her shoulders.

Bucky finishes his solo, banging his sticks together in the air, the rumble of the boisterous audience vibrating across the stage. He whips out a bright red cloth from his leather shorts and wipes off his sweat laced forehead, heat radiating off his chest with every deep breath.

He turns his head again, watching your pretty eyes narrow in disbelief as you focus in on the red peeking through his fist. Those are your- you scrunch your eyes shut, pressing your fingers to your eyelids. You knew that fucker took them. He stole your panties after his ritual of eating you out before hitting the stage. You should have known when he scurried out the green room leaving you whimpering and trembling on the couch.

You raise your brow at the rockstar, sneering at his gleeful smirk. He waves your panties at you before twirling them around his drumstick as he screams goodnight.

Rolling your eyes, you pray that your panties don't end up in the crowd. The second the thought forms in your brain, it's like fate laughs at you, because your panties twirl off the end of his stick, heading straight to the front row. Steve catches them mid air and wipes his chest off with it. He screams your name to the crowd, whipping them around his finger before tossing them to Nat.

You sigh in relief, only to groan a second later when she holds the crotch of your lace panties under her nose and inhales into the microphone. “Nothing better than some sweet pussy right!”

Scrunching your eyes shut as the crowd roars in response. God, you can’t stand them sometimes, it’s okay though because you decide you’re going to accidentally leak a few pics to your IG tonight.

Flipping them off, you go to the green room to get ready for the after-party. And Bucky.

Adrenaline buzzes through Bucky's veins, nothing compares to the post-show high he gets. After waving to his adoring fans, he runs off stage, heading straight for you.

When the door bursts open, a sweaty Bucky envelopes you in a hug, plastering kisses along your neck and chest. He’s always so horny after a set and you fight him off ordering him to shower. Bucky puts you down, his mouth opening, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Nope,” you declare, walking away from your drummer. “Just did my hair and I’m not messing it up in the shower.”

Bucky’s face drops into a pout, his hand palming his crotch as he stares at you.“I’ll blow you after you’re clean.” You promise, biting your bottom. "You can fuck my throat if you're-" The sounds of your laughter follow him as he sprints into the bathroom.

Bucky saunters out almost thirty minutes later, a white towel around his waist. “Your man is clean, I’m ready for you to suck..." He trails off, you duck your head, hearing the shock in his tone.

"What the fuck” He huffs, skidding to a stop when he sees the room full of people.

Avoiding his gaze, you hid your smile. It's not your fault the door was left unlocked. You’re braiding Wanda’s hair as she plays blind man’s bluff with Sam. Nat’s propped up on the pile of suitcases in the corner taking a selfie, her shirt off and her hand barely covering her tits. Steve’s surrounded by a cloud of smoke as he lounges on the couch, his guitar propped next to his leg. Music playing softly under the chatter filling the room.

Bucky thought he was going to have you to himself for a while before the afterparty started. He’s been hard for two hours now and he can’t wait much longer. You catch his baleful eyes, tension rolling off him as he glares at you. Shrugging, you turn back to the redhead and finish her final braid.

Bucky slumps on the couch with a dramatic groan. His fingers playing with the hem of the fluffy white towel. You love when he gets like this, the rockstar who has groupies begging to suck his cock is practically pouting for your touch. He keeps groaning, shifting his hips lower and lower on the leather couch, his legs spread wide, the ends of the towel pulling apart, more and more skin showing.

Ignoring Steve’s mutter for him to knock it off, Bucky says your name, patting his thigh. “C’mere kitten. Need to tell you something.”

“She can hear you from over here.” Wanda quips you giggle as you smooth down her hair.

"Kitten.” The guttural warning has you glancing over your shoulder. Bucky meets your playful eyes, you know exactly what’s about to happen, slick forming in your aching cunt the second he flicks the towel open, his cock springing free.

“Put that thing away Buck,” Steve groans, his head dropping back on the couch.

Your mouth waters at the sight of cock swaying between his thighs. It’s practically saying your name as you stare at it. You get up, knocking Sam over with your hip when you scramble to your feet, his cards scattering on the carpet as you skip over to Bucky.

You stand in front of him, putting your hands on his tattooed shoulders. Bucky grips your waist, pulling you on his lap, your knees straddling his thick thighs.

Bucky pinches your chin between his fingers, licking your bottom lip as he hums. "Want me to put it away, kitten?"

Fuck yes you do. “You should listen to Steve,” you nod. Taking his hand, you lick his long fingers one by one before sliding it between your folds. His is hooded slate-blue eyes flare when he feels how soft and wet you are.

He orders you to turn around, his voice deepening. You smirk, turning around, your legs sliding over his thick thighs, your back flush to his firm chest. Lifting up your hips, he slides a warm rough hand under your skirt, the material bunching around your hips.

Without taking his eyes off your ass, he smirks, “alright Steve, I’ll put it away.”

He brings you down, down, down, over his thick cock, the sensation of his swollen head pushing up into your tight wet heat has your head flinging back on his shoulder.

“See Stevie-“ your mouth going slack as another wave of sensations hit you, “-it’s oh fuck me, it’s away”, you mewl.

Steve props open one eye, pursing his lips as he rolls his head to the side. The rest of the band watching you bounce on Bucky's cock, your gasps get louder as he stretches your velvety walls.

You hear murmurs of praise echoing around you, ‘take his cock pretty girl, fuck he’s deep, look how wet she is, damn she’s hot, I want a taste of her cunt’ and it’s driving you wild knowing you’re the center of attention. White-hot pressure building as he thrusts deeper into your pussy. You cling to his arms, the fast brutal pace making you lightheaded.

“Fuck Steve, her tight little pussy is sucking me back in. I can feel me right here,” he groans, putting his hand on your belly as he tugs your head back. His lips swallowing your cries as he pushes his fingers into your skin. “You feel me, don't you, kitten?”

You wheeze out a yes, yes Bucky oh god. Out of the corner of your eye, you see everyone staring at you, Sam whispering in Wanda’s ear as he pulls her braids, her hand slipping under the band of his shorts, a flash of color catches your attention, you catch Nat propping her leg on the table, spreading her pussy with her bright red nails.

“Cmon Barnes, give it to her harder, her pussy can take it,” her sultry voice tinged with lust as she works her clit. “That’s it, get it nice and sloppy for me.”

He feels your walls flutter around him as he pistons into you, “can you take it kitten, you think you can handle me?” He breathes in your ear, taunting you as he slams into your tight heat. “Don’t think she can take me Nat, feels like I’m splitting this little pussy in two.” Bucky angles his hips up, his cock hitting your sweet spot and oh god he’s so deep, stretching you so wide around him, you feel him in your belly. Your thin, high wail echos through the room, the air thick with need.

“Thatta girl.” you don’t know who said it, more praise drifting around you as you continue to shamelessly mewl.

“Make her cum before I do,” Steve warns as he sits up, his bottom lip rolling between teeth. He watches Bucky’s shaft move in and out your cunt, more and more of your slick coating him. The urge to taste both of you is overwhelming.

Steve stands in front of you, wrapping his large hand around your throat, squeezing softly before he yanks your shirt up, his fingers rolling your nipple.

“C’mon sweetheart, make a mess of his cock, lemme see you cream all over him so I can clean you up.” His hoarse, desperate promise makes you clench down, another wave of pleasure coursing through you as he pinches your sensitive nipple.

“‘m close Steve,” you sob out, the sounds of Bucky’s low groans in your ear, his warm breath washing over your skin. You gasp when he sinks his teeth into your shoulder, his pace getting erratic and sloppy. “Please, please Bucky,” you beg, needing just a little more, you’re so close to your peak, the knot in your belly tightening, god all you need is a little more.

"I said make her cum Bucky,” the way he says it, teasing with a hint of domineering impatience that has you and Bucky moaning. Steve places his hand around Bucky’s throat, your head snapping to the side to watch his fingers push into his skin. Oh god you never know what you like more, being choked or seeing Steve choke Bucky. Steve tightens his grip, his rings digging into the sides of his neck, your walls spasming as Bucky’s mouth falls open, a litany of fuck, fuck fuck pouring out of his mouth as you grind down.

“Right fucking now.” He grins, watching Bucky’s eyes flutter shut as he wheezes out a yes sir.

Steve’s darkened blue eyes slide over to your face. “You better cum for us, sweetheart. You better be good for me.” His guttural, dark tone has your belly tensing, as Bucky hits that little rough patch again, it's good, so good you can only nod. Steve raises his other hand, waiting for you to look up at it, your aching bud twitches as you lick your lips, a strangled, incoherent please seeping out.

He brings his hand down, slapping your clit, the sharp stinging sends you over the edge. The next couple of slaps have you jerking in Bucky’s arm as the knot snaps in two, pure electricity streaming through you, pleasure sinking into every fiber of your body.

“Oh yes fuck yes Steve,” you scream, your nails clawing into Bucky’s wrists as you toss your head back, your hips circling erratically as your orgasm winds through you.

“What did I say, Bucky?” Steve still has his grip on Bucky’s throat. “I told you to make her cum.” He stares him down, the challenge in Steve’s smug blue eyes has Bucky throbbing inside your sensitive cunt. Bucky grits his teeth, his hands moving to your waist, holding you still as he fucks up into you.

He blocks Steve’s next slap, his rough, calloused fingers slipping over your puffy clit. “Steve thinks he made you cum,” His voice, dark and gravelly, in your ear, “but it's my cock your greedy pussy is trying to strangle, isn’t it? Who’s making you feel good, kitten?”

“You are, you Bucky,” you chant, words slurring together as the heady pressure forms again, “so good, don’t stop, don’t stop Bucky.”

Steve pops his slicked covered fingers in Bucky’s open mouth, groaning under his breath as you come again. The force of your orgasm halts your breath in your chest, a faint gasp forming as your eyes roll back. “Good job, Bucky.” Steve praises, resting his forehead on his, staring into his dazed slate blue eyes. “Now cum for me, fill her pretty little pussy up until she’s leaking.”

“Fuck, goddamn you Steve.” He spits out in response. You don’t know if it's the way Steve demanded Bucky to cum or the way Bucky’s hips stutter into yours as Steve increased the pressure on his throat, but you feel yourself clench down again.

Another wave of bliss soaring through you as Bucky grunts his release, your spasming walls coated with ropes of his thick hot cum. You collapse on his chest, Bucky sliding down the couch, taking you with him as Steve let go of his throat.

Steve places his hands on his hips, sighing as he gazes down at the two of you tangled up in each other. Steve kneels down, you whimper as he takes Bucky’s softening cock out of your pussy.

“So pretty.” He murmurs at the sight of Bucky’s cum seeping out of you. "And look how she came all over you," he sighs, pumping Bucky's cock a few times until he groans out his name.

Steve pushes his finger in his mouth, the vulgar groan coming from his pink lips sends a shiver down your spine. He glances up at your faces, chuckling loudly. “Guess I should clean you both up, huh?"

“What about the after party?” you question, leaning on your elbow, your hand pushing on Bucky's abs. "I thought we had-oh" a broken moan falls from your lips at the feel of Steve's wet tongue gliding through your messy folds.

“Sweetheart your pussy is the party.”

---

🔪 Slasher 🔪 Choose Your Own Ending

pairing: DARK horror movie villain!bucky barnes x female reader

summary: somehow, you end up in your favorite old horror movie, and you decide to take the opportunity to fulfill one of your fantasies—you're gonna fuck the villain, bucky barnes.

warnings: 18+ content (minors do not interact!!!), dark themes and elements, typical horror movie violence (blood, murder, some gruesome descriptions), smut, unprotected sex, semi-public sex, creampie, unsafe sadist/masochist dynamic (reader is into it but there are no safe words), dry humping, knife kink, size kink, chase kink, oral sex (m receiving), rough sex, rough body play, light spanking, choking, breath play, bratting/brat taming (reader is slightly unhinged), dirty talk, degradation kink, praise kink, boot riding, dacryphilia, pet names (cottontail, baby), reader passes out during sex, possessive behavior

word count: 13.3k total (11.6k with only the dark ending; 11.9k with only the fluffy ending)

a/n: i really didn't know if i'd be able to finish this fic in time for the end of my Slasher Summer challenge because it's probably one of the most ambitious fics i've ever attempted. it's loosely inspired by the movie The Final Girls (highly recommend) but i couldn't decide how i wanted it to end, so y'all get TWO ENDINGS!! both are included here, with additional warnings down below. i worked really hard on this, so i really hope y'all enjoy!!! 😅

The last thing you remembered was the feel of fuzzy static on your tongue, fizzling through your arms and legs and making you feel like every nerve ending in your body was buzzing to life. You had a vague memory of licking something you probably shouldn’t have, but then your ears popped and you felt solid ground beneath your feet.

Staticky silence was suddenly replaced by shrill screams of excitement and the mechanical whirring of carnival rides. The rich scents of funnel cakes and popcorn and cotton candy filled your nose, making your mouth water with the desire to eat your weight in fried food.

Blinking your eyes open—not remembering when you’d closed them—you were met with the entrance to the Bakersfield Fun Fair. The big banner declaring the name of the carnival sparked a hazy recognition deep in your mind, but when you looked around, you didn’t quite recognize where you were, and you had no memory of how you’d gotten there. 

Still, something about the fairground, with its ticket booth and carnival rides and all kinds of stalls selling food or touting games to play for prizes, felt familiar. Like you’d seen it in a dream, or when you were a child the memory was a distant thing. 

Muggy summer air brushed against your skin with a soft breeze that helped to alleviate the worst of the heat, the air holding a hint of chill as the sun set on the distant horizon. It cast everything you could see, which was mainly just the carnival and the grassy field being used for a parking lot, in a golden glow. 

Finally, it occurred to you to look down at yourself, finding that you were wearing cutoff jean shorts and a plain tank top—neither of which you recognized. 

The confusion you’d held at bay suddenly overwhelmed you, making you feel as dizzy as if you’d just ridden the tilt-a-whirl, which you somehow knew was nestled somewhere in the fairgrounds. Your stomach lurched as your mind tried to make sense of where you were and how you’d gotten there. You closed your eyes and tried to think. 

As you concentrated, memories began to surface in your mind, like you were dragging them up from the depths of a deep, murky lake. 

It wasn’t summer. It was fall, you remembered, and just moments before you’d been curled up on the worn, aged rug in your grandmother’s basement. You were housesitting for her while she was on a cruise. 

You remembered closing your laptop, heaving a huge sigh of relief at finishing work for the day, then going down into the basement. You’d spent countless hours there as a teenager watching movies on the big, boxy TV set, the kind where you could feel the static if you put your hand against the screen. Your favorite movies to watch were the horror ones…

That was it! 

That was why Bakersfield and the carnival seemed so familiar. Bakersfield was the small town terrorized by the ruthless villain in your favorite horror movie, Slasher, and the final act’s killing spree took place at the town’s annual end of summer carnival. The Bakersfield Fun Fair.

And the villain was Bucky Barnes, a psychotic killer with a sadistic sense of humor and piercing blue eyes. 

You’d had a crush on him when you’d first watched Slasher as a teenager, and your attraction to him remained even well into your adult years. You’d decided to put the movie on because you’d been lonely at your grandmother’s, figuring a night with your favorite horror movie slasher would be the closest thing to a date you could get.

Once you remembered that, the rest of it came back to you. You’d been curled up on the rug in front of the TV, and your favorite scene had come on. It was the one where Bucky is cleaning a bullet wound in his shoulder—given to him by the movie’s mean girl, right before he brutally stabs her in the head—and he had his shirt off, showing the broad expanse of his muscled chest.

It hadn’t been your finest moment, but you were lonely and you got it into your head to lick the screen of the TV over Bucky’s bare chest. And then, that was it. That was all you remembered—and the feeling of static on your tongue.

Opening your eyes, you looked up at the banner again. You blinked. And blinked again. Then you pinched yourself. You didn’t wake up. 

The sign still read Bakersfield Fun Fair. But…that was impossible.

Your jaw went slack as you looked around—really looked at your surroundings.

In the time that you’d spent figuring out where you were, the sun had dipped behind the tops of the trees in the forest beyond the fairground, turning the sky pink and orange, fading into a deep cerulean. There was a ferris wheel in the distance, and the canopy top of a carousel off to the side. 

There were lines of stalls stretching in both directions beyond the entrance to the fair, some with ring toss games and others with milk bottles to be knocked over. Other stalls were selling all kinds of junk food, from cotton candy to candy apples. 

Everything looked and sounded and smelled real. You could practically taste the funnel cake on your tongue, and feel the powered sugar-covered fried dough melting in your mouth. You could clearly see the faces of all the people milling around the fair, kids breaking off with hands clasped tight around their tickets as they went running down the various rows of stalls. 

And the closer you looked, the more realized everything was dated. The clothes, the rides, the toy prizes. Everything looked like it was from the early 90s, when Slasher was made. Even your own clothes and the tennis shoes on your feet looked like they were out of the 90s. 

It was bizarre, and yet, it didn’t feel like a dream. But it had to be a dream. Right?

Spinning around in a circle, you decided that had to be the case. It was the only thing that made sense. It’s not like you could’ve been transported into the world of your favorite horror movie. Stuff like that didn’t happen; it broke all rules of physics and other science stuff you didn’t understand.

Deciding to just roll with it and enjoy your dream, you shrugged off your confusion and headed into the Bakersfield Fun Fair. While you meandered down one of the lines of stalls, you wondered if you’d see any of the characters from the movie. You wondered if you’d see Bucky. 

You almost tripped over the grass beneath your feet at the thought, your heart speeding up in your chest and beating excitedly against your rib cage as you considered the possibility of actually meeting your biggest horror movie crush. 

But your mind didn’t stop there. Oh no. You were the girl who’d decided to lick an old, staticky TV because it was the closest you thought you’d ever get to licking Bucky’s bare chest. 

Naturally, your mind took the thought of meeting him much further and you thought about fulfilling one of your most cherished fantasies. If you were in the world of Slasher, you wanted to fuck Bucky Barnes. 

Before you’d ended up at the Bakersfield Fun Fair, in some ultra-realistic dream, the closest you could’ve gotten was finding a guy who looked like Bucky Barnes and try to convince him to wear the Slasher mask while chasing you through the woods. 

But you’d found yourself in the world of your favorite horror movie—whether by way of your subconscious dreaming about it, or some breakdown of the space-time continuum—and you had the chance to fuck the actual Bucky Barnes. Giddy excitement flooded through you, and you began skipping down the line of carnival stalls, trying to remember what exactly happens in the final act of Slasher.

It probably should’ve worried you how unconcerned you were with the possibility that Bucky could kill you before you even got started trying to convince him to fuck you. But it was your dream, so what was the worst that could happen? If he killed you, you’d just wake up horny and dissatisfied, right? Then, you’d have to take care of yourself, which wasn’t any different to any other day of your life.

Nah, you were almost entirely certain you were in a dream, and because it was your dream, you wouldn’t have too much trouble getting Bucky to fuck you. You just had to find him…

As if right on cue, screams erupted from the opposite end of the fairground, and it sparked your memory. The action at the end of Slasher ramps up when Bucky storms the Bakersfield Fun Fair and the final girl, along with the remainder of her friends, try to set a trap for him. 

Trying to hid your giddy grin, you raced through the fairground, heading in the direction of the screams. Since you’d remembered the beginning of the end of the movie, you couldn’t help but think about what else happens. Bucky carves through the final girl’s friends one by one in various, gruesome ways on the carnival rides at the fair. Then, the final girl eventually traps him by crushing his arm in the gears of the carousel. 

Bucky doesn’t die, of course. He comes back in the sequel, Slasher II, and sports a metal arm that glimmers in the moonlight while he stalks the final girl around Bakersfield all over again. It’s not nearly as good as the first movie, but Bucky is still very hot, and you watched the sequel nearly as many times as the original when you were a teenager.

You were so distracted by thoughts of Bucky’s prosthetic arm, and what it would feel like to have his metal hand wrapped around your throat while he fucked you, that you didn’t realize you were suddenly alone in the fairground, and you’d made it to the Tunnel of Love ride. 

It was then that you spotted the macabre scene of the final girl’s best friend—you couldn’t remember the character’s name, it was something boring like John—with his heart ripped out of his chest and held in his limp, dead hands. His lifeless eyes stared unseeingly ahead, looking almost like a movie prop, but so, so much more real.

This particular kill was one of Slasher’s most controversial, you remembered. Half the cult fandom argued it was too on the nose, since the movie heavily implied John was in love with the movie’s final girl and never found the courage to tell her. The other half of the fandom enjoyed the tragic romance of it. 

Personally, you didn’t care much about the kills or the drama between the final girl and the other characters. You really only watched Slasher for Bucky, and only cared about the creativity of the murders when he looked particularly hot doing them. 

Your mind whirled as you stared at John’s dead body, your brain focusing on the Slasher message boards you’d trawled well into your college years, rather than trying to make sense of the horrible sight in front of you. It really, really looked like real blood soaking his clothes—and you could even smell the coppery tang of it in the air.

Instinctively, you took a step back, the grass of the fairground soft beneath your feet. The sun had slipped fully behind the trees of the forest beyond the fairground, casting long, ominous shadows over the scene. Your heart beat harder in your chest, and you took another step back, as if putting room between you and the horrific sight in front of you would somehow make it easier to reconcile.

You took one more step backward and bumped into something solid, something that you knew deep in your bones shouldn’t be there.

The smell of blood was stronger suddenly, mixing with an earthy, spicy scent that didn’t make sense for the carnival fairground. Holding your breath, you slowly looked over your shoulder and were met with the sight of a black leather-clad chest. 

Already, you knew it was him. But you dragged your eyes up and sucked in a gasp when you met the piercing blue gaze of Bucky Barnes.

His eyes were filled with a cold hatred that was so visceral, it made your stomach twist in a way that was not entirely unpleasant. Inexplicably, warmth bloomed low in your core, unfurling and reacting to the villain’s presence. Finally, you were face to face with your biggest horror movie crush, and you couldn’t help but take a moment to take all of him in.

Bucky Barnes was even bigger and more intimidating than he seemed on your TV screen, and he was more handsome too. His eyes were an electric blue, the color so bright, it seemed like it glowed from within. And his chin-length brown hair fell on either side of his face, highlighting the strong line of his brow and the intensity of his gaze.

The villain’s mouth and nose were covered by the hard plastic mask that matched the utilitarian leather jacket and combat pants he wore with thick, heavy boots. There were straps on the leather jacket that spanned his broad shoulders, and a utility belt around his trim waist where he secured the various knives and weapons he used throughout the movie.

Looking up at his face again, you realized Bucky was so much taller than you expected, standing behind you like a mountain of cold hatred, radiating danger and menace. Unfortunately for you, that only made the heat simmering in your belly burn hotter until you were squeezing your thighs together against the ache building there. 

You knew your body’s reaction to the psychotic murderer was foolish, to say the least, but there was something about the dangerous man that made your heart beat harder, and made you want to spread your legs for him. 

Glancing down to Bucky’s hand, you saw the big butcher’s knife dangling from his fingers. He hadn’t raised it yet, and when you looked back into his eyes, the villain seemed to be watching you closely, as if wondering how you were going to react to him. 

The longer you went without screaming or running away from him, the more his brows lowered over his eyes. He began to look perplexed.

That was fine, you could work with perplexed.

Carefully, as if dealing with an animal you didn’t want to spook, you turned around and set your hands gently on Bucky’s massive chest, your fingertips toying idly with the leather straps on his jacket. Holding his gaze with your own, you slid your hands up to his shoulders and pushed yourself up onto you tiptoes so you could twine your arms around his neck, as if he were your boyfriend and you were welcoming him home.

“Hi,” you murmured, your voice coming out breathy as your heart beat wildly in your chest. You fluttered your lashes at Bucky, figuring that if you didn’t treat him like a threat, he wouldn’t be. And so far, it was working.

The horror villain didn’t seem inclined to respond to your shy greeting, so you pressed yourself close to him, enjoying the feel of his hard body against your soft one. Arching your spine, you pushed your tits up in your tank top, as if offering them to him. 

You were gratified when Bucky’s gaze dropped to your lightly heaving chest, and felt his empty hand twitch against your bare thigh, like he wanted to touch you but was holding himself back. Not that you needed him to touch you to know he was enjoying the feel of you against him.

Bucky’s bulge was already digging into your lower stomach, and you suspected he’d already been hard before you’d pressed against him. But still, you were gratified when, every time you shifted against him, he twitched in his pants, his cock eagerly responding to you. 

The interest of Bucky’s cock had a smile spreading across your face, making you look like the cat who got the cream as you tipped your head back and grinned shamelessly up at the horror movie villain.

“Is that a knife in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” you purred, rocking your body against Bucky’s bulge and pressing your chest more tightly to his leather jacket. You were practically rubbing on him like a cat in heat, but you couldn’t stop yourself. It felt too good to feel his solid, sturdy form against you.

As you shifted closer, you could feel the tackiness of blood on your arms and chest, and when you glanced down, you saw that some had stuck to you from Bucky’s jacket. It was odd to see the blood on your skin, but it felt like another reminder of what you were doing—and, especially, who you were doing it with. 

Fire was blazing through your veins as you cast your hooded eyes on Bucky’s face, your mouth going soft as you met his piercing gaze. There was a cold flame in the depths of his blue eyes, one you’d never seen in all the times you’d watched Slasher, and it filled you with pride to realize Bucky liked having you pressed against him. 

In response to your question, which you’d almost forgotten in the seconds after it passed your lips, Bucky huffed a laugh behind his mask. Then his hands were on your ass, and he was grabbing your soft flesh with an unyielding grip. He hiked you up higher against his chest, using his inhuman strength, and your legs fell open instinctively, so his thick bulge dug into the juncture of your thighs. 

A wanton moan fell from your lips, your head falling back as you rocked your hips in tiny circles, grinding on Bucky’s hard cock through your clothes. You could feel the flat steel of his knife pressed to the back of your thigh, and your core pulsed at the weapon’s proximity to your most sensitive place, but you didn’t have any worry he was going to use it on you—not when he was staring at you with such a greedy look in his eyes.

Bucky growled out, “Dumb slut,” as his fingers dug into your ass through your jean shorts, but you were too distracted by humping against the mountain of a man, pleasure swirling through your body and filling your head with cotton candy nothing. 

All that mattered was grinding against Bucky’s bulge, and the fact that you were finally—finally—getting to live out your darkest fantasies of fucking the horror movie villain.

“Y’know, I always wondered if killing made your cock hard,” you murmured breathlessly, catching Bucky’s eye and giving him a cheeky grin. “Guess I have my answer now.” You dragged the seam of your shorts up the thick length of Bucky’s cock, drawing a growl from him, your smile spreading wider. “Unless you just have a soft spot for dumb sluts like me,” you said, giggling at your own joke and batting your lashes at him.

Bucky shook his head at you, but not like he was disagreeing with you—more like he was already exasperated with your antics. 

“I thought I already killed this town’s biggest slut,” Bucky ground out, and though you couldn’t see his mouth or jaw, you somehow knew he was grinding his teeth. His fingers dug harder into your ass, his grip nearly punishing as you squirmed against him. 

You found an angle that had your clit rubbing against the tip of Bucky’s cock through your clothes and you let your head fall back, a filthy moan spilling from your lips. The obscene sound rose toward the darkening sky above the fairgrounds, loud against the silence that had fallen over the deserted carnival.

When you managed to get control of your tongue again, and pick up the thread of your conversation, you shot Bucky another grin.

“I’m not from Bakersfield,” you purred, pulling yourself closer to Bucky’s face, until your lips were nearly brushing against the hard plastic of his mask. You could feel his breath, hot and heavy, gusting through the slots on the front, making you shiver. Your expression settled into one of fake seriousness as you stared him in the eye. “And you have no idea how much of a slut I can be.”

A growl rumbled in Bucky’s chest, and his blue eyes narrowed on you, like a predator deciding on its prey. 

“Is that a challenge or an invitation, little cottontail?”

He slapped your ass with the flat of his knife, an obvious instruction to keep humping against him. 

As you followed the order, you choked out a one word answer, “Both!” Then bit your lip against a moan, hiding your delight at the nickname—and your surprise that Bucky would call you anything so sweet. 

But you didn’t seem to be grinding against him hard enough, because he dragged the sharp edge of his knife over the backs of your thighs, just beneath the curve of your ass. He didn’t press hard enough to break skin, but you could feel the threat in the gesture.

You lost the battle against trembling in the big, horror movie villain’s arms, and whimpered, rocking against him harder as a single tear leaked down your cheek. Pleasure was pulsing through your body, hard and fast, the same rhythm in which your heart beat in your chest.

Bucky rumbled a sound of pleasure, his blue eyes going molten as he watched the tear track down your face. He seemed to have forgotten your conversation entirely, more focused on your smaller body humping against his larger one.

You had long since soaked through your panties, and you could feel your arousal leaking through your shorts, coating your inner thighs in your wetness. But dry humping with Bucky wasn’t what you had in mind when you’d fantasized about the horror movie villain through most of your adult years. You needed more, and you had just the idea—a fantasy you’d long wanted to fulfill. With Bucky Barnes especially.

“I know you’re sort of busy, killing and all that,” you huffed, your body straining to keep rocking against his thick length with the speed he desired. “But I was wondering if you might want to take a break and play a game with me?” Your voice was hopelessly breathless and breathlessly hopeful, the pleading in your tone blatant as your words pitched higher with your question. 

Bucky’s brows lowered in confusion. “What kind of game?” came his rumbling, distorted voice from behind his mask.

With a flash of a smirk, you shifted one hand to his shoulder, where you remembered the bullet wound would be beneath his jacket. You could feel the slight raise of the bandages beneath the leather, and you dug your thumb into the spot. You were rewarded by a vicious growl and Bucky’s hands falling away from your ass, the cold steel of his knife disappearing from your skin.

Hopping down, you danced a few feet away from the now-enraged psychopathic killer, making sure you were beyond the reach of his long arms, including the length of his knife before you stopped. Something in your core tightened with excitement when Bucky’s cold, blue eyes focused entirely on you. Even the sight of him shaking out his arm seemed somehow threatening. 

You could see the dark stain of deep red blood in the black leather of his jacket, and couldn’t help but grin. You’d unleashed the darkest side of him, and you couldn’t be more giddy.

You knew Bucky had been holding back on you while you’d been in his arms. But you didn’t want to fuck a horror movie villain because you wanted some harmless dry humping. You wanted him to wreck you. You wanted him to hunt you down and make you his.

“The game is this,” you began, skipping back a few steps when Bucky lunged for you—though you noticed he reached for you with his free hand, rather than his knife, which you took as a good sign and grinned wider. “If you catch me, you can fuck me.” You held his gaze, your smile turning a little feral as you watched the seething villain. “As hard and as rough as you want.”

Your final words made Bucky pause, like a predator going still right before launching itself at its prey. His electric blue eyes shone brighter, reflecting the neon lights of the carnival as they fall across his handsome face. 

You could feel the energy in him shift, and even though you couldn’t see his mouth, you somehow knew he was grinning. You suspected it was even more feral than your own smile.  

“You really are the dumbest fucking slut, little cottontail,” Bucky growled, equal parts humor and menace in his tone, sending a delicious shiver skating down your spine. He took a step forward, his eyes sharp as they watched you skip backward, staying out of reach of his hand and his knife. “You better not let me catch you, baby, because if I do, I’m going to make you scream bloody murder as I split you open with my cock.”

The grin on your face was so wide it was beginning to make your cheeks hurt, but you couldn’t wipe it away even if you’d tried. Your entire body was buzzing with anticipation, adrenaline already pumping through your veins as you prepared to run. But you couldn’t help yourself, you had to taunt Bucky just a little more. If you were only going to get one chance to fuck your horror movie villain crush, you were going to make it count.

“Bet you say that to all the girls—bet none of them can scream like me,” you sassed, bouncing on the balls of your feet and scampering back a few more steps when Bucky took another menacing step forward, his big, heavy boot crunching the grass beneath him. 

You laughed at his scowling face, the sound loud and wild in the quiet that had fallen over the fairgrounds. Even the music of the carousel had gone silent. But you couldn’t hold your tongue. You loved the look of danger on Bucky’s face too much.

“You gotta catch me first, Mr. Slasher, then we’ll see if you can make me scream.”

With that parting challenge, you gave Bucky one last cheeky, impertinent smile, and the you turned and took off. 

Sprinting off into the Bakersfield Fun Fair, you didn’t dare look behind you, knowing instinctively that Bucky would be close on your heels. Your mind raced as you tried to form some kind of plan, since you hadn’t thought this far ahead. 

Of course, you had every intention of letting Bucky catch you, but you didn’t want to make it too easy for him. Besides, you’d always wanted to be chased by the hot horror movie villain, then overpowered and taken by the brutal man, so you wanted to make sure you enjoyed yourself as well.

As you turned a corner and began running down a row of carnival rides and games on the edge of the fairground, you spotted the funhouse in front of you. Grinning wildly, you pushed to run a little harder and launched yourself up the metal stairs leading into the funhouse.

There was a spinning barrel right away, and you clambered through it, the silence inside the funhouse swallowing you up as you plunged into the depths of the structure. Hauling yourself up a flight of stairs, you stumbled to a stop when you found that the interior of the funhouse was a maze of mirrors.

Your heart was practically beating out of your chest as you began moving through the maze, your hands outstretched to feel your way between the mirrors. Too soon, you heard Bucky’s heavy footsteps on the metal stairs leading up to the level with the maze and you tried to scurry faster, but you kept bumping into mirrors thinking they were a clear path forward.

A deep, dark chuckle echoed through the stuffy room in the funhouse, the sound distorted through Bucky’s mask, making him truly sound like a horror movie villain. 

The sound of his laugh sent a shiver racing down your spine, your heart rate picking up as you heard his heavy boots begin walking through the maze. It seemed like he was moving much faster than you and you tried to pick up your pace.

“When I get my hands on you, little cottontail,” Bucky began, his menacing voice filtering to you easily, sounding like he was right behind you. “You’re going to regret being such a dumb slut—I’m going to destroy your tight holes with my cock and ruin you until you’re all mine.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time!” you called over your shoulder, just before barreling into another mirror with a defeated, “oof,” as you tried to escape the maze. 

Huffing in frustration, you turned and went down another path, your panicked breaths so loud in your ears, you couldn’t hear Bucky’s footsteps anymore. You bit your lip, trying to stay quiet, but your lungs protested, your pounding heart making you feel the blood pumping through your veins with every step you took.

“If you’re a good slut, maybe I won’t kill you,” Bucky rumbled, his voice definitely closer than it should be, and you whipped around, looking for the source. But he was no where in sight. “Maybe I’ll keep you—chain you up in my basement, and use your body like the fuck hole you were meant to be.”

You tried to ignore the way your pussy quivered at Bucky’s threat, your body wanting him to do exactly that. But you pushed on, though you were having a harder and harder time remembering why you didn’t want him to catch you. Your panties were soaked and your hole was aching to be filled. And Bucky seemed more than willing to fuck you until you were nothing more than the dumb slut he accused you of being.

Rounding a corner, you gasped loudly as the massive form of Bucky Barnes loomed in front of you, his blue eyes immediately finding yours and making you feel like prey trapped by a much larger predator. 

Spinning on the ball of your foot, you turned and tried to escape in the other direction, only to run head first into Bucky’s chest. His arms closed around you, and you belatedly realized the Bucky you’d seen had been a reflection in one of the mirrors. He wasted no time, squeezing you so tight to his body that you cried out, his strength forcing the air from your lungs. You were caught.

“I win, little cottontail,” Bucky sneered, crushing you harder to his chest while you struggled to breathe, your ribs feeling like they were on the verge of snapping.

Then, suddenly, he let you go and you slumped to your knees, your legs giving out as you fell to the metal floor of the funhouse. Your head was spinning from the lack of air and you focused on pulling as much oxygen into your lungs as possible, the adrenaline in your body making you feel your heartbeat in your temples. 

While you were distracted, Bucky quickly worked his pants open and before you knew what was happening, his thick, heavy cock fell on your face with a lewd slapping sound. You flinched. But then Bucky’s musky scent filled your nose, and you relaxed. Warmth spread through your body as your mind went fuzzy for an entirely different reason than lack of oxygen. 

Your mouth fell open instinctively, your head tipping back to press your lips to his girth, and you felt more wetness dripping from your slit between your thighs. 

Bucky chuckled at your obvious submission, but still used the flat tip of his knife to tip your face back further, until it was practically horizontal. He worked his hips languidly, sliding his cock over your face, precum dripping onto your skin and making a mess of your cheeks and forehead.

“Open your mouth wider, dumb slut,” Bucky growled, his eyes glittering in the dim funhouse as he stared down at you. 

When you did as he ordered, sticking your tongue out for good measure, the tip playing with his balls, the horror villain made a pleased sound deep in his chest. You had the distinct impression he was smiling again, and you almost dared to ask him to take off the mask, but decided against it. Part of the fun of fucking Bucky Barnes was him keeping the mask on. 

“Good girl,” Bucky purred, petting your head with his free hand. He dragged his hips back and pushed the leaking head of his dick into your mouth. “Now, suck.”

The metal flooring of the funhouse dug painfully into your knees, but you pushed the pain from your mind as you focused entirely on Bucky’s cock. Wrapping your lips around the head, you sucked gently, the taste of his precum bursting on your tongue. Your chest warmed with pride when he groaned in pleasure.

You’d intended to take your time—wanting to savor Bucky’s cock and learn every inch of the thick, veiny length before making him come in your mouth. But it seemed your horror movie crush didn’t have the patience for that. You supposed you shouldn’t be surprised. You did make him chase you. 

“Is that all ya got, little cottontail?” Bucky growled, using the hand on your head to push you down roughly on his cock, making you gag, your hands flailing against his hard thighs. “I thought you were some kind of slut—thought you’d be throating my cock the second you got your lips around it.” 

Tears poured down your cheeks as he pushed deeper with a grunt, your fingers curling into fists against his thighs as you tried to open for him. Bucky’s cock forcing its way into your throat stung a little, and you worked to relax your muscles, but they kept squeezing tight, preventing his hard length from sliding all the way in.

Finally, Bucky pulled his cock free from your mouth and you gasped for breath, a hand massaging your throat, the inside feeling raw already. But Bucky didn’t seem to care. 

He bent down over you, grabbing your face in his free hand and using the sharp end of his knife to wipe the tears from your face. 

“I thought you wanted this, baby,” he rumbled, his tone mocking and patronizing, a laugh in his distorted voice that made you think he was grinning and enjoying your struggle more than he was trying to let on. “You said I could fuck you as hard and rough as I want.” He paused to tsk at you. “You can’t even take my cock without gagging—some slut you are.”

Embarrassment and no small amount of humiliation flooded through you, making you pout. OK so maybe you were more of a slut in theory than in practice, but you did want this. And you’d been trying. Couldn’t he see that?

Crossing your arms over your chest, you glared up at Bucky, your lips still pursed in a pout. 

“Your cock is too big,” you huffed, a hint of a whine in your voice. “Let me try again.”

Bucky laughed, the sound cold and mean, though that only made your pussy drip even more for him. He patted your cheek patronizingly with his knife before fixing you with a hard look.

“You either take my whole cock in your dumb slut mouth, little cottontail,” he growled, a threat in his tone. “Or I’ll make you take it, ya hear me?”

The menace in his deep voice sent a shiver racing down your spine, settling heavily between your thighs until you had to squeeze them together against the ache in your core. You nodded your understanding. “Yes, sir,” you murmured. 

“Good girl,” came Bucky’s rumbling, terrifying voice. Then he stood up and shoved his cock into your mouth again, so suddenly that all you could do was make a muffled, surprised noise and take it. 

You bobbed on the hard, thick length of Bucky’s cock, stretching your lips until the edges stung, forcing his girth deep into your mouth. You gagged when the tip pressed against the back of your throat, but you tried to ignore your body’s response and work past it. No matter how hard you tried, though, you couldn’t get his dick all the way inside your mouth.

After a few minutes of letting you try and watching you fail, Bucky let out an impatient growl before muttering, “Looks like you need me to make you take my cock, baby.” Both his hands grabbed your head and he tilted it back, so your gaze met his. “Just remember, if you’d been a better slut, you wouldn’t have made me do this.”

Your eyes widened, tears leaking out the corners as he moved you into the new position he wanted, with your back to one of the mirrors, your head trapped between the hard surface and his cock. Your fingers fisted in the fabric of his pants near his knees, but you didn’t protest, just stared up at your horror movie villain, anticipation zipping through your body.

“Don’t worry, little cottontail,” Bucky rumbled, and you could tell he was smiling again, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a telltale way. “This won’t hurt nearly as much as if I’d slit your throat—but it’ll probably last longer than it would’ve taken you to bleed out.”

At that ominous comment, your pussy clenched, even more wetness dripping from your pussy and soaking your shorts. You clenched your thighs together, but that was the only part of your body you could move other than your arms. You were helpless to Bucky’s brutality, and you loved it. If his cock wasn’t already buried in your mouth, you would’ve urged him on.

Wasting no more time, Bucky shoved his dick deep into your mouth, pushing past the squeezing muscles in your throat, groaning when you choked and gagged on his thick cock. Your jaw ached and your throat felt raw, but you accepted it, you welcomed it. Bucky’s roughness was only making your pussy wetter, and you couldn’t wait until you could feel him sinking into your tight, wet hole.

Still, you couldn’t quite control your body’s reaction to the intrusion in your throat. Your throat spasmed and you let out a strangled little sound of desperation as it got harder to breathe. You arms flailed and your body tried to escape, only to bang against the mirror behind you. The fact that you were trapped, really trapped, made more tears leak from your eyes. 

“That’s it, baby, cry for me while you’re choking on my cock,” Bucky rumbled, holding your head in his hands as he stared down at you, kneeling for him, your throat bulging with his cock. His eyes sparkled like he enjoyed the sight far too much. “Your dumb slut tears are making me harder.” 

You felt his cock throb in your throat as proof, but then he was pulling back, only for his hips to snap forward, burying his hard length in your throat all over again. More tears poured down your face, your throat closing on a sob that wrenched a deep, pleasured groan from Bucky.

“Fuck, that’s it—take it, slut, you might be crying, but you fucking love it, don’t you, little cottontail?” Bucky rumbled, breathless laughter in his tone. “You love letting me use your mouth like my own personal fuck toy, bet your pussy’s dripping onto the floor, making a mess of your thighs like ‘m gonna make a mess of your face, huh?”

You couldn’t help it, you moaned around Bucky’s cock, his words stoking the blazing fire of your arousal. It didn’t help matters that he was right—your thighs, your shorts and your panties were a mess, all soaked with your desire. 

Bucky grunted when he felt you moan around his hardness, his hips snapping against your face harder as he pounded into your mouth. His hands held your head in a punishing grip, his cock ramming deep into your throat while the back of your skull was pressed against the mirror behind you.

A whine worked its way up your throat as you squirmed, your pussy pulsing with the need to be filled, to be rubbed, to get some kind of attention. One of your hands fell between your thighs and you rocked against it, your clit rubbing against the seam of your shorts until you were moaning and sobbing around Bucky’s cock.

Suddenly he stopped. “What’re you doin’ down there, little cottontail?” he rasped, ducking his head to the side so he could see around his cock and your face. When he caught you with your hand between your thighs, he laughed, his glittering blue eyes finding yours. “Oh, I see—the dumb little slut’s dripping hole needs some attention, huh?” 

Bucky shifted, using his booted foot to kick your thighs apart on the metal floor of the funhouse. Then he shoved his boot between your legs, and jerked his head like he expected you to sit on it.

“You need something to hump against, don’t you, baby?” he asked, his tone mocking. “Well, go ‘head. Ride my fucking boot, little cottontail.” His voice was dark and deep, the sound of it making you shiver. But you couldn’t pretend you didn’t want to follow his order, so you lowered yourself down onto his boot.

The moment your aching core dragged over the laces of Bucky’s boot, you let out a low, filthy moan, the sound muffled by his cock in your mouth. It was exactly the kind of friction you wanted, your clit and messy slit rubbing against the seam of your shorts and the roughness of his laces. Pleasure bloomed, hot and heady, and swirled through your body, overwhelming your mind.

Above you, Bucky groaned, shoving deeper into your throat until your nose was pressed into the thick thatch of hair at the base of his cock and his balls were nestled up against your chin. Spit and precum and tears were leaking down your face, making a mess of your jaw and chin, dripping down to your tits while Bucky watched you with hooded eyes.

“Do that again, baby,” Bucky grunted, holding your head down on his hardness. “Moan like a dumb fucking slut on my cock while I ruin your throat.” 

It took little effort to moan again as pleasure and pain swirled through your body, your hips working on Bucky’s boot, grinding your slick cunt against the stiff leather through your panties and shorts. Your clit rubbed over the laces, your mind filling with clouds of bliss as you sank into the feeling of your pussy grinding against Bucky’s boot and his cock fucking your throat.

Bucky was grunting and groaning loudly, his sounds of pleasure a reward for how good your slutty mouth was making him feel. He pounded into your face, his balls slapping against your chin, seeking his release while you humped against his boot, intent on finding your own pleasure while he used you. 

You were both lost entirely in each other, too focused on seeking pleasure to notice someone else had entered the funhouse. Bucky’s eyes were only for you, and you were staring up too intently into his face, watching pleasure make his eyes go hazy to pay attention to your surroundings—which was the only reason one of the final girl’s friends was able to sneak up on the two of you.

“Get away from her, you monster!” The girl’s shriek was followed closely by the splintering sound of a wooden bat as she swung it at Bucky, and the thing shattering apart against his back. Her face, twisted in fury and determination, quickly shifted to surprise and panic.

For his part, Bucky merely grunted, barely lurching forward as he shoved his cock impossibly deeper in your throat while he bore the attack. But then he was moving quicker than your pleasure-drunk eyes could fully process, your body only aware that he was pulling back until only the tip of him remained on your tongue. Growling furiously, Bucky turned and used his knife to slash the girl’s throat.

You vaguely recognized the girl as one of the characters in Slasher who gets killed at the carnival in the third act, though you couldn’t remember which ride Bucky kills her on. Maybe it was the funhouse—that would explain how she found the two of you.

In that moment, you didn’t much care. You’d been busy with Bucky and you were more than a little annoyed at the interruption. Your body was buzzing with your unslaked need, and you felt horny and frustrated as you turned your attention back to the horror villain above you.

But Bucky’s focus was entirely on the other girl, who was grabbing her throat uselessly, trying to stem the gush of blood as she stumbled into a mirror, leaving a bloody handprint behind. Bucky’s eyes were gleaming as he savored the sight of the dying girl, the corners of his eyes crinkling like he was grinning.

His cock was still in your mouth, but just barely, and the longer he watched the other girl die, the more a pout grew on your lips. 

After a few long moments of the girl’s death dragging on, you’d had enough. This was your fantasy come to life, and if Bucky wasn’t going to pay attention to you and get you off, then you were going to make him. 

Carefully, you extracted yourself from between Bucky and the mirror you’d been pressed against, your pout only growing when his stiff cock slipped from your lips and he didn’t even notice. Quickly, you crawled around the corner and once you were out of sight, you hopped up to your feet so you could move faster.

Your legs felt weak from your earlier running and kneeling on the hard, metal floor—not to mention how close you’d been to coming on Bucky’s boot. But you urged them to work as you moved as quietly as you could through the rest of the maze.

You were already almost to the exit when Bucky finally noticed you’d escaped. His angry roar of, “COTTONTAIL!” echoed off the mirrors and metal walls inside the funhouse. But his rage only made you snicker. It was his own fault, after all.

“You shoulda tied me down or paid more attention to me if you didn’t want me getting away, Mr. Slasher,” you called over your shoulder, taunting him as you darted around the final corner in the mirror maze, finding your way out. You clambered through the rest of the funhouse, Bucky’s stomping footsteps reverberating around you and making your heart beat faster with fear and excitement.

You slid down the slide that worked as the exit from the funhouse and as soon as your feet hit the grass of the fairground, you sprinted off again. Wracking your brain, you tried to think about where else Bucky kills the final girl’s friends in the final act of Slasher. All you could remember was the ending, with the carousel.

You turned a corner, running in the opposite direction of the carousel and that area of the carnival, not wanting the final girl or anymore of her friends interrupting you once Bucky caught you again.

Sooner than you expected, a leather-clad chest slammed into your back and, within the next breath, you hit the grassy ground as Bucky tackled you. One of his hands wrapped around the front of your throat, his fingers digging into the sides of your neck while he pressed his face into the side of yours.

Even through his hard plastic mask, you could feel his breath on your skin, his hot, heavy breaths gusting past your cheek as he panted like a rabid dog. 

“I win again, baby,” Bucky growled, his voice even more threatening thanks to the fury in it. He clearly didn’t appreciate that you’d made him chase you again, and the coldness in his tone promised that while you might find pleasure in what he was about to do to you, you were also going to feel no small amount of pain. 

“And you can be sure I won’t make the same mistake twice,” he went on, resting more of his weight on your back until you were pinned to the ground beneath him, your body struggling to catch your breath as he crushed your lungs. “Now that I have you, you’re never getting away from me again—you’re mine, little cottontail.”

Your heart panged in your chest, and it took you a second to realize the feeling was yearning. Because that was the heart of it, wasn’t it? You wanted someone to see you at your brattiest, with your darkest desires all laid out—and even seeing your soul bared for them, you wanted them to want to keep you. Part of you wanted to roll over and open your legs for Bucky, tell him you were his forever. But that wasn’t really in your nature.

Instead, you huffed a belated laugh, squirming beneath Bucky and fighting against his considerable strength even though you knew it was no good. You weren’t going anywhere, and you loved it.

“I’ll believe it when I see it, Mr. Slasher,” you taunted, bucking your hips hard. You felt Bucky’s big body jostle just a little and, sensing a glimmer of freedom, you fought harder. 

Then cold steel replaced Bucky’s hand at your throat and you went still. Despite the fact that he’d used the knife mere moments ago to kill someone else, you were almost certain he wasn’t going to do the same to you. Well, pretty certain.

Besides, you were still convinced you were in a dream and dying would only wake you up. But with Bucky’s knife pressed to your neck, you didn’t exactly want to test your theory.

The horror movie villain chuckled, his chest rumbling against your spine and his breath ghosting over your cheek. 

“That’s the first smart thing you’ve done all night, little cottontail,” he murmured, his voice so dark and deep, it made you shiver. 

He dug the steel of his knife into your throat, using his other hand to guide you up onto your hands and knees. Bucky’s big body was curled over yours, his hand reaching beneath you to grope your tits while he groaned against the side of your face. 

“Such soft tits, baby,” he grunted as his fingers kneaded your flesh through your tank top. Then his hand was diving under the fabric to pinch your nipples, making you cry out and arch your back. “Yeah, that’s it, ya dumb slut, let me hear how much you like having a monster like me playing with your tits.”

You whimpered when he pinched your nipple hard and shook your breast, the sting of pain and pleasure consuming your mind and making you grind back against his thick cock, which he’d tucked back into his pants. An impatient whine tumbled from your lips and it was on the tip of your tongue to beg Bucky to fuck you, but it seemed he was just as eager to get on with it.

Skimming his hand down your body, Bucky found the button of your shorts and quickly undid them. He sat up on his knees, dragging you with him and keeping his knife at your throat. 

He shoved your shorts and panties down roughly past your ass to your thighs, then dipped his hand between your legs. A loud groan rumbled in his chest when he realized how wet you were. 

“Fuck, you really are a slut, aren’t you, baby?” he taunted in a mocking tone, and you could almost hear the smile in his voice. His fingers slipped between your drenched folds and all you could do to answer him was moan as he teased your pussy. “I’m gonna fill up this slick cunt, little cottontail,” he rumbled in your ear, a promise ringing in his words. “I’m gonna destroy your tight hole until you’re nothing more than my dumb, cock-drunk slut.”

Between Bucky’s fingers playing with your pussy and his words wreaking havoc on your pleasure-soaked mind, you were desperate for him to follow through on his promise. 

Suddenly, you’d had enough of the game you’d been playing with Bucky and you wanted him to finally—finally—fuck you.

“Please, Bucky, please, please, fuck me,” you sobbed, tears leaking from your eyes and down your cheeks as you rocked your ass against his hard cock. “Please, god, I need it—I need you.”

For a moment, Bucky was silent and unmoving. Then he was shoving you forward into the grass so you were back on your hands and knees. His knife just barely grazed the side of your neck as you fell forward, and you whimpered at the light sting of it.

The next thing you knew, Bucky’s cock was slapping against your bare ass, and he was lining himself up with your soaked, fluttering pussy. Your fingers dug into the grass, preparing yourself to hold on for dear life.

“Remember, little cottontail, you said I could fuck you as hard and rough as I want,” Bucky rumbled, sliding his cock between your legs, coating his thick length in your desire. “If it’s too much for you, you can scream all you want, but I’m not stopping until I’ve filled your cunt with all the come in my balls.”

You could hear the laughter in Bucky’s voice, but didn’t have time to respond to his words because in the next second, he shoved himself all the way inside you with one thrust.

Bucky’s thick, hard cock slammed deep into your tight pussy, and a scream wrenched free from your lips, making your already raw throat hurt even more. But it was the delicious kind of pain that mixed perfectly with the feeling of Bucky filling you up for the first time. 

His girth was bigger than anyone or any toy you’d taken before, and it felt like you were being split apart, your insides rearranging to make room for his huge cock. It was only because you were so wet that it didn’t really hurt, but the sting of the stretch was enough to send your mind reeling, your thoughts scattering until the only thing that mattered was Bucky’s cock inside you and his body behind you.

Bucky made a noise that was half groan, half growl—sounding entirely feral behind his mask as his hands dug into your hips. You could feel him still holding his knife, but the steel wasn’t pressed against your skin so you didn’t give it much thought.

“God, that’s a tight fucking cunt ya got here, cottontail,” he rasped, pulling back and slamming forward so hard, your arms shook and you nearly collapsed face first into the grass. “Feel like you were fucking made for me, baby—made to be my fuck hole, made to take my cock.”

True to his word, the horror movie villain rutted into you hard, paying no mind to your pleasure, just taking his own. But that was exactly how you liked it, and you couldn’t help the litany of desperate moans and whimpers that tumbled past your lips. 

Before long, your arms gave out and your cheek pressed to the grass, which was cool against your face. The position made your back arch and your ass stick up in the air. Bucky made a pleased sound, slapping your ass in a gesture that almost felt like praise.

“Yeah, take it like a slut, baby,” he growled, pounding into you harder—hard enough you could feel your ass and hips and thighs ripple with the force of his thrusts. “This is how dumb sluts are meant to be fucked.”

You whined at the searing pleasure of Bucky’s cock hammering into your cunt, and you arched your back further, giving him easier access to drive even deeper into you from behind. Your reward was another hard slap on your ass—that time with the cold flat steel of Bucky’s knife. You squealed, then moaned as the sharp sting devolved into even more pleasure.

Bucky laughed, the sound wild and dark. Then he curled his body over yours, dropping the knife in the grass so he could grab wrap one of his hands around your throat while the other groped your tits. 

“You’re mine, little cottontail,” he growled in your ear. “I own your body now, and you’re going to be my personal fuck toy for the rest of your life.” He rutted into you, hard and rough, his hips slapping against your ass mixing with the sounds of your wet pussy being fucked. “I’m gonna chain you up in my basement, and you’re gonna be my basement slut—my little cottontail—forever.”

It was impossible to nod, and impossible to speak, with how tightly Bucky had you pinned beneath him while he fucked you. So you wrapped a hand around his wrist, not pulling him away, but squeezing hard enough that you could feel his pulse thrumming beneath your thumb. You clung to him, telling him wordlessly that you were submitting to him, tears gathering in your lashes as pleasure overwhelmed you.

“Fuck,” Bucky grunted, pounding you hard and fast, the hard plastic of his mask digging into the side of your face. “Cry for me, cottontail, you know it makes me harder.” 

His fingers dug into the sides of your throat while his other hand tortured your nipples, tugging and pinching them, until your tears began leaking from your eyes. Bucky ducked forward, nuzzling your tear-stained cheek through his mask, groaning as he hit a spot inside of you that made your whole body clench and your mouth drop open in a soundless scream.

“I can feel your cunt choking my cock, baby,” Bucky rumbled in your ear. “You really love everything I’m doing to you, don’t you, dumb slut?” His hips pressed against your ass and he started grinding his cock deep in your core, the tip brushing against that spot inside you that made you see stars.

“Yes, yes, Bucky, yes,” you sobbed, your words breathless and soft and only able to escape because he’d loosened his hold on your throat slightly. But then he tightened his fingers again and you made a desperate little gasping sound.

Bucky laughed, the sound evil and mocking, and your cunt pulsed again. He refocused on fucking you, pounding into you and chasing his own pleasure. You tried to scream, the pleasure nearly mind-blowing, but his hand on your throat made sure you could only make the barest of noises.

“You’re gonna come on my cock, little cottontail,” Bucky rumbled, his hard plastic mask chafing against your sensitive cheek. “You’re gonna come and show me that you’re mine, that you accept your new life—and me as your master.”

Your fingers squeezed his wrist again in understanding, and then you couldn’t think anymore. Bucky’s cock was pounding into your pussy hard enough to almost hurt, pleasure pulsing through your body as he plucked and played with your tits. Your head was going fuzzy from a lack of air, but that just made everything else feel better and more.

When Bucky’s hand abandoned your tits to slip between your thighs, it only took a few strokes of his fingers against your clit to set you off. At the same moment, Bucky’s hand loosened around your throat, and oxygen flooded your lungs as you came on his cock. 

It was almost an out-of-body experience, coming on the thick length of your horror movie villain crush, your mind going entirely blank as your body tried to process all the pleasure and sensation flooding through it. A loud, piercing scream sounded in your ears and it took a second to realize it was spilling from your own lips. 

Bucky’s hand tightened around your throat again, tighter than before, cutting off the sound of your pleasure while he grunted and groaned above you. He was rutting into you as your walls squeezed his cock, taking his pleasure as he prolonged yours.

Blackness was starting to creep into the edges of your vision when he finally roared loudly, his cock throbbing inside you as he spilled his come deep in your pussy. His fingers dug into the sides of your throat harder, choking you through his orgasm as your body fluttered with the last waves of your release. 

The last thing you heard was Bucky muttering, “Good girl, take my come, little cottontail,” as he pumped you full of his thick, sticky seed. Then, there was nothing but comforting darkness, and you sank into it, feeling satisfied and happy as you passed out in the arms of your horror movie villain…

Now, the choice is yours, dear reader. Do you want to stay with Bucky Barnes and live in the world of Slasher? If so, read on for the dark ending! Or do you want to wake up and meet someone a little less psychotic? If so, skip down to the fluffy ending!

Slasher - Dark Ending

dark ending additional warnings: dubcon, somnophilia, slightly painful sex, basement wife-ing, references to Bucky's arm amputation, Bucky is even more psychotic

You were woken by your body jostling against concrete, an aching mix of pleasure and pain radiating between your thighs. The slick sounds of fucking met your ears and, belatedly, you realized you were impaled on a cock, the thickness of it stretching your tight hole to its limit. 

Your inner thighs felt chafed and your back hurt from the position you were contorted in, your shoulders propped up against a cinderblock wall while you were folded in half at the waist, a heavy body pinning your legs to your chest while they fucked you. You were naked and a little cold, but the body against you was warm.

Blinking your eyes open, you were met with the sight of Bucky’s handsome face contorted with pleasure as he fucked you. There was a new glimmer in the depths of his blue eyes—something wild and feral and more than a little frightening. His mouth spread into a savage grin when he saw you were awake.

“There’s my little cottontail,” he rumbled before ducking down and kissing your cheek in a gesture that would’ve been sweet if not for his stubble roughing over your sensitive skin. You whimpered softly at the abrading feeling, your pussy pulsing despite your exhaustion.

When he pulled back, the sound of chains rattling above you finally caught your attention and you looked up, finding your wrists shackled above your head and bolted into the wall of the basement. Dim morning light was filtering in through windows set high in the walls, and you couldn’t make out much beyond the shadow of the stairs leading up to the first floor.

Before you could gather you wits enough to ask a question, or wade through your confusion to figure out what question you should even ask, Bucky slammed deep inside you, wringing a weak moan from you. It was only then that you realized he’d been taking it easy on you while you were asleep, but since you were awake, he started fucking you harder. Pleasure, pain and bewilderment warred with the tiredness of just waking up as you tried to think. 

Your eyes slid closed while you tried to block out Bucky and your surroundings. You needed to figure out why you weren’t in your grandmother’s basement, having woken up from the dream you’d been sure you were having.

But Bucky didn’t like that. His weight settled more heavily on top of you, making your hips ache in protest, and grabbed your face roughly in his hand. 

“Look at me, cottontail,” he rumbled, shaking your head until your eyes fluttered open again.

Tears leaked out of the corners of your eyes and your mouth worked, trying to find the words for how you felt. You’d wanted this—wanted someone like Bucky who saw who you really were and still wanted to keep you. But now that you were actually chained up in his basement, you wondered if maybe you’d jumped in the deep end without being able to swim. 

“Don’t look so confused, baby,” Bucky growled in a patronizingly sweet tone, thumbing your tears from your cheeks and making you flinch as the salt of them irritated your skin. “I told you I was never letting you go—you knew this was going to happen.” He was grinding his cock deep into your well-used cunt, the pleasure almost painful. “Now that you’re chained up in my basement, you have no hope of ever escaping from me again.”

The head of his cock battered against your cervix and you cried out, your head thumping against the cinderblock wall behind you. The pain mixed with the pleasure of thick length rubbing against your sensitive inner walls until your mind was spinning. 

You just couldn’t wrap your head around it. You really hadn’t known this was going to happen. You’d thought you were dreaming and were going to wake up after you’d fucked Bucky Barnes, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Apparently you’d really somehow been transported into the world of Slasher.

“Thank me for keeping you, little cottontail,” Bucky growled, wringing another pleasured whimper from you as he kept grinding his cock into you. “After all, it wasn’t easy getting you here after that bitch crushed my arm.” His voice was dripping venom and he rocked his hips harder, forcing tears from your eyes as his cock battered your cervix.

It was only then that you understood why so much of Bucky’s weight was resting on you while his hand held your face. Darting your eyes to Bucky’s shoulder, there was a thick, bloody bandage wrapped around the place where he must’ve amputated his arm after the final girl had crushed it in the carousel gears. 

Your stomach rolled at the sight, empathy for Bucky surging through you. It really couldn’t have been easy getting you back to his house when he was injured like that. 

But before you could follow the order he’d given you, Bucky yanked your face back to look at him. He ducked closer, so all you could see were his eyes, wild and psychotic, boring into your own.

“Thank your master for keeping you!” he growled harshly.

Your heart panged, and you rushed to do as he said. “Th-thank you for keeping me, Bucky,” you cried, tears streaming down your face, your voice filled with genuine gratitude. “Thank you, master!” 

The anger leeched out of Bucky at your words and your tears, and you could feel his cock throbbing inside you. 

“Good girl,” he purred, nuzzling your cheek in reward and kissing your jaw with his soft lips. “My good, dumb slut—you’re going to make such a good basement wife for me.”

A small, confused noise squeaked out of you and Bucky pulled back, a grin on his face. He nodded up toward your hands and you twisted them in your shackles, finding shiny, silver metal glinting off your left ring finger. You sucked in a gasp, feeling speechless as your mind failed to process another shocking revelation in so little time.

“Your dream is coming true, baby,” Bucky rumbled, licking the tears from your cheeks, taking your silence as understanding and submission. “You’re going to be my own personal fuck hole—my pretty little dumb slut—for the rest of your life.”

Bucky canted his hips, grinding his cock into the depths of your pussy while the base of him rubbed against your clit and the pleasure that had been winding tighter in your core suddenly snapped. You came with a loud, sobbing scream, your head thrown back against the wall of the basement as tears cascaded down your cheeks while you succumbed to the pleasure, your cunt greedily squeezing Bucky’s cock.

A small part of you wanted to black out again, hoping you’d wake up back in your grandmother’s basement, unsure if you had what it took to be the full-time fuck toy of your favorite horror movie villain. But somehow you knew that wouldn’t happen.

Whatever had transported you into the world of Slasher seemed to be a one-way ticket, and you’d made your choices. The fact that you were at the mercy of Bucky Barnes was no one’s fault but your own.

And yet, you couldn’t bring yourself to regret anything you’d done. After all, you’d gotten exactly what you wanted—you got to fuck Bucky Barnes. And if you had your way, you’d fuck Bucky Barnes every day until you died. Which was good, since that seemed to be exactly what he had planned for you.

Just then, Bucky grunted, his cock twitching inside you and he slammed deep, grabbing your face and pulling you in for a messy kiss while he came, coating your insides with his seed. His lips were hard and demanding, but you weren’t some wilting flower—you nipped his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. 

Bucky’s cock throbbed inside you as he chuckled, kissing you again, the taste of his blood bursting on your tongue as you devoured each other. 

When he pulled away and collapsed on top of you, a satisfied smile curved your lips. You glanced up at the ring on your finger again, thinking it wouldn’t be so bad to be Bucky Barnes’ basement wife. 

Slasher - Fluffy Ending

fluffy ending additional warnings: talk about past roleplay, some potentially risky decisions on reader's part, that's really it

You awoke with a start, the loud, chiming sound of the doorbell echoing through your grandmother’s house and dragging you back to reality from the depths of your dream. A faint soreness permeated your body, and you frowned, the memory of your dream clinging to the edges of your mind.  

Groggily, you opened your eyes to find you were curled up on the familiar rug in the basement of your grandmother’s house, and you suspected the hard floor was likely the cause of your soreness. Still, you felt a faint tingling all over, the remnants of pleasure from your dream and you smiled as you stretched languidly, easing most of the aches in your limbs.

The doorbell chimed again, and you dragged yourself up, wiping drool from your cheek as you pulled your cardigan tighter around yourself and climbed the stairs up to the first floor. On your way to the door, you checked the time, finding it was nearly midnight, and wondered who was stopping by so late. All your relatives and all your grandmother’s friends would be asleep.

Flicking on the porch light, you opened the front door, but the left the screen door latched when you found a strange man standing there. The frigid autuman night air wrapped around you, and you crossed your arms over your chest to stave off a shiver. 

“Hey Mrs—” The man had been standing with his back to you, facing the street, and swung around when he heard the door open. But he paused when he saw you, his greeting cutting off as if he’d been expecting someone else. 

A distant corner of your brain pointed out that of course he was expecting someone else—you were answering the door at your grandmother’s house.

But you couldn’t pay attention to your mind’s logic because you were silently freaking out. The man looked almost exactly like Bucky Barnes. 

He had the same sparkling blue eyes, though there wasn’t any of the cold hatred that haunted your favorite horror movie villain. And his mouth was curved into a charming smile, which you knew for certain you’d never see on the version of Bucky from Slasher. The man’s hair was also shorter, and the stubble on his jaw was a little less scruffy, like he’d shaved that morning and it had grown out since then. The style really worked for him. 

He was somehow even more attractive than Bucky Barnes. You didn’t know how that was possible, but apparently it was. 

The man shifted on his feet, running a hand through his hair, looking a little abashed. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb ya,” he said, a slight Brooklyn accent in his voice. “Sometimes I borrow some ground coffee from the lady who lives here when I’ve run out.” He shot you a sheepish smile and shrugged. “And I’ve run out.”

“Oh,” you said, a little dumbly. “You must be talking about my grandmother.” Your surprise over the man’s resemblance to Bucky was wearing off, and you found that his smile was infectious. He had a charm to him that made you want to tell him more than you should, which must’ve been why you found yourself saying, “She’s on a cruise, and I’m watching her house.”

It might’ve been a mistake to tell a strange man that much, but instead of doing anything to make you second-guess yourself, he just smacked a hand against his forehead. The gesture was so endearing, you couldn’t help but laugh, warming to him even more. 

“You’re right! She told me about that.” He paused for a moment, his gaze raking over your face—hopefully not finding any traces of drool on your chin—and his eyes softened. “Sorry again to bother you, your gran’s normally up watching one of those late shows, I hope I didn’t wake you.”

You snorted to yourself. Of course your grandmother was known for staying up later than you. But you didn’t want the man to feel bad. It wasn’t like he woke you up before you came on dream Bucky’s cock. 

“No, no, it’s fine,” you said, shaking your head and smiling softly to let him know it really was fine. Again, you had the urge to say more to him than you normally would to a stranger. So, before you could hold your tongue, you blurted, “Do you know you look exactly like the villain from this old horror movie?” 

Even in the dim yellow light of the porch, you could see the man’s cheeks turn pink while he scrubbed a hand over his jaw. But he was hiding a smile behind his palm and when he caught your eye, there was humor in the depths of his gaze.

“Yeah, I get that sometimes,” he said, his voice suddenly lower. “Bucky Barnes from Slasher, right?” 

You nodded, almost mesmerized as you stared into his eyes. “I had the biggest crush on him,” you admitted, because apparently the filter between your brain and mouth had been left on the rug in your grandmother’s basement. But the man only chuckled, the light flush fading from his face.

“Did you now?” he asked, his eyes shimmering with humor as he looked at your face, his gaze raking over the curve of your lips. He shifted closer to the door and a shiver skated down your spine at the way he loomed over you. “Y’know, my friends have called me Bucky ever since we watched that movie one summer when were idiot kids.”

“Y-your name’s Bucky?” you asked, excitement making your voice come out like a whisper. 

The man looked to the side and chuckled, the sound low and rich and making you want to giggle ridiculously and kick your feet. When his gaze found yours again, his eyes were sparkling with playfulness and something more; his mouth was curved into a devastatingly charming grin.

“No, my name is James Barnes, but pretty much everyone calls me Bucky.” He watched you absorb this information, shifting even closer to the door until you could feel the warmth of him seeping through the screen. “Would you like to call me Bucky, pretty girl?” he asked, his voice pitching so low and deep, you could feel it between your thighs.

Your shoulders trembled as you shivered, nodding eagerly as you whispered, “Yes, please.”

Bucky rumbled a pleased sound, and his hand raised toward the screen, like he was reaching for you. But then he paused, as if catching himself. Huffing a laugh, he drew his hand back and wiped it down his face, seemingly forcing himself to straighten and take a step back. 

You almost whined in protest, but caught yourself at the last second, biting your lip against a frown as he moved away. You hadn’t realized how close the two of you had drifted to each other through the door until he was pulling away. You understood it was probably weird, the way you were acting with each other considering you just met, but the chemistry between you was palpable, and you desperately wanted to explore it as soon as possible.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I have the mask,” Bucky confessed, breaking you free from your thoughts. 

You were glad for it, because he was giving you another loaded look and you felt your belly swoop, butterflies taking flight as he smiled at you. It took a second to process his words, and when you did, you couldn’t help the impish grin that spread across your face. You gestured for him to go on.

“I bought it for a girl I was seeing who said she wanted to roleplay,” he went on, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans and looking off to the side again, like he knew he wasn’t supposed to be telling this to a girl he just met, but couldn’t help himself. “But I think I scared her off.” He turned his penetrating gaze back to you, pinning you in place while you held your breath. “You don’t strike me as the kind of girl who scares easily.”

You snorted again and tossed your head. That was an understatement, if your dream was any indication of your desires—which it was. You gave the man called Bucky a cheeky smile. “No, I’m definitely not,” you told him, a hint of a challenge in your tone.

For a long moment, the two of you just stood there, staring at each other. Then, you made a slightly reckless decision. Your hand reached for the latch of the screen door and pushed it open, all while holding his gaze. 

“Why don’t you come in and get that coffee you needed,” you offered, hoping your instincts about Bucky were right, and he would turn out to be exactly the kind of man you wanted in your life. Besides, you told yourself, your grandmother liked him well enough to lend him some coffee—and you trusted her judgement so he must be a decent guy. “And you can tell me what about your roleplay frightened off that girl.”

Bucky’s smile spread into a full-on grin, and he eagerly grabbed the door, opening it wider while he stepped forward. When you didn’t move back right away and instead allowed him to step into your personal space, his gaze dropped to your mouth, his eyes darkening and the corners of his mouth twitching in another smile.

“Deal,” he rumbled. “So long as you tell me more about this crush of yours.”

The memories of your dream flitted through your mind, feeling more real than any dream you’d ever had before, and you found you couldn’t wait to tell Bucky about it. The man in front of you was warmer and kinder than the one you’d met in your dreams, but you had a feeling he had a dark side that liked to come out to play—just like you. 

“Deal.” After you said the word, you felt as if something truly special was beginning and your heart raced with excitement as you stared up into Bucky’s handsome face. Both of you were grinning like idiots.

Finally taking a step back, you welcomed Bucky into your grandmother’s house, knowing deep in your bones that you were going to be in each other’s lives for a very long time—possibly even forever. And you couldn’t help but think that having this Bucky Barnes was even better than dreaming about your horror movie villain crush. After all, at least he was real.

---

Lucky | Bucky Barnes

Part:1/2

Bucky x movie star!reader

Word Count: 19k

Warnings: Angst, fluff, ect

A/N: Found this in my google docs when i was looking for my layout of Yours, Always, it was supposed to be a long one shot but Tumblr wont let me post a 35k fic lol so its broken up in two parts, Its not proofreading it or edited

Last Part

Masterpost

------

The lights are blinding.

That’s the first thing you feel, not the cold wind slipping down the back of your silk dress, not the too-tight smile tugging at your lips, not even the ache in your ribs from the corset they cinched too hard. Just the lights.

They’re white, hot and endless.

“Y/N, this way!”

“Look over your shoulder!”

“Give us that million-dollar smile!”

“Who are you wearing?”

“Are the rumors true? Are you dating anyone?”

You turn, you pose.

Left side. Chin down. Eyes wide.

You were taught this. Programmed.

Smile like it doesn’t hurt. Laugh like the world hasn’t caved in three times this week.

Behind you, flashes burst like fireworks, one after the other, click, click, click. You’re the show. The proof that beauty exists. The doll everyone wants to dress up, photograph, praise, tear apart.

“She’s glowing.”

“She looks stunning.”

“She’s so lucky.”

You’re not listening, not really. You can’t hear anything over the pulse in your ears.

You shift your weight in your heels. Smile again. Flash another glance toward the cameras. They eat it up, you give them more.

Every pose is polished. Every hair is perfectly placed. Every reaction is rehearsed. But no one asks if you’re happy. No one would believe you if you said you weren’t and maybe that’s the worst part.

Because on nights like this, under the golden lights and velvet ropes, you’re not a person. You’re a thing. A body in couture. A name they know. A face that sells and the show must go on.

Always.

So you blow a kiss toward the crowd. You laugh at a joke you didn’t hear.

----

The kitchen at the compound was unusually quiet for 8 a.m.

Steve sat at the island with a tablet, squinting at whatever article caught his interest. Next to him, Bucky flipped through the newspaper, actual paper, the only man in the building still committed to ink and print.

“…They’re remaking Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Steve muttered.

Bucky didn’t look up. “Blasphemy.”

Footsteps, then a voice, too cocky for the hour. “Morning, grumpy,” Tony announced, striding in like he owned the place, which, technically, he did.

Bucky lowered the paper an inch. “Don’t.”

Tony stole Steve’s toast. Steve scowled. “Seriously?”

Tony dropped a thick folder onto the counter with a theatrical thud. “Got a mission for you.”

That got Bucky’s attention. He folded the paper, leaned back, arms crossed.

Steve raised a brow. “He’s not cleared.”

Tony shrugged, chewing toast. “This is different. No fieldwork, no guns. No jumping off buildings, unless she throws him off one, which… fair bet.”

Bucky opened the file. Glossy photo, sunglasses, silk scarf. Smiling like she had the world in her pocket, which he would come to learn she did.

“Who’s this?”

Tony smirked. “Y/N L/N.”

Steve squinted. “The movie star?”

Tony nodded.

Bucky blinked. “Why would a movie star need me?”

Sam entered just in time. “Wait, who’s getting you?”

“Y/N Y/L/N.” Tony pointed at Bucky. “He’s going to be her bodyguard.”

Sam nearly dropped his protein shake. “No fucking way.”

Tony grinned. “Knew you’d appreciate it.”

Sam grabbed the file, flipping through. “Dude. She’s massive. Like… stalkers, paparazzi, sold-out appearances, screaming crowds. Her life’s a circus.”

Bucky looked unimpressed. “So send a security team.”

“She asked for you,” Tony said. “Well, her team did. Wanted the best.”

Bucky scoffed. “Why me?”

Tony smirked, because of course he did. “Because you’re the best. I hate that you are, but facts are facts and I love facts.”

He dropped the folder on the counter like it weighed nothing. Bucky stared down at it like it might explode. Bucky stared back at the photo, you were beautiful there was no doubt. You looked perfect, but you were just some girl in diamonds and silk and an expression that didn’t mean anything. You looked like every other starlet in every other ad. All light, no weight.

“Why the hell would someone like her need someone like me?”

Sam plopped down at the counter, flipping through the file like it was a magazine. “Because she’s got stalkers. Serious ones. There’s one guy, I saw on this gossip site I follow, who has been sending her letters since she was sixteen. Broke into her house twice. Held her captive once, for, like, 24 hours.”

Bucky shook his head. All of it felt ridiculous, like a plotline from one of those movies you were probably in.

You were famous, beautiful. Everything he wasn’t. He was a mess of history and metal and trauma in a jacket that didn’t fit right.

“Do I have a choice?” he asked flatly.

Tony took a long sip of his coffee and turned for the hallway. “Nope.” Then he was gone, because of course he was.

Bucky looked down at the photo again. She was laughing in it. That fake, trained kind of laugh. He knew it because he’d worn the same one in his file photos. The ones they used to show he was “adjusting well.” Your smile didn’t reach your eyes.

A hand clapped him gently on the shoulder, Steve. “It’s not gonna be that bad,” he said. “At least you’ll be out of the Tower. Doing something, something normal.”

Bucky stared at him, normal….right. He was a guy with blood on his hands and a barcode in his brain. A guy who hadn’t had a real conversation that didn’t involve tactical strategy or surveillance in… well, ever…and now he was supposed to babysit Hollywood’s favorite face?

He sighed and picked up the file. “She probably smells like perfume and entitlement,” he muttered.

Steve just smiled, too used to him by now.

Bucky didn’t smile back.

----------

Your suite smells like roses, burnt espresso, and tension. “Absolutely not,” you say, calm and clipped, as you scroll through your phone. “Get someone else.”

Your manager, Brett, sighs like he’s been holding his breath since 6 a.m. “Y/N. It’s not up for debate.”

You set your phone down slowly. “It is if you expect me to share space with a guy who used to kill people because someone said a few magic words.”

“He’s not like that anymore.”

“Right,” you mutter. “Because trauma just disappears.”

There’s a pause, another voice, one of your publicists, because apparently you need more than one, Leah, trying to sound gentle. “He’s the best we could get. Discreet, physically intimidating and he’s an Avenger.. We need you alive, you have contracts to complete..”

You glance between them. Brett’s jaw is tight. Leah’s trying too hard. You already know this is non-negotiable, nothing ever is anymore.

You pick up your phone again and say coolly, “Fine, bring in the ex-brainwashed assassin.”

They exchange a glance. “He prefers ‘Sergeant Barnes.’”

-----

When you first lay eyes on him, he walks in like he doesn’t want to be there. You don’t blame him, you don’t either. Leather jacket. Black jeans. Expression like thunderclouds. You already know who he is before anyone says a word.

He’s not what you expected. You thought he’d look more… broken or brutal. Instead, he looks like someone holding himself together with string. Sharp eyes. Quiet fury, but those blue eyes, god they were gorgeous, he was too.

He doesn’t smile, doesn’t flinch. Just stands there while Brett introduces him. “Y/N, this is Sergeant Bucky Barnes.”

You glance at your manager, then at Bucky. “Do I salute, or are we skipping that part?”

Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“Guess we’re skipping it,” you say, grabbing your coffee from the table and walking past him.

“Don’t talk to the press,” you toss over your shoulder. “Don’t talk to me unless it’s necessary and don’t fall in love with me.”

You’re joking, no one ever would

----

Bucky rides in silence. You’re pretending to be texting someone, pretending to be fake-laughing at a meme. Your assistant is reviewing your schedule: press junket, interview, table read, fitting.

You don’t look at him. He watches you through the rearview mirror. Everything about you is curated. Nails, lashes, the way you sit, like you’re always in a frame, always on camera.

He doesn’t see the appeal.

He’s not impressed by fame. He’s seen the world from the shadows. Glitter doesn’t mean safety. Glamour doesn’t mean goodness. You’re just another rich girl in a diamond cage. Still, he watches you like a soldier, like a threat.

You breeze past him into the building, sunglasses on, smile ready. He trails behind, clocking exits, cameras, fans, your security team.

Inside, it’s chaos, assistants shouting, lights flashing, everyone talking about you like you’re not standing there. You say nothing. Just nod, pose, walk where you’re told.

You’re perfect, plastic.

You sit in a chair, silent, while three people adjust your outfit. Bucky leans against the wall.

Someone says something about your last breakup. You laugh, it’s fake….empty. But they all buy it, he doesn’t

Your phone buzzes. You read it, then lock the screen without reacting. Bucky notices your hand twitch, a tiny, involuntary move. No one else does.

You glance at him once in the mirror, just once and he swears he sees something in your eyes but then the mask is back.

----

He walks you to your suite. No one talks.

Your heels click against the marble, each step echoing like punctuation. You don’t look back. You don’t slow down. Your assistant is three steps behind you, frantically unlocking the door like her job depends on it because it probably does.

You step inside the suite without acknowledging either of them.

White roses, chilled water, room temp lighting. Everything exactly the way your team demanded it. The air smells like money and tension.

You don’t even glance around. Before the door closes behind you, you pause one heel pivoting delicately on the floor and glance back over your shoulder.

He’s still standing there. Stiff and ilent. Arms folded like he’s waiting for an excuse to walk off the job.

You tilt your head. Smile.

But it’s not a sweet smile. It’s the kind that’s been sharpened over years of interviews and red carpets. Poisoned at the edges. “You always look this miserable, or is that just for me?”

He doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t.

You smirk, slow and mean, a laugh without sound, and shut the door in his face.

The lock clicks and outside, Bucky exhales like he’s just made a deal with the devil.

This job is going to suck.

----

You wake up before your alarm.

You always do.

It’s not anxiety, not really. It’s… habit. You’ve trained your body like a machine. Five hours of sleep is more than enough when you’re running on caffeine and compulsion.

You lie there for a moment, staring at the ceiling. Neutral cream color. No photos on the walls. No sound except for the hum of the air conditioner.

Someone knocks, twice, precisely. That’s the cue. You don’t speak, you don’t need to. This part doesn’t require you. The door opens, and the day begins

You know Brett will want a smile today. Leah will say you look tired. Marcy will try to shove that green juice down your throat again. You’ll let them, that’s the deal. You don’t own your mornings, haven’t in years.

Somewhere between the third nomination and the second perfume line, you stopped asking for space. They never gave it, and you stopped missing it.

They take your phone before you can read any texts, not that you would have any real ones. “You don’t need distractions,” Brett says, without looking at you, you nod.

They unlock your bedroom door from the outside. You don’t react.

You sit still as they go through your day. Makeup in thirty. Car at eleven. Don’t speak to press directly. Don’t touch fans, don’t make eye contact unless it’s on a red carpet.

You sip the green juice.

You pretend it tastes good.

You don’t remember what you actually like anymore.

Bucky’s already waiting.

He watches, arms crossed, as Brett speaks to you like you’re a child. Leah adjusts your coat. Your assistant carries your bag, even though you could carry it yourself.

They swarm around you, and you don’t say a word. They move you like you’re part of the scenery. He notices your silence first. Not out of peace, out of resignation.

He notices how you never touch your phone. How you’re never the one who opens a door. How you glance at Brett before answering a question.

You don’t move unless told, you don’t exist unless activated. You’re like a prop in your own life. He’s seen prisoners act freer and the worst part is you let them do it.

------

You’re perfect.

Dress like liquid diamonds. Hair pinned like an old Hollywood starlet. Lashes long enough to cast shadows.

You smile on cue. Laugh at questions that aren’t funny. Tilt your head just slightly to the left, it photographs better that way.

Bucky watches from behind the velvet rope. Arms crossed, shoulders tight. He’s not fidgeting, but he’s bracing. Always is, around this kind of crowd. The glitz, the lights, the smiles that don’t reach the eyes.

He hears someone say you’re “effortless.” He wants to laugh. Nothing about you is effortless. You’re a war machine wrapped in satin.

Inside, you take your seat. Cameras move around the announcers, the lights dim. They’re showing the nominees now, Best Actress.

Five clips, five women, one winner. Bucky scoffs at the reality of it all, how stupid this all truly is. But he can’t stop watching thinking back to Sam’s text from earlier ‘$20 says she takes it home’ Bucky responded back with ‘$50 she doesn’t’

The first few are polished, clean. Impressive, maybe. But calculated, controlled.

The screen fades in: it’s you, 1940s costuming. Hair curled and pinned. A wool coat, buttoned wrong because your hands are shaking. You’re walking up a long stretch of dirt road in London, a telegram crumpled in your fist.

The sound design is too quiet. The only thing you can hear is your breath, shallow and shaky and the crunch of your shoes on the frostbitten earth.

A voice reads over the shot. Cold, military, detached.

“We regret to inform you…”

You don’t speak, you run.

You stumble as you sprint up the front steps of a brownstone. A woman in black opens the door like she’s been waiting for you. There are more behind her. Neighbors, wives, sisters. All of them dressed in mourning.

You don’t look at any of them.

You try to step forward, but your knees give. They hit the concrete. Hard. You fall like you’ve been shot.

Bucky sees the scrape on your knees as the camera pans in, blood smearing across grey stone. He wonders if that was real or scripted. He votes scripted, but the way your face twists in pain makes him doubt it.

Then you scream, It rips out of you like something that’s been caged.

“NO!”

The whole auditorium flinches, your voice cracks wide open.

“No, no, no—he promised! He PROMISED me—! He said he was coming back!! NO— I don’t believe you! No, no, no, no….”

You’re not crying for the camera. You’re grieving, your body is shaking, your heaving like breathing physically hurts you.

You pound your fists into the stone. You shove off the women who try to gather around you. They’re crying too now, holding each other as you come undone in the middle of the street.

You don’t sob, you wail and it’s a sound Bucky’s never heard before or maybe one he’s tried to forget.

It’s the sound he imagines came out of his mother’s chest the day a man in uniform knocked on her door. It’s the sound he hopes to god he never has to hear again.

His jaw tightens, his throat locks, his eyes sting, but he doesn’t blink. Because he can’t. He straightens his spine, just like he was taught. Tighten the muscle, stand tall, don’t feel it, not here, not now.

The screen goes black, applause follows. Loud, immediate…earned.

But Bucky doesn’t move. He looks down at his hands, balled into fists at his sides, slowly, he looks at you.

You’re sitting in the front row, smiling politely, accepting the praise like it’s just part of the job.

But he knows what he saw, that wasn’t a performance. That was grief, that was real.

The presenters open the envelope.

There’s a joke about the glue being too strong, the crowd laughs. So do you, you tilt your head just right, camera-ready.

Bucky exhales like he’s underwater.

“And the winner is…”

A pause.

“Y/N L/N!!!”

The crowd explodes, a standing ovation. Cheering like it’s the end of the world.

You stand slowly, carefully, like you’ve practiced this before. You smile like someone just told you they love you.

You make your way up the stage, dress flowing like silver water under the lights. You hug the announcers, take the heavy glass statue, and step toward the mic.

The room quiets as you speak.

“Thank you.” Your voice is calm, measured. Just the slightest crack around the edges. “This role was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.” You glance out at the crowd, eyes glassy.

“To imagine living in a time like that, being in a world where people didn’t know if the person they loved was coming home, where a letter could end everything… it shattered something in me. It really did.”

“And I’m standing here because women lived through that. Women endured that and so did the men they loved and I wanted to honor them, I’m thankful I got to.”

You swallow hard, look down at the award.

“Acting has given me so much. But more than anything, it’s given me a voice I didn’t always know how to use.”

You look up again, past the cameras, past the lights.

“To the fans, to the crew, to the people who believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself, thank you.” You blow a kiss into the air.

The room swells with applause. You smile one last time and you walk offstage, heels echoing like gunfire, shoulders slumped like you’re carrying something heavier than glass.

Backstage, Bucky doesn’t take his eyes off you. Someone hands you champagne, you drink it from the bottle. You hand off the award without looking at it, your face drops and your eyes go distant.

Bucky only takes his eye’s off you when his phone buzzes.

Sam: knew she’d win. she always does, you owe me $50.

Bucky stares at the text for a while.

He wants to write back: you should’ve seen her backstage.

But he doesn’t.

---------

You’re staring out the tinted window, face unreadable, while your assistant scrolls through your calendar.

“Lunch with Vogue,” she says.

You blink slowly. “I hate the editor.”

“She loves you, though.”

You nod. Because that’s enough of a reason.

Bucky sits in the passenger seat, watching your reflection in the mirror.

You haven’t said a word since you got in. Not to him, not to anyone, unless prompted. He chalks it up to ego or moodiness.

You bite your lip to stop the shaking. You smile when the camera flashes outside the car.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Unreal.”

You hear it, you say nothing.

You’re filming a commercial. Champagne, slow-motion smiles. Music blasting. You’ve done this campaign six times. You fucking hate champagne.

“Again,” the director says. “More playful this time, Y/N.”

You do it again, you laugh on cue. You toss your head back. You hate how your earrings pull on your earlobes, but you don’t touch them. You hate the smell of the set perfume, but you don’t flinch.

From the sidelines, Bucky watches it all. Leaned against a lighting rig, arms crossed.

“She loves the spotlight,” someone says behind him.

Bucky doesn’t disagree. You stand in it like you were made for it, the way your chin tilts just enough for the cameras, the way your lips part in that rehearsed, polite smile. You seem to drink it in, all the flash and noise and attention. You look like you belong there.

But what they don’t see is that you haven’t eaten all day. That the corset is too tight, cutting into your ribs, that every breath is a performance, sometimes you wished you weren’t breathing at all. No one notices, no one asks.

They don’t know you haven’t really laughed in months. Not the kind that starts in your chest and makes your eyes water. Just the polite kind. The one they teach you for red carpets and late night interviews. The kind that photographs well.

They don’t know about the days where it all feels too quiet, even when it’s loud. When you drive up the coast alone and wonder how fast you’d have to be going for the curve to take you off the edge. Not out of sadness. Not even out of fear. Just… curiosity.

You don’t want to die. Not really. You just want to feel something that doesn’t come with a script.

After the take, you walk off set and sit in a chair by yourself. Bucky watches you hand your phone to Leah without being asked.

He watches Brett adjust your robe before you even touch it. He watches you smile at a crew member and then go completely blank the moment they pass. He thinks you’re cold, you think you’re conserving energy.

Bucky sees it from the hallway. He wasn’t meant to. Your door’s open slightly. You’re standing in front of a mirror, holding your face with both hands like you’re trying to keep it from falling apart.

You whisper to yourself, something he can’t hear and then slap a smile onto your face. You turn, open the door.

You jump when you see him standing there. “Jesus,” you mutter. “Creep much?”

He doesn’t apologize.

You brush past him, coat draped over one arm, pretending like you didn’t just rehearse a fake expression for the last two minutes.

Bucky shakes his head as you go. He still doesn’t get it.

You eventually get home and strip yourself of everything the day gave you, you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, again. The TV is on but muted. You don’t know what channel. Your phone buzzes, Leah sends a revised schedule for tomorrow. You don’t respond, you don’t cry.

You just blink, slowly, and say to the ceiling, “Get through one more day.” You don’t believe it, but you say it anyway.

-----

The trailer lot was a mess.

Lights everywhere, crew yelling, someone spilled coffee on a cable and now half the power was out. The shoot was running behind…again.

Bucky stood with his arms crossed by the production trailer, watching the chaos like it personally offended him. He didn’t do chaos unless it involved something he could punch and then came the voice.

Yours. Loud, sharp enough to cut glass. “No! Absolutely not. I said no to the green one, does no one ever listen to me?!"

You stormed out of your trailer, heels clicking like gunshots, satin robe flowing behind you like a cape.

Your hair was half done, makeup already starting to melt under the lights, and you were holding what looked like a couture dress with two fingers like it personally insulted your family.

“Do I look like I just walked out of Mamma Mia?” you snapped at your stylist, voice cutting. “No? Then why the hell would I wear this?”

People scattered. Your manager started apologizing before you even finished talking.

Bucky just watched blankly. Spoiled, he thought. Completely unhinged, an un grateful brat who probably didn't know what a hard day actually was.

You tossed the dress at some poor assistant and marched back into the trailer, muttering something about firing everyone and never working in this town again.

“She’s exhausted,” someone said nearby. “She hasn’t had a day off in months.”

Bucky didn’t even look at them. He didn’t get it. Exhausted? For what?

You stood on a stage and talked. You wore pretty clothes and smiled at cameras. He’d lived in the woods for weeks eating bugs during wartime. He’d bled out in alleyways, dug bullets out of his own thigh. That was exhausting.

This? This was pretend. This was fake, you were fake. He didn’t say it out loud. Just shook his head, turned, and kept walking. That’s when he heard it.

The trailer door, not your trailer, but the office one was cracked open just enough. He didn’t mean to stop. He didn’t mean to listen. But your name came up, and his legs rooted themselves to the ground.

“He was outside her hotel again.”

“How the hell does he keep getting this close?”

“They think he’s hacked into call sheets. He’s finding her schedule before we even approve it.”

“He’s escalating. The notes are more aggressive, more personal.”

“She doesn’t even react anymore.”

“Yeah, well, she never does.”.

“We should lock her down this weekend. No events. Nothing public. Spin it as a scheduled break.”

Bucky blinked, slowly. The air felt heavier all of a sudden.

She doesn’t even react anymore.

He didn’t know why that line stuck, just that it did. Later, Brett flagged him down near the lot exit, sunglasses on like he was someone important.

“You’re off this weekend,” he said, waving it off like a minor inconvenience. “She’ll be locked in at the house. No press, no events. All quiet.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “And the stalker?”

Brett shrugged. “She’ll be fine. We’ve got in-house security. You’ve earned the break. She’s a lot, but… nothing at all. You know what I mean?”

Bucky didn’t. He didn’t know what any of it meant. But he didn’t argue. Didn’t even know why he felt the need to argue. This was a job, you weren’t his problem, you never had been and never will be.

He took his keys without a word.

You were heading to your car at the same time, heels off now, coat thrown over your shoulders like armor, hair pinned perfectly again, mask back in place. The driver was already waiting, of course.

You stopped at the car door, glanced over. “So,” you said, voice softer now. “You’re off this week?”

“Apparently.”

You smiled. Not the one from press junkets or award shows. A smaller one, more human. It didn’t reach your eyes, but it was the closest he’d seen. “Enjoy it.”

He didn’t smile back, just grunted. “Try not to cause any more trouble.”

Your laugh was quiet. Not a performance, just something real, pushed through exhaustion. “I’ll do my best.”

You slid into the car, the door shut and just like that, you were gone.

Bucky stood there for another full minute before walking away. Still trying to figure out why he felt like he’d missed something important.

————

Two days later, Bucky was back at the Tower. The city felt quieter here, less like performance, more like breathing. Steve and Sam were already in the kitchen, post-run, towels slung over their shoulders, sweat still drying.

Sam tossed Bucky a water bottle. He caught it one-handed. “So,” Sam said, leaning against the counter, “how’s the movie star?”

Bucky scoffed. “She’s a piece of work.”

Steve glanced up from the paper he was pretending to read. “That bad?”

“She doesn’t talk unless she has to. She’s always on, like everything’s some promo tour. Even off-camera, it’s exhausting.”

Sam raised a brow. “She’s been famous since what, ten? Maybe she doesn’t know how to turn it off.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Her team treats her like a product. I watched some assistant take her phone out of her hand mid-text. She doesn’t even open her own car doors. They tell her what to eat, where to go, what to say. She just does it, doesn’t blink.”

Steve frowned. “And she just… takes it?”

“She doesn’t flinch, it’s like she’s not really there.”

Steve folded the paper and set it down. “That kind of sounds like survival.”

Bucky looked at him, scoffs. “You’ve never met her, you wouldn’t know.”

“I don’t have to,” Steve said gently.

Bucky ignored him. “I watched her snap at some poor girl the other day over the color of a dress.”

Sam snorted. “You snap when we move your knives or reorganize your ammo stash.”

Bucky turned, glaring. “That’s different.”

“If you say so,” Sam said, smirking. “Come on, movie night. You’re coming.”

“I don’t—”

“Nope,” Sam said, already walking. “You’re coming.”

The Tower’s theater room was dim, the seats stupidly plush. Steve had a bowl of popcorn bigger than Bucky’s head. Sam handed him a beer with a shit-eating grin.

“What are we watching?” Bucky asked warily.

“It’s a surprise,” Sam said.

That should’ve been the first red flag, the lights dimmed, and the screen lit up. Bucky’s face twisted the second the title card appeared. “No,” he said flatly. “Absolutely not.”

“Sit down,” Sam said, tugging him back into the seat. “Watch the art happen.”

Your name lit up the screen, In The Quiet After. The same film from the award show, Bucky sighed so hard it came out like a growl.

Of course it was that movie, the one you won for. The one everyone was still talking about in quiet tones like it was sacred. Sam smirked and passed him the popcorn, Bucky didn’t touch it.

He was already watching and he hated that he watched

The first scene opened with a wide shot, London under a grey sky, everything washed in a cold, early-morning haze. A train pulled into the station slow and quiet. Inside, you sat by the window, your cheek pressed to the foggy glass, lips parted slightly like you’d just forgotten how to breathe. You didn’t say anything, didn’t need to.

Your eyes were already telling the truth, hollow, wide, tired. Like you were mourning something you hadn’t lost yet or maybe something you’d already lost long ago, but hadn’t let yourself feel.

It wasn’t acting. Not the kind he was used to, anyway.

The story unfolded slowly, like memory. You played the fiancée of a soldier who’d been missing in action for nearly a year. The war was winding down, but hope, the kind that hurt still lived in you.

There was a scene where you folded his letters, over and over, until they were so creased the words disappeared. Another where you danced alone in your kitchen with a record playing, eyes shut, holding a sweater like it was a person. Bucky didn’t breathe through that one.

Bucky sat forward, elbows on his knees, beer forgotten. Then the telegram came, the scene they showed when you won that award. A different scene started when you didn’t cry at first. You just stood in the hallway, dress wrinkled, light slanting through a window like it was trying to reach you. Your legs gave out again. Just crumpled underneath you, the sound you made this time wasn’t a sob, it was a whimper, low and shaking, like something breaking in a place no one could see.

You stood in front of his empty closet, touching the things he left behind, a medal, a book, a shaving kit and when you pressed your face to the shirts still hanging there, Bucky had to blink fast, jaw clenched.

There was a scene, a short one where your character sat at the edge of the ocean, shoes off, staring at the water like it owes you something and you whispered, “I wasn’t afraid until they told me he was gone and now I’m afraid of everything.”

That one stayed in his chest, the last shot was you sitting at the window, hair half brushed, looking out at nothing.

Not waiting, just existing. The screen faded to black, the credits rolled. The room was quiet. Sam shifted beside him, eyes still locked on the screen. Bucky sat there, frozen, a fist pressed to his mouth and when the credits rolled, he didn’t move.

Sam leaned over. “Admit it. That was good.”

Bucky didn’t say anything. He blinked, fast, and wiped a tear away so quickly it almost didn’t count but Sam saw it.

“Not you too,” Bucky muttered when he heard Steve sniff beside him.

Steve just shrugged. “She’s good.”

Bucky didn’t say anything.

He was still thinking about the look on your face in that last shot, how it wasn’t dramatic, or showy, or polished. Just tired, real. That scared him more than he’d admit. It felt real, he’s felt that feeling before himself. He swallowed hard.

The film moved him, it felt like what could have been if he found someone before he got his papers, watching you dance in the street with a man you loved, laughing like it hurt and when he died, you crumbled in silence, not tears. Just… nothing.

He was still watching the dark screen littered with white words of everyone who made the film, he couldn’t stop thinking of the scream. Not yours, but the one he never heard from his sister, or his mother, or the world that mourned him when he disappeared.

——

The silence at your house was overwhelming, it usually was.

No cameras, no crew, no voices in your ear telling you where to be. Just the soft hum of the fridge, the creak of the floorboards under your bare feet, and the muted echo of a house too big for one person.

You hadn’t turned the TV on, you didn’t want noise, not the fake kind. You sat at the piano in your sunken living room, hair pulled up, hoodie sleeves pushed to your elbows. You let your fingers hover over the keys for a long time before pressing the first note.

You wrote without meaning to, it came out slow, low, soft.

They put me in diamonds, tell me I shine. Pose for the photos, say the right lines. But nobody asks if I slept last night. Nobody asks if I’m really alright.

You played the chorus over and over until the melody started to hurt.

It's quiet now, no scripts, no gold. Just me in the dark, getting tired of roles. They all say I’m lucky, but they don’t have a clue…what it’s like to be seen and never seen through. When the laughter fades to air, I’m just a girl with no one there.

Your voice cracked once, but no one was around to hear it.

You liked singing more than acting, always had. Singing felt like you, writing felt like something real. But that didn’t sell, not the way your face did, not in the way your body did.

They’d said it so many times, you’d stopped arguing. You had the kind of face that belonged on billboards. So that’s where they put you, said you were too pretty to hide behind a mic. That your voice was fine, but your face was profitable. So you shut up and smiled and gave them what they wanted, you always ended up here, playing music for a room that would never applaud.

-------

The studio was freezing. The kind of cold that crept under skin and made bones ache. Probably on purpose, keep the talent uncomfortable. Keep them alert, keep them obedient, its what they use to do for him.

Bucky stood just outside the wardrobe trailer, arms crossed, metal fingers flexing now and then just to feel something. He didn’t shiver, he didn’t feel cold like that anymore.

He was watching nothing and everything at once, lights shifting across the lot, assistants rushing like ghosts with clipboards and coffee. The hum of production noise buzzed in the background. Mostly, he ignored it.

Until your voice cut through it. “I don’t want to do this!”

It made him blink.

He’d never heard you say no to anything. Not to your team, not to the cameras. Not to the weight of your own exhaustion. Now that he thought about it, that was because no one had ever listened long enough to hear you.

“I said I don’t want to do this,” your voice rose again, cracking on the edge. “I’m not doing nudity. I told you that!”

A pause.

A sound that made Bucky’s stomach turn. That sick, sharp snap of skin on skin. A sound his body recognized faster than his brain.

A slap.

He didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. He just moved. The door slammed open hard enough to rattle the hinges. Cold air rushed in behind him.

You were standing in the middle of the trailer, stiff and trembling. Satin robe gripped tight around your frame like armor. Your makeup was half-finished, but your eyes were all fire and fear. A bright red handprint bloomed across your cheek like war paint.

Brett turned, visibly irritated. “This doesn’t concern—”

Bucky stepped in front of you, slow and dangerous. “Move.”

Brett straightened his spine like it might make him taller. “You don’t tell me what to do! I tell people what to do.”

Bucky’s voice was like ice. “You gonna move me?”

Brett didn’t blink, but he didn’t answer either. Because the truth was: everyone knew who Bucky was. Maybe Brett wasn’t afraid of you, but he was sure as hell afraid of the man standing between you and him now.

Brett backed away, grabbed his tablet, muttered something about schedules, about budgets, about “not being done” but he was already retreating. The door slammed shut behind him.

The air in the trailer changed, it was thick and heavy. You didn’t look at Bucky right away. Just stood there, unmoving, one hand slowly rising to your cheek, like your body couldn’t decide whether to comfort itself or feel the bruise.

“Thank you,” you said, voice soft but unsteady.

He didn’t move either. “Just doing my job,” Bucky muttered.

You nodded, but something in your face cracked when he said it. Like the words “job” hit a little too hard, because of course he was paid to protect you.

“Of course.” It came out flat and empty.

Bucky shifted, watching you. You looked small at that moment. Not weak, just… unguarded. Like someone who was running out of ways to hold themselves together. “You okay?”

You nodded, eyes still on the floor. “Of course.” But the second time, your tone was different. Like you didn’t believe yourself either.

You didn’t wait for a response, you just walked out.

Chaos hit less than an hour later.

You were walking to the car, head down, wrapped in a coat you didn’t remember putting on, when the entire lot seemed to shift. Shouts rang out, radios crackled. Security scrambled to lock the gates. Flashes went off, someone screamed. The sound of feet pounding pavement.

Bucky was already moving. He didn’t wait to be told. He didn’t need clearance. He stepped between you and the sound, body tight and still, pressing close until your back touched his chest.

You didn’t flinch, of course you didn’t. Because this wasn’t new for you. None of it was, not the panic, not the threat. Not the way you had to keep walking like you weren’t being hunted. You didn’t even seem to care about your life being in danger.

Your publicist, Leah, came running, phone pressed tight to her ear.

“He’s here,” she said, breathless. “We think he followed her from the last hotel. How the hell does he keep finding her?”

Bucky’s jaw locked. His eyes scanned the crowd, already calculating exits, cover, line of sight. He reached for your hand, not hard, just firm and tucked you behind him like instinct.

Bucky was still inches from your back when Leah caught up to you both, still talking fast. “We’re not sending her to that appearance Friday. We’re leaking it anyway, we think he’ll show. In the meantime, Sergeant Barnes, you’re with her 24/7, you’re staying at the house.”

You didn’t argue, just nodded. “Why’s your cheek red?” Leah asked, barely looking up.

You adjusted your sunglasses. “Ran into a door.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “Of course. The beauty, but with no brains.”

Bucky winced at that one. He looked at you, waiting for your reaction but you didn’t have one, you didn’t respond, nothing you just kept walking.

———

You didn’t speak on the drive home.

When you unlocked the door and let him in, you didn’t say welcome. You didn’t offer a tour, you just kicked off your shoes, dropped your bag by the wall, and disappeared into the kitchen like he wasn’t there at all.

Bucky stood in the foyer for a minute, looking around. The place was immaculate, modern and well magazine-worthy. But there were no photos. No personal touches, no signs of family, no warmth. It was clean to the point of being sterile. You lived in a house that looked staged for a sale.

His footsteps echoed. You came back with a bottle of water, handed him one wordlessly, and went upstairs. The silence in the house wasn’t peaceful. It was suffocating, he couldn't imagine having to live here.

Bucky sat down in one of the perfect chairs in the perfect living room and stared at the wall across from him. This wasn’t how he imagined the world's biggest movie star to live, this was how ghosts lived.

The door buzzed just after six.

Bucky had been sitting on the perfect chair, trying to figure out what the hell to do with himself in a house that didn’t feel lived in. He opened the door before the second knock. The woman standing there didn’t even blink.

“Relax,” she said, holding up a tiny keypad and some wires. “Just updating her security. Won’t take long.”

She didn’t ask for permission. Just stepped inside like she owned the place. She didn’t even take off her heels.

“Gina,” she added, like that explained anything. “I’m her publicist or one of them, technically. You probably already met Leah, she's the hands on one, no way I could deal with our little diva all day.”

Bucky followed her as she moved to the wall near the front door, unscrewing a panel and installing a new keypad. He stayed quiet, watched every move. She knew she was being watched and didn’t care. “Just showing you where you’re sleeping,” she said casually. “Couple of days, right? Guest room’s down here. Hers is right above it.”

She motioned toward a sleek white door by the front hallway.

“Help yourself to anything,” she added. “Don’t touch her piano, don’t wake her up unless there’s an emergency. Don’t ask her too many questions, she won’t answer them.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “What’s the plan for the guy?”

Gina checked something on her phone. “We leaked that she’s going to an event on Friday. We’re hoping he shows, cops will be watching.”

Bucky crossed his arms. “Has he ever tried anything violent?”

Gina paused. “There was one incident. A few years ago, but she talked her way out of it. Manipulated him, acted her way out of it, that’s what she’s good at.”

She glanced at him, eyes sharp. “That’s why she wins awards, she’s good at faking it.” She smiled, a little too smug and walked out the door without waiting for a response.

Bucky waited until she was gone, then pulled out his phone. “Steve,” he said when the line clicked on.

“You good?”

“Define good,” Bucky muttered. “She’s locked in her own house because she has this stalker. The place has high level security. Some publicists just came by to upgrade the system even further, it's crazy for just one girl.”

Steve’s voice came calm. “The stalker?”

“Name’s Elias Corrin.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Yeah okay,” Bucky said.

He hung up and leaned back against the door, staring into the quiet. He didn’t know what the hell he’d walked into. But he didn’t like how deep the hole looked from here.

That night he found you outside.

You were barefoot on the patio, legs pulled up into the chair, arms wrapped tight around your knees. The lights from the pool lit your skin in pale, blue glimmer almost otherworldly, like moonlight underwater. One empty bottle of wine sat on the table. Another was already open, half-gone.

You didn’t hear the door open. You didn’t hear his steps. It wasn’t that he was trying to be quiet. You just weren’t listening, your mind too loud.

You turned when you finally heard the soft slide of glass. Your voice was low, hoarse from the day. “You want a drink?”

“No thanks,” Bucky said. “I can’t get drunk.”

You tilted your head, like you were trying to figure out if that was sad or not. “By choice?”

“No, the serum.”

“Oh,” you murmured. “Right, super soldier.” You paused. “Weird that that stuff actually exists.”

He nodded.

You gestured toward the chair across from you. “You can sit. I’m not gonna throw anything.”

He hesitated, then sat.

You were humming something, a soft, sad thing with no real melody. Like you were just filling the silence so it didn’t swallow you. It wasn’t a song, it wasn’t for him. It was just for you, but Bucky… felt it. Low in his chest, somewhere hard to reach. Like the ache of something he hadn’t admitted yet.

You didn’t look at him when you said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

He didn’t answer, just kept his eyes on you.

“This house is cold, empty.” You took a sip. “Want to know something stupid?”

He waited.

“I used to dream about my perfect house. Not like this, not marble floors and designer furniture. I wanted a little white one. Big wraparound porch, a garden, wind chimes. Maybe photos on the walls of all the friends I’d have. A kitchen that actually smelled like something.”

You smiled at your wineglass. It didn’t reach your eyes.

“I pictured pots and pans hanging over the island. You know, the messy kind. With a coffee mug that doesn’t match the rest. Something that looked like someone lived there, oh my god, I can't forget about stained glass windows so when the sun shines, my house would be happy to.

He looked around at the manicured patio, the spotless glass, the perfect silence. “Why don’t you make it that?”

You shook your head like he didn’t understand.

“It’s never that easy,” you said. “Money buys a lot, but not silence that doesn’t feel like you’re drowning in it. Not real people, not anyone who stays.”

He watched you carefully, the way your voice dipped like a record dragging on the wrong speed.

“Aren’t you happy?” he asked.

“If there’s a camera around? Yeah,” you said, pausing briefly you took a deep breath, then softer, almost a whisper, like it wasn’t meant to be heard, “But no, not really.” The words hovered between you like smoke.

You stared out at the water, blinking slow. “I wanted to sing. That’s all I wanted. Just… write songs, play piano, maybe disappear into it.”

Bucky didn’t speak. He didn’t want to interrupt whatever this was, the first time in the weeks he’s been assigned to you that he saw you be real, and he wouldn't admit it but he was fascinated by this lifestyle that was the complete opposite to his.

“But they said my face was too pretty to waste, and said acting sold more. Said I’d be stupid not to take the offers.” You snorted into your glass. “So I did, because I didn’t know what else to do, who else to be.”

You shook your head. “Now I’m rich, alone…exhausted and everyone thinks I’m this spoiled little thing who throws tantrums about champagne or shoes or the wrong shade of lipstick…. sometimes I do it, y'know? Throw fits everyones expecting me to throw, just to feel something more than what I do.”

You turned to look at him. “But I don’t even know what I want anymore, Bucky. I just know it was never this.”

His name sounded different coming from your lips. It wasn’t flirtation or business, it was something honest. Like you were asking him to just see you, not fix you. He stayed silent. Sometimes silence was safer than saying the wrong thing, his mind was too busy reeling the you he made up in his head, the you that screamed for a different coloured dress because you were a brat, not the you that did it to give the people what they made you, to give yourself something to feel.

You took another sip, lips curling slightly. “You wanna hear something really fucked up?”

He gave you a slow nod.

“Every year, on my birthday, they throw these huge parties. Red carpet, champagne, some exclusive venue with a million fake people. The same faces, the same photos. But every year, I show up, smile, and think…” you laughed bitterly, “God, I can’t believe I made it another year.”

He frowned, finally responding. “What do you mean?”

You looked up, eyes shining with something sharp. “I mean, how does someone live this long,” you said, “without feeling anything at all?”

Just like that, the air shifted, it's like the earth felt it to become the wind picked up. Bucky felt it, the weight in your voice, the truth behind the joke. The kind of sadness that doesn’t scream or cry or beg. The kind that just exists, quiet and constant.

He didn’t know what to say, he barely did day to day with basic, easy conversations so he just stayed, like Steve did for him when he needed him to and that mattered.

You looked at him again, and this time, your voice cracked a little. “Don’t look at me like that, like I’m breakable.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m looking at you like you’re real.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I get it,” he said. It was barely more than a whisper.

You blinked. “You do?”

“Parts of it.”

You didn’t say anything back. Just stared at him for a long time, until the silence wasn’t heavy anymore, just quiet, then you just poured another glass and kept humming.

--------

The house is quiet again. Not in the eerie way it used to be, where silence felt like a scream. This kind of quiet is soft, bearable…almost warm. No one’s called for you. No cameras, no red carpet, just Bucky.

You woke up late, no alarms, no stylists, no fake lashes. Just sunlight cutting through the blinds and the faint clink of him making coffee downstairs.

He didn’t speak when you walked in, just slid a mug across the island like it was something he’d done a hundred times. You sat across from him in an old sweatshirt, knees curled under you. No makeup, no walls. He didn’t stare but he noticed. He always does.

It’s strange, how fast the noise fell away.

The city is still out there, of course. Cameras, crowds the mess of it. But here, even in this steril house it’s quiet in a way he doesn’t mind.

He watches you more now. Tries not to, but he does. You hum while you make toast, barefoot on marble floors. You read paperbacks and roll your eyes when the plot disappoints you. You talk more, not much, but more.

Yesterday, you asked about Brooklyn. About what music he liked before the war. Not as an interview, but just… because. He didn’t give you much. But you didn’t look disappointed and that scared him a little. Because this was supposed to be a job.

It’s late when it happens, hours past the point where anyone normal would be asleep. The house is dim, quiet. Bucky’s sitting in the armchair by the glass doors, a book open in his lap he’s not reading it’s just… there. Then he hears it, soft scuffling in the kitchen. A cupboard door thudding shut, another opening. A drawer slammed a little too hard.

“HA! I found ’em!” You pop up from behind the island, holding a crinkly bag of marshmallows like you just won the lottery.

He doesn’t say anything, just watches. You’re wearing flannel pajama pants and one of his sweatshirts you borrowed two days ago and never gave back.

You spin around, holding the bag in front of you like a trophy. “Come on.”

He raises an eyebrow. “No.”

You pout. “Come on, Sarge. I need you to start the fire or I’ll probably burn the house down.”

He groans but you hit him with it, the puppy dog face, not just any the best he’s ever seen, big eyes…lip jutted. That kind of ridiculous, manipulative sweetness that shouldn’t work on him but it does.

He sighs, pushes up from the chair. “Fine.”

Your whole face lights up and it’s not fake. Not for the cameras, just real and because of him and that’s when he thinks in this moment you don’t remind him of the sun. You remind him of the stars, bright, but only in the dark.

The fire pit flickers out back. You’re curled up with a blanket draped over your shoulders, holding a roasting stick like it’s some ancient tool. Bucky crouches near the flames, getting the wood just right.

“I feel like I should be paying you,” you joke.

“You are,” he says.

You laugh, really laugh, the kind that reaches your eyes. You hand him a marshmallow. “Don’t burn this one.”

He does, immediately but you make him eat it anyway.

You talk, and it’s easier now. You tell him about your first audition. How you tripped on your own heels and nearly threw up in front of three casting directors. You tell him about learning to cry on cue, about learning to smile when you wanted to scream.

You ask him about his family, not like you’re prying, but like you actually care.

He tells you about his mom. How she used to braid his sister’s hair before school, how she always left the porch light on for him, even when he came home past curfew. How his dad never said much but always made sure the heater worked. He doesn’t say much more. But it’s something.

You’re staring into the fire, the flames rising and sinking like they’re breathing. Your last marshmallow is too close, the edge catching and curling black. You don’t flinch. You let it burn a little longer before pulling it back, watching the char bubble and blister.

You pop it into your mouth anyway, ashy, sweet. You barely taste it. Softly, too softly for how heavy the words are you speak.

“I used to think I’d die young.”

It comes out like a throwaway thought. Like something you’ve said before to the ceiling at 3 a.m. But now it’s out here in the open, between you and the fire and him.

You roll your eyes at yourself, laughing once, dry and bitter. “Not in some big dramatic way. Not pills or headlines or anything that’d ruin the brand.” You shake your head. “Just… quietly. Like, one day I’d stop, fade out, a footnote.”

You glance at him, just for a second, then back to the flames.

“But yet here I am,” you murmur, “with a super soldier, roasting marshmallows, under lockdown because some guy thinks…” You don’t finish that sentence.

Bucky’s jaw ticks. His body goes still, but he doesn’t interrupt. You get the sense he knows better than to.

You keep going, because if you stop now, it’ll crush you.

“I’ve had everything they said I should want. All of it. Magazine covers, designer gowns, awards with my name etched in gold like that’s supposed to mean something.”

You laugh again, hollow this time. “I’ve been told I’m beautiful by people who don’t even make eye contact. I’ve smiled through breakdowns. I’ve clapped for co-stars who took everything I wanted and through it all, I thought eventually….eventually I’d feel full.”

You pause, let the fire crackle for you.

“But I don’t.” Your voice is lower now. “Most days, I don’t feel anything at all. Just… tired. All the time. Like I’m running on autopilot. Like I’m standing in the middle of a room full of people screaming my name and I’ve never been lonelier.”

The wind shifts and fire flickers. You don’t look at him when you say it, but it’s the truth that floors him.

“This is the most joy I’ve had in years and I’m paying you to be here.”

That quiet silence hits hard. You feel your throat tighten. So you turn to him, finally, and your eyes are glassy, not full of tears, just… worn.

“Does that make me crazy?”

Bucky doesn’t answer right away. He watches you, really watches you like you’re not a headline or a paycheck or a woman wrapped in satin on someone’s magazine cover. You’re just a person now, barefoot, burned out, asking if your emptiness means you’re broken.

“No.”

You blink at him.

--------

Wednesday morning starts slow, the kind of quiet that hangs gently in the air, like the house itself is still asleep.

Bucky’s already out on the patio, sitting on the bench, coffee in hand. His hair is still damp from the shower, sticking up a little at the back, and he’s wearing the same navy t-shirt from the night before, stretched a bit at the shoulders.

The air is cool, and the sky is soft gray. He’s not thinking about much, or maybe too much. He doesn’t know the difference anymore. Just staring at the garden, at the fence line, at the leaves trembling in the breeze. He hears the creak of the sliding door.

You step outside barefoot, sleeves too long on a borrowed hoodie. You’re balancing two mismatched mugs in your hands like they’re made of glass. You don’t say anything.

You just hand one to him. He looks up, surprised. He takes it without question, and puts his other one down.

You sit beside him, folding your legs up into the chair, knees pulled to your chest, like you’re trying to make yourself smaller. Your mug disappears into your hands.

Neither of you says a word for a while. The only sound is the wind brushing the trees and the faint clink of ceramic when one of you shifts. You sip slowly, so does he. You hated the quiet but this, felt different, this quiet sounded different.

You don’t look at him when you speak. “I hate the quiet, it makes me feel like I failed.” Your voice is soft and thoughtful.

Bucky turns his head, watching you.

You’re staring at the trees like they’ve got all the answers. “I know its stupid but if it isn't loud, if people aren't clapping, I thought it meant I wasn’t enough.”

You rest your chin on your knees. “I didn’t know quiet could feel… nice."

Bucky nods, not quick, just slow. Like he’s been thinking the same thing for years and never knew how to say it.

“It’s the only time I know I’m okay,” he says quietly.

You look back at him for a second, not too long just enough to let the words settle. “Yeah,” you say.

---

You’re in the screening room. You’re the one who picked Casablanca. Bucky didn’t argue, anything to get the last movie he saw out of his head, your movie.

The lights are dim, you’ve got a blanket wrapped around you, feet tucked under your legs, and a bowl of popcorn between you that neither of you are really touching.

He’s not watching the movie, he’s watching you.

The way you mouth the lines under your breath. The way your eyes crinkle slightly during the airport scene. The way your voice is quieter when you say: “We’ll always have Paris.”

You notice him watching. “What?” you whisper.

He shakes his head. “You’ve seen this a hundred times.”

You smile. “That obvious?”

“You don’t even look at the screen during the last scene.”

You shrug. “I know how it ends.”

He leans back, watching the flickering light dance across your face.

“You ever wish you had that? The whole ‘we’ll-always-have’ moment?”

You go quiet. “No, I think I’d rather have something that stays.”

You look at him, neither of you says anything after that. The credits roll, you don’t hit pause, don’t get up.

You both sit in the low blue glow, blanket still wrapped around your shoulders, his hand resting lightly on the couch between you. Not touching. Just there and when you eventually stand, stretch, and yawn into your sleeve, you look at him and you wish he was not just someone paid to be here.

He watches you leave, he memorises the way the blanket slips off your shoulder, the way your bare feet pad across the floor, the way you glance back once but don’t say anything.

He doesn’t move, doesn't stop you. Why would he?

But something in his chest feels…off. He wishes, just for a moment, that he wasn’t just the guy on the couch, the bodyguard. He wishes you had stayed, turned around or said his name again like you meant it. Long after you disappear, he keeps staring at the empty hallway. Still warm from you, still quiet in that way that feels like something is missing.

------

The Thursday morning sun is high when you find him.

You’ve just finished lunch or at least pushed half of it around your plate while pretending to eat and you spot Bucky out in the backyard. He’s sitting under the shade of the lone tree near the edge of the property, sleeves pushed up, hair messy, working on something with his hands.

At first you think it’s a knife, but as you get closer, you realize it’s a small block of wood. He’s carving. You’re not sure what, and you don’t ask.

You just drop down into the grass beside him, not bothering with grace or performance. Just you, in worn leggings and an old band tee, barefoot, your hair a little messy from the wind.

“What are you making?” you ask, casually.

He shrugs. “Don’t know yet.”

You watch his hands move, steady and careful, everything you wish you had. You realise you're staring at his hands too long, you decide to start a conversation “Tell me about Steve.”

He raises an eyebrow without looking up. “Why?”

You shrug. “You talk about him like he’s some mythical figure.”

Bucky smirks. “To me, he kind of is.”

You pick at the grass near your ankle. “What was he like? Before he got all tall and shiny.”

That makes him laugh, not some big one but real, you realising it's the best thing you ever heard.

“He got beat up every day,” Bucky says, carving knife still moving. “Small guy, loud mouth with a heart way too big. He was always standing up for people who didn’t ask him to. Even when he didn’t have the strength to back it up.”

You nod, resting your chin on your hand. “What about Sam?”

Bucky’s mouth pulls into something softer. “He’s the best guy I know. Smart, always knows what to say. He jokes a lot but… he means well, he sees people…really sees them, he saw through me. Sees the good in people before they see it.” He pauses. “They are two sides of the same coin, they’re the best people to have on your side.”

You pause. “You love them.”

He glances at you. “Yeah,” he says. No hesitation. “They’re family.”

There’s a moment of silence, the breeze picks up, ruffling the loose strands around your face. You lean back into the grass, legs stretched out, eyes closed against the sun. You speak so quietly he almost doesn’t catch it. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that.”

He sets the carving knife down slowly.

You open your eyes but don’t look at him. “Someone who just… knows me. Without all the filters, not the version of me they pay for. Not the headline, just….me. The way you talk about them.”

You exhale like you’ve been holding that sentence in for years. “I think I’d trade everything for that.”

You’re not expecting a response. You don’t even know why you said it.

But Bucky’s voice comes low. “You're not alone as you think.”

You turn your head to look at him, eyes narrowing just slightly, you don’t believe him but then he meets your gaze without flinching and your chest loosens, just a little.

You’re both in the kitchen. The sun’s gone down, but neither of you noticed, it’s the kind of night where time slips sideways.

You’re sitting cross-legged on the marble counter in worn socks and his hoodie, picking through the fridge drawer for grapes like you live there. Bucky leans against the island, arms folded, watching you with the kind of expression that’s halfway between amused and curious.

The little bird sits on the table behind him. It’s still rough around the edges, but it’s starting to take shape, something delicate carved out of something solid, just like him you think.

The air is calm, you’re not trying to fill the silence. You just exist in it together. You toss a grape at him, he catches it.

Out of nowhere, you say something, you don’t even remember what. Something sarcastic and weird and a little too honest about celebrity facial treatments or the time someone tried to sell your bathwater online.

Bucky snorts, actually snorts. It’s sudden and unexpected you freeze, mid-chew, eyes wide…then you snort, louder, messier, completely involuntary.

It hits you both at the same time.

You start laughing, big, belly-deep laughing. The kind that catches you off guard, the kind that makes your cheeks hurt.

“Oh my God,” you wheeze, pointing at him, “you snort when you laugh!”

His ears flush, but he doesn’t stop smiling. “Apparently.”

“Who would’ve thought? Sargent Barnes, war hero….snorts.”

He shrugs. “Haven’t done it in years. Maybe not since… my sister.”

That quiets the laughter, but it doesn’t kill the warmth. You shift, leaning back against the fridge. “What was her name?”

He nods. “Rebecca, I called her Becca. She was younger, smart….tough. Used to pretend she hated me, but she’d cry if I didn’t tuck her in when Ma was working late.”

You smile softly. “You were good to her.”

“I tried to be.” He swallows, “What about you? Do you have any siblings?”

You pause, then tilt your head. “You didn’t Google me?”

Bucky chuckles, low and tired. “There was a file. Mostly about your stalker. Ellis, right?”

You nod once. “Yeah, him.”

“Didn’t say much else,” he adds. “No siblings, no school records. Nothing normal. Just interviews and promo stuff and… threat reports.”

You look at him, expression unreadable. “I guess that tracks.”

He pushes off the counter, grabbing a glass of water. “I’d rather learn the real stuff from the source anyway. The internet’s mostly crap.”

That makes you smile, you nod. “I don’t have siblings, it was just me and my parents weren’t really in the picture, oh and I was homeschooled.” You don’t elaborate, and he doesn’t push.

Your eyes drift to the little bird on the table. You nod toward it. “What’s with the bird?”

He glances back. Picks it up in one hand, brushes his thumb over the grooves. His expression goes quieter, faraway.

“Birds don’t stay anywhere long,” he says. “They don’t belong to anyone. But they always find their way back, no matter how far they go.”

—————

It's Friday morning and you’ve barely touched your toast.

It sits cold on your plate while you curl into the window seat, knees drawn to your chest, sleeves pulled over your hands. You watch the driveway like it might come to life, like your stalker might materialize out of the shadows and end this awful waiting.

The house is too quiet, even the birds outside sound cautious. Your stomach churns, but not from hunger, from dread.

You keep hearing the same line in your head, over and over: They’re supposed to catch him tonight. As if that makes it safe, as if that makes it over. It doesn’t feel over. You don’t think it ever will.

Bucky finds you just after lunch, when he notices you’re not downstairs, not in the kitchen, not anywhere.

He walks past the stairwell and sees you, still there, still staring and something in him just knots. He doesn’t say your name, he just sits down beside you. The cushion shifts under his weight.

Your voice is quiet. Barely there. “You ever sit so still, it feels like the world’s moving around you?”

He nods, eyes on the window. “Yeah.”

You take a shaky breath. “They’re supposed to catch him tonight.”

“I know.”

You don’t look at him. Your voice is soft but sharp. “He sent me a letter once. Said he watched me sleep, said I looked like an angel.”

Bucky stiffens. Every instinct in his body coils tight.

“I was sixteen. I didn’t even know what the hell that meant. I just knew it made my skin crawl.”

You laugh once, it’s not a real laugh…more of a release. Bitter and brittle. “He thinks I belong to him. He’s… quiet. Calculated, smarter than anyone gives him credit for and he always finds me. No matter how many houses I buy. No matter how many bodyguards they hire.”

His jaw tightens. He wants to say he understands but he doesn’t. Not really, he’s been the shadow before. The one who follows, he knows what that kind of obsession looks like, what it feels like.

But this is different, this is….you, unraveling slowly in front of him, all he can do is offer his presence. “You’re safe now,” he says, his voice low. “With me, you are.” He swallows, “I wouldn't, I won't let anything happen to you.”

You turn to him, eyes tired. “I feel safe…here, with you.”

He doesn’t say anything, he does something he’s never done before…he just lays his hand over yours.

It’s warm and steady, something you’ve never felt before and to his surprise you hold it tighter than you mean to.

By Friday night he can tell you’re still wound up, still stuck inside your own head, even after dinner.

You smile at him when he offers tea, but it’s automatic. Your shoulders are too tight, your eyes are too far away.

So he says it, casually, like it’s nothing. “You play piano?”

You blink. “What?”

He shrugs. “Saw it in the sitting room, you said you loved music more right?”

You raise a brow. “What, you wanna sing a duet?”

Bucky huffs a laugh and shakes his head. “No, no, I just… miss music sometimes. Real music, not the garbage they play in stores now.”

You smile for real this time. It’s small, but it’s there. “I could play for you.”

He doesn’t answer, just gestures with his hand.

You lead the way. You sit on the bench and let your fingers rest on the keys, just for a moment. You don’t speak, you don’t explain what you’re about to play. You just start..it’s soft, slow. The kind of melody that makes the walls feel like they’re holding their breath.

Bucky leans against the archway, arms crossed, eyes locked on your hands. You don’t look at him, you’re somewhere else entirely.

Your fingers glide across the keys like you’ve done it a thousand times. Like the music lives in you, just waiting for the silence.

He watches and he feels something inside him break open a little. Because this? This is….you. No press, no cameras, no posing.

Just raw, haunting beauty.

He can’t imagine what your voice would sound like and maybe he doesn’t want to. Not yet. Because this, just this is already more honest than anything he’s ever known.

You finish the last note, and it lingers in the air like a held breath. You look over at him, eyes wide. A little nervous. “Well?” you ask.

Bucky just shakes his head once. Voice barely above a whisper. “That was… beautiful.”

You smile, but your eyes are wet. You don’t cry. But he sees how badly you want to.

———

It’s Saturday morning now, you barely slept.

You kept shifting beneath the sheets, cold despite the weight of the blanket. Your mind wouldn’t stop looping: He’s going to be caught. It’s almost over. He’s going to be caught. It’s almost over.

But it didn’t feel like peace. It felt like the second before an earthquake. Like stillness before glass shatters.

Your chest aches with nerves, your skin feels too tight. So you get up just after five. The sun hasn’t even risen, the sky is that pale kind of blue that makes the world feel like it’s holding its breath.

You pad into the kitchen in thick socks. Hair messy, hoodie hanging off one shoulder. You tie your hair back lazily and open the fridge, staring like you’re waiting for it to give you purpose.

You don’t know why you start making breakfast. You just… want to do something kind, something normal.

You make everything because you don’t know what Bucky likes. Toast, eggs, bacon and coffee in that old mug he keeps using. You cut the strawberries into little perfect slices. You line them into a fan on the edge of the plate, even though no one’s going to notice.

For a second, it feels like a house, like a home even in the white marble, sterile kitchen. Not a set, not a stage. A home. .

The front door slams open, you flinch so hard the knife in your hand clatters into the sink.

Footsteps and voices echo off the walls. Brett. Leah. Two others. Storming in like they own you, which they do. You let them.

“He’s in custody,” Brett announces, breathless, already half on his phone. “He was parked a block down. Had maps, call sheets, photos…creepy shit.”

You don’t move. The strawberries still in your hand. You don’t know if you feel relief or anything at all.

Bucky wakes the second he hears the noise. He comes down the hall shirtless, tugging a tee over his head, dog tags thudding softly against his chest, eyes sharp with instinct.

“What the hell’s going on?” he says, voice gravel and steel.

Leah doesn’t look at him. “We got him, it’s handled.”

She turns to you. “You need to go make yourself presentable. Interviews start at ten. There’s a presser at the hotel. You’ll speak briefly. We’re drafting the statement now.”

“I—” you start, dazed. “I made breakfast.” You say it like it matters.

Brett looks up from his screen, scoffs. “You’re on a diet. You don’t need this. We’ll order a green smoothie or something. Go change.”

And it’s gone, everythings gone. That small, warm thing you’d tried to build. Gone. You nod, slowly, like you’re moving underwater. Everything feels muted, numb. You started to feel real, feel human over the last couple days and just like that, like your shedding skin, it’s gone.

You turn toward the stairs. Bare feet soundless on the wood, skin cold against the polished surface. Everything feels far away, your body, your voice, the day itself. Like you’re floating inside a version of yourself that isn’t quite real anymore.

“I made you breakfast.”

You barely recognize your own voice. It comes out quiet, fragile. A whisper, almost childlike in its softness. Like if you speak louder, it’ll crack.

Bucky stops mid-step, freezes. You feel him turn, feel his gaze land on you and you hate how exposed you are.

You’re standing there in a faded t-shirt, too big on your frame. Sleeves shoved up to your elbows. Your hair’s still tangled from sleep, lips dry, eyes tired but not defeated, not yet.

You look at him like you’re trying. Like you’re trying so hard to keep this one little thing from slipping through your fingers. Trying to hold on to something normal, something kind. Just one moment that’s yours, he sees it.

He steps toward you carefully, slow, cautious. Like you might shatter if he moves too fast. Like you’re a bird that’s already half-decided to fly away.

He reaches out and wraps his fingers around your wrist. Not tight, just enough to anchor you.

You both just stand there, surrounded by chaos, shouts from down the hall, footsteps thudding across tile, Leah barking about call times, Brett’s voice cutting in and out of a phone call.

But all of it fades. It’s just you and him now, suspended in the noise.

Your voice cracks when you speak. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

He opens his mouth, voice low. “You don’t have to thank me. I—”

“I know.” You nod quickly, cutting him off, eyes flickering toward the floor. “You’re just doing your job.”

He shakes his head before you even finish, like he can’t stand hearing you say it.

“No,” Bucky says, and his voice is rough now, unsteady in a way that catches you off guard. “I’d do it again. In a heartbeat.”

That silence between you swells, full of every word neither of you has the nerve to say. Something real, something dangerous.

“Let’s go! We’re already late!”

Brett’s voice cuts like glass.

You flinch, again. Shoulders twitch up like you’re trying to make yourself smaller. Eyes drop, hands pull in close to your chest like you’re retreating and you start to turn, you always do.

But Bucky doesn’t let go. Instead, he reaches into his pocket. His hand brushes yours, careful, deliberate. He slips something into your palm, small, warm from his touch. His fingers fold yours around it like a secret.

You glance up at him, brows drawn together, confused.

He doesn’t explain, doesn’t speak. Just gives you the smallest nod, like he’s handing you something he didn’t know how else to say.

And you go, you don’t look back. Not until you’re behind the door of your bedroom, alone again. Where it’s quiet. Where you’re allowed to fall apart. You sit on the edge of the bed, your hand still closed in a fist.

When you finally open it, it’s the bird. The one he carved, the one he made.

It fits perfectly in your palm, smoothed down along the wings. Made with hands that have destroyed and protected and carried too much.

It’s not just a carving. It’s a message. I see you.

You let out a small gasp when you realize that someone finally sees you.

Bucky watches you disappear up the stairs barefoot, shoulders drawn, your fist still wrapped tight around whatever he gave you.

He lingers at the bottom for a moment, listening to the storm of voices in the hallway. He turns. “Where exactly was he?”

Leah barely glances at him, arms crossed, Bluetooth earpiece flashing as she flips through a stack of printed call sheets.

“Two blocks down. Surveillance caught him in his car, windows blacked out, engine running. He had her itinerary on the passenger seat. Press stops, hair appointments. Shit even we didn’t approve yet.”

Bucky’s jaw tenses. “And?”

“And nothing,” Brett cuts in, stepping out of the dining room, already dressed like he’s about to walk a red carpet himself. “NYPD took him in. He’s being processed. PR’s drafting a statement now. We’re controlling the narrative.”

“Controlling the—” Bucky stops himself. Takes a breath. He steps closer. “What exactly did he have?”

“Maps. Photos. Schedules. Hotel room numbers. Stuff that hasn’t gone public.” Brett shrugs like it’s just another day at the office. “Creepy, sure, but nothing that’s gonna stick longer than a few news cycles. We spin it right, she’s golden.”

“She could’ve died.”

“She didn’t,” Brett says, smiling like that’s the end of it. “And now she’s trending.”

Something hot twists in Bucky’s chest. Something that used to come before violence. He shoves it down.

He looks around the room, sees assistants carrying in garment bags, stylists setting up makeup lights by the floor-to-ceiling windows. The kitchen island is already cleared for curling irons and hot tools.

“She’s not even ready yet,” Bucky says, trying to track where you went.

Leah turns, pulling a compact from her purse and flipping it open. “She won’t need to be. We’ve got wardrobe, glam, full team en route. Hair in thirty, face in forty-five. Out the door in ninety.”

Bucky frowns. “She just woke up.”

“And?” Brett says, already texting again.

“She hasn’t eaten. She—” Bucky stops, then says it quieter, rougher, “She made breakfast for us.”

That makes Leah laugh. “Oh God, was that what that was?”

“She needs—”

“What she needs is to get out the door in full glam and pretend she wasn’t almost murdered again,” Brett snaps. “We’ve got donors expecting a statement. Sponsors asking for visibility. You want to be helpful? Stay out of the way.”

Bucky looks at both of them and all he sees are people who profit from your pain. You’re not a person to them, you’re a product. He turns before he says something he’ll regret.

Bucky wants to check on you, he wants to climb up those stairs so badly. God, he wants to, wants to knock gently on your door and ask if you’re okay. Not as your hired help, not as the guy who keeps things from getting too close.

Just as Bucky, as the guy who got to see you, the real you over the last few days but he doesn’t.

Instead, he walks out to the porch, still hearing the chaos inside the team barking orders, stylists setting up, the fucking sound of a steamer heating up in the kitchen like that’s more important than the fact that you haven’t even had a bite of the breakfast you made.

He takes out his phone and calls the only person who knows how to translate the weight he’s carrying.

“Hey,” Steve answers. “You alright?”

“No,” Bucky says.

It’s quiet on the other end for a moment, like Steve’s bracing. “Talk to me Buck.”

Bucky runs a hand down his face, presses his thumb against the corner of his eye like it might keep the ache there from settling in too deep.

“They got him,” he says. “Ellis, caught him last night outside that stuoid event, he had addresses, faked credentials, hotel floor plans. Stuff not even public.”

“Shit,” Steve mutters.

“He’s been watching her. Following her, probably inside her house at some point and no one even noticed. She told me he used to write her letters when she was sixteen. Said he saw her sleep. Said she looked like an angel.”

Bucky’s throat tightens.

“She’s lived her whole life being owned by people. By this industry. By her fear. Every room she walks into, someone’s already decided who she has to be. She’s surrounded by a team who talks over her. Who hands her protein shakes like they’re medicine. Who tells her what to wear and when to smile and what parts of her body she’s allowed to hate.”

He pauses, hand curling around the edge of the porch railing.

“She made me breakfast this morning. Got up before the sun. She sliced strawberries like she thought it would matter.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. He knows better than to interrupt.

“And when they came in, her team, they stormed in, started barking orders before she’d even had a chance to exist in the morning. They told her she didn’t need to eat. That she had press to do. That she had a role to play andI watched her disappear in front of me, Steve. I watched her vanish.”

There was a small moment of silence, Bucky’s voice softer, “She’s not who I thought she was.”

Bucky exhales, long and shaky, then his voice breaks a little when he continues. “She’s… funny. Quiet in the morning. Hums when she makes toast. She’s even more beautiful without the make up, and glamour and when she talks about the kind of life she wanted, just a garden and a messy kitchen and wind chimes, my chest, Steve it aches.”

He swallows hard.

“Because she doesn’t think she deserves it. She thinks the world has already decided what she’s supposed to be. She calls herself a product…a performance. But when she plays the piano, Steve…” he stops, voice catching, “it’s like hearing something alive for the first time.”

Steve’s voice comes, low and gentle. “You care about her.”

“I didn’t want to,” Bucky says. “But yeah, I do and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do now, because I’m watching her put the mask back on. She went from crying on my shoulder to being someone I can’t reach again.”

“She’s protecting herself,” Steve says. “You gotta see that.”

“I do, that’s what makes it worse.”

Steve speaks again, carefully. “Bucky… if she feels safe with you, really safe, she’ll come back. Let her protect herself for now. But don’t let her forget she has another choice.”

Bucky nods, even though Steve can’t see it.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah, okay.”

He ends the call, puts the phone in his pocket, stares out into the quiet for a long time. He’s not sure if he knows how to live with it, if he can’t protect the version of you the world never bothered to notice.

---

Steve lets out a long sigh as he hangs up the phone. He leans back in the chair at the long glass conference table, pinching the bridge of his nose, the way he does when something gets under his skin.

Sam walks in holding two coffees, casual in joggers and a hoodie. “What’s up, Cap?” he asks, handing Steve a cup before dropping into the seat across from him.

Steve’s quiet for a second. Just shaking his head like he’s still trying to wrap his mind around the call. “Bucky called.”

“Oh?” Sam sips. “Everything okay?”

Steve exhales again. “He’s rattled, says they caught the stalker this morning. Ellis.”

Sam’s brows raise. “Damn. That’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, slowly. “But… it’s not just that.”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

Steve looks up at him, steady. “He talked about her.”

Sam pauses. “Her her?”

Steve nods. “He said she made him breakfast. Said she plays piano barefoot and hums while she makes toast. That she hasn’t worn makeup around him in days.” He pauses. “Said she looks sad even when she smiles. And that when she talks about what she wants… it hurts.”

Sam grins into his coffee. “He likes her.”

Steve gives him a look.

“No,” Sam says, holding up a hand, “like likes her.”

“He cares about her,” Steve says quietly. “More than I think he expected.”

Sam leans back, a slow smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Good. I haven’t seen him care about someone in, well, ever.”

Before Steve can respond, the doors slide open and Tony walks in mid-sentence with himself, fiddling with a StarkPad. “I swear if Rhodey sends me one more email with the subject line ‘just checking in,’ I’m—”

He stops, glancing between them. “Why do you both look like someone died?”

“Bucky called,” Steve says.

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Is he still brooding around the movie stars mansion?”

“He said some things,” Steve answers. “About her.”

Tony’s mouth pulls into a small, knowing smile.

“No,” he says. “Not surprised. They’re the same side of a coin.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

Tony shrugs, but there’s something in the way he does it like he’s downplaying too much. “C’mon,” he says. “Bucky’s all steel and ghosts and guilt. She’s satin and smiles and sadness. But inside?” He taps his temple. “They’re both haunted. Both performing. Just trying to survive in a world that used them up and kept asking for more.”

Steve shifts in his seat. “How would you know that?”

Tony sips his coffee, too casual.

“Do you know her?” Steve asks again, firmer this time.

Tony meets his eyes. “I knew her father. Worked with mine. That’s all.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Tony holds the stare for a beat too long before finally answering.

“I know what it’s like to be a product of something you didn’t ask for. I know what it’s like to lose control of the narrative. So… yeah. Maybe I see it in her. Maybe I’ve seen it before.”

Sam looks between them. “So you’re saying she’s more like Buck than anyone else?”

Tony nods, quiet again. “I’m saying he might be the first person in her life who doesn’t want anything from her.”

Steve furrows his brow. “Her father worked with Howard?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, walking over to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Back in the day, scientist. Biochemical and neural interface research. Smart guy. A little twitchy. Always wore vests.”

“Like lab vests?” Sam asks.

Tony smirks. “Like bulletproof vests.”

That makes Steve straighten. “What kind of work were they doing?”

Tony glances at them both. “Classified.”

Sam sighs. “Come on.”

Tony looks at Steve. “You remember how many times people tried to recreate the serum after you?”

Steve nods, slowly. “You think it was that?”

Tony shrugs, leans against the counter. “I can’t prove it. But that’s the buzz I always heard. Quiet lab work, off the books. Lotta military interest. Howard kept it off the public radar. If it was about the serum, it was buried deep.”

Sam frowns. “What happened to him?”

Tony’s face darkens for a moment. “File says ‘deceased.’ No cause of death. No investigation. Just… gone.”

Steve looks down. “And she was how old?”

“Sixteen, maybe seventeen,” Tony says. “They emancipated her within weeks. Pretty much immediately after the funeral, which—” he glances between them, “there wasn’t one.”

Sam whistles under his breath.

“And then her team took over,” Tony finishes. “Press started building her up. Face of the future, Hollywood’s miracle girl. You know the rest.”

Steve leans back in his chair, jaw set. “No one ever asked questions?”

Tony lifts a brow. “When the world wants to sell a star, it doesn’t care where the kid came from. They just needed her to be pretty, quiet, and compliant and she played the part.”

Sam rubs his jaw. “No wonder Buck’s stuck.”

Steve nods slowly. “Yeah.”

---

You’re halfway through a late-day shoot in your living room. The lighting crew is moving softboxes across the marble floor while a makeup artist powders your cheekbones between takes, and someone’s telling you to “give them glass, not warmth” whatever the hell that means.

You’re tired. Not soul-tired, not yet… just worn. You’ve been in this same room for hours, modeling outfits you didn’t pick, smiling for a lens that doesn’t know the difference between a real expression and a pretty one.

You’ve got one heel kicked off under the coffee table. Your hair is perfect. You haven’t eaten since that stupid green juice and then the door bursts open.

Your assistant stumbles in like she’s running from something, breathless, gripping a heavy ivory envelope with trembling fingers.

“It just came.”

You blink. “What just came?”

She hands you the envelope like it might explode. “They couriered it. No one gets these.”

You take it, slide your thumb under the seal, and open it slowly, half-dreading some new obligation.

You read it once, then again. Your press team all but explodes around you. “They invited her to their tower, do you understand what this does for us?”

“This is next-level exclusive.”

“Q2 branding could double if we leverage this right—”

You tune them out. You’re still staring at the invitation.

Your name, printed in silver ink. A formal invitation from Stark Industries to a private event at Avengers Tower. No cameras, no press, no red carpet. Just the inner circle.

You run your finger along the edge of the paper like it might tell you why this feels different.

Across the room, Bucky is leaning against the wall, arms folded, jaw tight. He’s been watching you all day, the same way he always does now. Not like security, like he’s studying you.

He speaks over the noise, his voice calm, quiet meant just for you. “What’s got them all worked up?”

You walk toward him, still holding the envelope. “They invited me to Avengers tower, you're home."

He raises an eyebrow, taking the envelope when you hold it out. He scans it quickly, his eyes darting across the text like he’s reading a threat or maybe a puzzle.

He lifts his gaze. “Are you gonna go?”

You shrug. “Of course.” A pause. “I want to meet your friends.”

There’s something in the way you say it, not casual, not for show. You mean it. You’ve been building this quiet thing with him all week, and now you want to see the world he comes from, a real one. Not the world with red carpets, his world.

He hesitates, his fingers flex slightly around the envelope.

“Are you coming with me?” you ask, gaze steady.

He doesn’t answer right away. “As your bodyguard?”

You smile, real this time. Soft around the edges. “No, as my date?"

His chest tightens. You don’t see it, but he feels it. A stutter-beat under his ribs.

You turn before he can answer. Just like that, pivoting back toward the set, the lights, the camera waiting to eat you alive again. “Think about it,” you call over your shoulder.

Then you’re gone, humming under your breath again, barefoot now, holding the invitation like it doesn’t weigh anything. Like you didn’t just drop a grenade in the middle of his day.

Bucky stays frozen.

He watches the lighting crew adjust your hair. Watches your team scramble over themselves to draft a statement in case photos leak. Watches your smile flash for the camera, just like always.

But all he can hear is the way you said, I want to meet your friends. All he can feel is the way the word date landed in his chest. Because now he’s not thinking about your stalker or the shoot or holding that stupid envelope in his hand.

He’s thinking about your laugh. Your humming. Your bare feet on cold floors and the way his heart hasn’t beaten steady since Tuesday.

That night, the house is too quiet. Not peaceful quiet. Not the kind that settles you, the kind that presses.

Bucky stands in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, half-finished cup of coffee cooling in his hand. He hasn’t touched it in ten minutes. Doesn’t even remember pouring it.

The only sound is the faint ticking of the old wall clock above the stove. Somewhere in the house, someone from your team is packing up wardrobe racks. Someone else is wheeling out lights. But here, in the kitchen, it’s just him and his spiraling thoughts.

Why would you ask him? Why would you ask him to be your date? Him? You could have anyone, ask anyone.

He’s not the guy who gets invited to towers and black-tie things. He doesn’t wear suits well. He doesn’t schmooze. He barely speaks at all some days. He never even shows up for the galas or parties even though they are held where he lives.

You, on the other hand, you move through the world like you were made for it. A camera clicks and you breathe elegance. You throw your head back when you laugh like it was choreographed and still… you asked him.

No security detail. No “you’ll be close anyway.” You asked him to go as your date and that four letter word, it feels too big, too good.

You’re a star. A world built around flashbulbs and first-name fame and he’s just a soldier trying to forget what it felt like to be a weapon. Still trying to remember how to be human.

He stares down into the dark surface of his coffee and thinks, you shouldn’t want me.

He doesn’t hear you come in. Just senses you, soft footfalls, no heels, tired socks on polished hardwood.

You move past him toward the sink, the hem of your hoodie brushing your thighs. It’s yours this time, not borrowed. Your hair’s pulled up in a loose knot, mascara smudged slightly under one eye. You look worn in the way that means you’ve finally stopped performing for the day.

You fill your water glass without looking at him.

The soft hum of the faucet fills the silence, steady and familiar. Your back is to him, shoulders slouched just enough to say you’ve stopped performing, even if you haven’t fully let go. Not yet.

He watches the way you move, it's quiet and natural. The kind of stillness that doesn’t beg to be noticed but always is. The kind that tells him you’re finally not bracing for something. Your shoulders don’t tense when you hear him step closer. Not like they did the first day.

He hears himself speak before he’s fully ready. “I’ll go… with you.” His voice is quieter than usual. Less sure. Like he’s afraid the words might float back into his throat if you turn around too fast.

You freeze, hand still on the faucet, water still running. The moment hangs there for a breath, then another. You turn— low, deliberate, like you’re giving him time to take it back if he wants to.

But he doesn’t. Your eyes lock onto his, wide and searching.

“You will?” you ask, voice light but careful. Like you don’t want to tip whatever balance has just formed.

He nods once. “Yeah.”

Just one word. But it carries more than most people say in an entire speech. You stare at him for a second.

He watches it happen, your face changes slowly. That kind of expression that can’t be faked, not even if you tried. Your smile breaks through like sunlight, hesitant at first, like it’s checking to see if it’s allowed but then it settles fully, soft and bright and open.

Not for the cameras, not for your team. Just for him. Bucky’s breath catches a little. Because that smile? That one? It reminds him of the stars. The ones he used to stare at on the long walks home after curfew. The ones that stayed bright no matter how dark everything else got.

You laugh, barely a sound, just the smallest exhale with a grin in it. “I wasn’t sure you’d say yes.”

“I didn’t think I’d be someone you’d ever want to ask,” he admits, voice rough around the edges.

Your smile falters for a second not because it’s gone, but because something about that sentence hits. “You’re the only one I would’ve asked.”

It knocks the air right out of his lungs. Neither of you says anything after that.

The water in your glass is full now, long past full, but you don’t notice until it drips over your fingers and hits the floor with a soft tap.

You blink down at it, then smile again, smaller this time, almost shy. You turn the faucet off, shake the water from your hand, and start toward the stairs.

But halfway there, you stop and glance back at him.

“Don’t be late,” you say, voice quiet but warm.

He’s left in the kitchen, heart thudding against his ribs like it doesn’t know how to beat slow anymore.

-----

It’s late when Bucky finally shows up at the compound. The lights are dim in the common area, but Steve and Sam are still up, Steve nursing a cup of tea on the couch, Sam sprawled across a chair with his phone, feet kicked up like he owns the place.

Bucky drops his overnight bag by the wall with a grunt.

Sam barely looks up. “What, you get lost?”

“Traffic,” Bucky mutters.

Steve squints at him. “You’re flushed.”

“I’m not flushed.”

“You’re flushed,” Sam echoes.

Bucky rolls his eyes, crossing to the counter for a bottle of water.

“I thought you were staying at her place till Sunday?” Steve asks.

“Had to come back,” Bucky says casually, twisting the cap. “Tony invited her to that party tomorrow.”

Steve sits up straighter. “He did?”

Bucky nods once, sipping. “Whole team lost their damn minds.”

He hesitates, for a moment. Steve and Sam both notice.

They lock onto him like bloodhounds. Sam leans forward slowly. “And?”

Bucky shrugs, too casual. Way too casual for how it makes him truly feel. “She asked me to go with her.”

Sam bolts upright like he got shocked. “No fucking way.”

He looks like Christmas came early. Actually, like it broke through the window.

Bucky winces as Sam jumps to his feet. “You’re her date? Her date-date?! Like plus-one, wear-a-suit, maybe-dance-if-there’s-music date?”

“Calm down,” Bucky mutters.

“I will not!” Sam’s practically vibrating. “I get to meet her. I get to breathe the same air as her. I’ve seen every movie, even the one with the horse!”

Steve is laughing now, shaking his head.

“She asked you?” he says.

Bucky shrugs again, trying hard not to smile and he fails.

Steve grins wider. “Get up.”

Bucky frowns. “Why?”

“We’re raiding your closet,” Steve says. “Party’s tomorrow. We’re not letting you embarrass her.”

“Embarrass her?” Bucky echoes, affronted.

Sam’s already halfway to the hallway. “Oh, I know you own that funeral jacket you wear every time we go out, don’t even try it.”

Steve claps him on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The floor is littered with jacket options, half-buttoned shirts, and three separate pairs of boots.

Bucky is standing in front of the mirror, arms crossed, wearing his good jacket, the one he doesn’t wear because it makes him feel like he’s trying too hard. His sleeves are rolled just enough. So he doesn’t look like a bodyguard tomorrow night. He looks like a man trying not to hope for too much.

“You’re wearing the good jacket,” Sam says, eyeing him.

“You never wear the good jacket,” Steve adds, leaning against the doorframe.

Bucky shifts uncomfortably. “It’s just a party.”

“A party,” Sam echoes, eyes twinkling, “with her.”

Bucky doesn’t answer, not right away.

He looks at himself in the mirror. At the way his face looks less harsh when he’s not frowning. At the way his shoulders aren’t so tight tonight.

“She’s not what I made her out to be,” he says quietly. “ Just so you both know, It was all a front.”

Steve looks at him, steady. “Yeah, we know.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

Because it’s all over his face, Sam just grins and says, “He’s so in trouble.”

-----

Bucky waits in the hall down the stairs from your bedroom, leaned casually against the wall like it’s just another day. He checks his watch once, twice. Runs a hand through his hair. He tries not to think too hard about what you might look like when you step out.

He hears voices downstairs, They’re not loud, not urgent but sharp.

“…she said she’d do that nude scene—”

He frowns, body stilling.

“She agreed to it?”

“Only on the condition that he go with her as her date tonight after we objected.”

His jaw tightens.

“She really played that one well.”

“She always does. That’s why she’s where she is.”

“She really wanted to go with him.”

He doesn’t catch every word, just those.

But it’s enough, enough to make something cold bloom in his chest. He’s not angry. Not exactly. He doesn’t even know what he feels just that it hits harder than he expected. Like someone just knocked the wind out of something he didn’t realize he’d been building.

Then the door at the top of the stairs creaks open and everything else drops, you step out slowly, one hand on the banister.

The overhead light hits the fabric of your dress and it glides across your figure like liquid. Black satin, off-shoulder. Cinched perfectly at the waist. Classic, timeless. Your hair’s swept back into soft waves. Your lips are a perfect, understated red. Diamond studs, no necklace. You don’t need one.

You look like you stepped out of one of Bucky’s memories from a reel that played in sepia tone, the kind he saw on leave, when the war felt far away and beauty felt possible.

He forgets how to breathe, under his breath, meant only for you “You…” You stop on the top step. He meets your eyes. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Your lips part, not in shock, but like you’re about to say something, something real but your team swoops in like a wave, rushing around you.

“Okay, here’s what you’re saying tonight—”

“If anyone asks about the film, keep it vague—”

“No direct quotes unless we wrote them—”

“Give me your phone, you can have it back before the party.”

“You need to take photos for socials.”

You don’t flinch, you hand it over without hesitation, because you’ve done it a hundred times, it’s like a reflex.

That’s what hits Bucky hardest, not the dress, not the cameras, not the reveal. But the way you hand over your freedom like it’s just part of the outfit.

Still, right before you’re ushered out the front door, you glance back at him. Just once before you speak slowly, “You look beautiful too Bucky Barnes.”

The car ride over is quiet. But not the tense kind of quiet. Just a mutual, steady kind.

You scroll through your phone, half-listening to the muffled chaos of your team barking orders in the seats behind you. Your body is still, perfectly poised, but your thumb moves across the screen like you’re somewhere else entirely.

Bucky sits beside you, elbow resting against the door, tie slightly loose. He doesn’t say much but he doesn’t have to.

Halfway to the Tower, he pulls out his phone.

Bucky: Don’t let her team into the party. Names are Brett, Leah, Gina.

A few seconds pass.

Steve: Got it.

You glance over at him once, he pockets the phone without comment.

The car slows as it approaches the private entrance to the Tower. Security lights sweep across the windows before the gate lifts. The building looms above, sleek and cold from the outside, its glass glinting under the night sky.

You’re quietly staring out at the lights, legs crossed, hands resting in your lap. Your dress shifts as the car stops, the fabric pooling slightly at your ankles.

You don’t move right away, you glance toward Bucky. “So this is where you live?” you ask softly.

He nods, looking out the window with you. “This is where I live.”

You tilt your head. “Hmm, only a little bigger than my place.” You joke.

That makes him laugh, it's low and warm in his chest, like you caught him off guard in the best way.

“It’s Stark’s,” he says. “We all just stay here.”

The driver gets out, walking around to open the door, but Bucky beats him to it. He steps out first, straightening his jacket, and then leans down to offer you a hand.

You take it. His metal fingers wrap around yours, cool at first, but steady. He helps you out gently, careful of your dress. You rise with practiced grace, heels clicking softly on the stone.

He goes to let go, like he always does. But you don’t let him. Your fingers tighten around his, just enough to say not yet. He doesn’t pull away.

He looks down at your hand in his, then up at you. You’re watching the entrance, chin high, eyes calm but he sees the faintest tension in your jaw, so he holds on.

You walk together, hand in hand, toward the entrance past the glowing glass, the red velvet ropes, the security guards who already know your names.

You lean in just slightly, voice low. “Don’t let go, okay?”

His grip tightens. “I won’t.”

Inside, the marble foyer glows under warm golden lights. Everything sleek, everything Stark.

You and Bucky walk hand-in-hand toward the elevator, calm, in sync, effortless. People look, of course they do. But no one says anything.

You feel it the way the world shifts when you enter a room with him. Not just because of who you are. But because of who he is to you right now.

Your team isn’t so lucky.

“Y/N!”

Brett’s voice echoes through the glass and stone.

You glance back just in time to see all three of them, Brett, Leah, and Gina stopped firmly at the front door.

“We just need to confirm authorization—” Someone says.

Then the security guard doesn’t flinch. “Sorry. You’re not on the list.”

“What? Are you serious? We’re her team!”

“Exactly,” the guard says. “She’s inside. You’re not.”

You glance up at Bucky. He’s already looking at you, smiling small, smug, and satisfied. You smile back because you’re free even if it's just for a night.

Your fingers tighten around his metal hand. The one that he thought would scare you, that should scare you. But you don’t even think about it.

“Lead the way, Sarge,” you whisper.

The elevator doors opened onto the 33rd floor, and for the first time in weeks, you weren’t met with flashing cameras or screaming fans. No paparazzi pressed behind barricades, no handlers whispering cues in your ear.

Just warmth.

The party was already underway, not loud or flashy, but intimate in the way only real people make a space feel. Low jazz drifted through the air, the soft clink of glasses echoing gently against polished marble floors. Laughter, shoulder squeezes, familiarity.

Bucky walked slightly in front of you, your hand still in his not as security, not as a shield, but as something closer to a tether. You felt it. The way his hand adjusted to yours. Like he didn’t want to let go either.

“Well, well, well.” Tony Stark, of course, found you first. Drink in hand, half-smile already forming.

He stepped forward with that signature Stark ease, the kind that made everyone either lean in or want to slap him.

“Look who it is,” he said. “Good to see you again, Y/N.”

You smiled, not for show.. Small, but present. “You too, Tony.”

Bucky blinked, caught off guard. His brow creased slightly as he looked between the two of you.

“You know him?” he asked.

You nodded, still smiling, joking mostly. “Popular people have to stick together, right?”

Tony barked a laugh. “God, I love her. Go have a drink. Say it’s on me, even though it's an open bar, just sounds more generous that way.”

You chuckled as Tony wandered off into a sea of board members and Avengers alumni.

Bucky’s hand was still in yours as you made your way toward the bar.

He finally asked, quieter now, more curious than anything, “How do you know Stark?”

“My dad worked with Howard,” you said, eyes scanning the room. “I used to run around their estate when I was a kid. Tony was older, not around much.”

Bucky stopped slightly. Stilled, at the name. Howard. The weight of it, the war, the serum and everything that followed. He looked at you carefully now. Like a missing piece just shifted into place.

“What did your dad do?” he asked.

You shrugged, sipping your drink. “Scientist, biochem. I guess kind of a genius. He and Howard were obsessed with whatever they were doing, never saw him much, it was all classified”

He didn’t say anything, but he could feel the tension pulling tight inside his chest.

You glanced at him, catching it.

“He disappeared when I was seventeen,” you said. “One day he just didn’t come home. Papers said it was an accident. There was no body, no funeral.”

Bucky’s jaw clenched.

You continued like you were reading off a grocery list, detached and well-practiced. “My mom… I never met her. Gave birth, didn’t want the job and left.” It wasn’t bitter, it wasn’t broken, it was just empty.

Bucky didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all. You took another sip, then looked up at him over the rim of your glass. Your lipstick left the faintest smudge.

“Take me to Steve,” you said softly. “I wanna meet your best friend.”

He nodded, led you into the room. Still holding your hand, still not letting go.

---

Promise Without Ceremony | Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Bucky Barnes gave up on marriage a long time ago. But then, somewhere deep in a storm-soaked safe house, he pulls a bullet from your leg and accidentally proposes in the process.

MCU Timeline Placement: Post TFATWS

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: blood loss, injury, bullet wound, field medicine, pain, mild medical trauma, emotional vulnerability, war references, ptsd mentions, marriage talk, soft angst, accidental proposal

Word Count: 3.9k

Author’s Note: i am once again asking bucky barnes to know peace (he will not). anyway i cleaned my kitchen at 1am and now i’m emotionally compromised about fictional men again. if you need me i’ll be lying facedown on the floor, thinking about laundry and commitment.

────────────────────────

The idea of marriage had died sometime in the ice.

Not all at once. Not dramatically, like a final gasp of a man slipping into the Atlantic with a ring still in his coat pocket. No, it had been slower than that. Eaten away in inches. First by frostbite. Then by fire. Then by the sound of screaming that wasn’t his own but came from his own mouth anyway.

It used to mean something to him. Marriage. A porch swing. Warm soup. A house with windows that didn’t rattle in the wind. The kind of thing you promised a girl in church shoes, hands clasped over the Sunday paper. 

James Buchanan Barnes had once thought he’d get that life. That he’d earn it. If he fought hard enough, if he came home in one piece, if he smiled the right way when he walked her back to her door.

Then war had cracked the world open like a rotten egg, and everything inside had spilled black.

There were no porches where Hydra took him. No rings. Just cold steel and code phrases. Needles and electrodes. Years swallowed by fog. And when he remembered again, when he started to remember, he couldn’t even picture a wedding band without wondering how deep it would slice if it caught against bone.

So no, marriage hadn’t crossed his mind in years.

Not until you.

Not even with you, not in the usual sense. You hadn’t crawled into his life and started naming curtains or pointing out flower arrangements like a threat. You’d just…stayed. Through the Accords. Through the fallout. Through Wakanda and the long, sterile quiet of the recovery halls. You never flinched when he woke up screaming. You never tiptoed around the word past like it might set off a bomb.

You were there during the repairs. The recalibrations. You’d worked with Shuri on something far above his understanding, fingers stained with grease and ink, hair always pinned messily away from your eyes. You’d curse under your breath in three different languages. You argued with Ayo. You laughed loudly.

By the time he was sent back into the field—once he had left the mountains, left the quiet—he expected the connection to die out. Most things did. The world had taught him that. You could try to keep something alive outside the place it was born, but roots snapped when you pulled too hard.

And it had. He had left you. Not by choice, not really. One blink and he was gone. Another blink, and you’d aged five years without him.

But then he saw you again. In D.C. In New York. Even in Louisiana. Out of nowhere, standing in a pair of sunglasses too big for your face, grinning like it hadn’t been years for you.

“Miss me, Barnes?”

And damn him, he had.

You’d joined the mission against the Flag Smashers. Temporarily, at first. That’s what you both said. Just this op. Just this briefing. Just this one joint task force run with Sam. 

And then it wasn’t temporary anymore. And then there was a room in the same safe house that you’d claimed. A bunk on the same floor. Your stuff beside his. And his toothbrush in your travel kit, and he had no idea how or when that had happened.

There were no conversations. No declarations. Just a slow merging.

He liked your laugh. The dry, cut-glass one you used when Joaquin said something stupid. The low, real one that came out when you let your guard down, when the weight on your shoulders slipped just enough to let joy through.

You liked to touch him. Not in the way that made him flinch. In the way that made the back of his neck burn. A casual hand on his spine when passing behind him. Fingers brushing his sleeve. A nudge with your elbow when he got too serious. You were constant.

You grounded him.

And he didn’t know how to name that. He wasn’t good at words anymore. Hadn’t been in decades. But he knew how it felt when you were hurt. When you bled. When someone touched you too rough during an extraction and he saw red before he even registered why.

He had never said “I love you.” Not outright. Neither had you.

But there were nights you fell asleep on his chest, breathing slow against the metal plates, and he’d whisper it in your hair like a secret. Like a curse.

Because he did love you.

And it terrified him.

Not because he thought you’d leave, though that was always a part of it.

But because he didn’t believe in the future. Not really. Hydra had broken that part of him, rewired him to think in terms of seconds, triggers, threats. Even now, after all this time, after all this healing, the idea of forever felt…dangerous. Unrealistic. Like planning for spring in the middle of a war zone.

But the truth was: he wanted to grow old with you.

He didn’t say it. But he wanted it.

The thought came loudest during quiet missions. When your hand found his under the table. When you scolded Sam like a sitcom wife. When you kissed him before leaving in a rush and forgot your ID badge, and he chased after you just to hear you laugh when he caught up.

That was what marriage looked like to him now.

Not churches or tuxedos. Not parties or speeches. Just this. Just you.

────────────────────────

It was raining now. Somewhere deep in the woods outside of Vienna, a safe house blinked on like a dying star. One generator. One flickering lamp. One bullet in your leg, and his hands slick with blood that wasn’t his.

You hissed as he dug the tweezers in.

“I told you,” he said, voice low, steady even as his gut churned, “you were too exposed on the ridge. You shouldn’t have gone up alone.”

You shot him a look. “Wasn’t alone. You were covering me.”

“I was supposed to be covering you,” he muttered, breath tight. “Didn’t exactly do a great job, did I?”

You didn’t answer.

He hated this part. The way the pain made your voice tighten, the way you bit your lip hard enough to bleed rather than make a sound. It reminded him too much of everything he couldn’t fix. Of every mission where he hadn’t been fast enough. Every loss that had turned to ash in his mouth.

You were trembling now, sweat slicking your brow. The bullet was lodged deep. He could feel it with the tip of the tweezers, but it wouldn’t come clean.

His jaw clenched.

“Bucky.”

“Almost got it.”

“Bucky.”

He angled the tweezers just slightly, catching the edge of the casing with a surgeon’s precision, eyes fixed on the wound like it was the only thing keeping him tethered. You were trying to steady him. He knew that. Heard it in your voice. But he couldn’t afford to believe you were okay. Not yet. Not until the metal was out and you were still breathing.

“James.”

He looked up at that. Your eyes were glassy, lips pale. And yet, somehow, you smiled.

“You smile too much when you’re in pain,” he muttered, tweezers angled again.

“Maybe you just give me a lot to smile about.”

“Yeah?” His voice came quieter, almost bitter. “Like what?”

“Like this charming bedside manner,” you rasped. “And your tendency to monologue when 

you’re worried.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.”

The bullet shifted. Your body jerked, a hoarse cry caught in your throat.

“Shit—sorry,” he said instantly, his free hand anchoring you at the hip. His palm was warm. Steady. “You okay?”

“Peachy,” you breathed.

And then, silence.

Heavy. Close. Pressed between bodies that had seen too many battlefields, too many exits. The only sound was the storm outside, ticking against the roof like bones, and your ragged, uneven breath.

He bent closer, eyes narrowed on the wound.

“You need to hold still,” he said softly. “If I nick your femoral, it’s over.”

“I know.”

“I mean it. It’s deep. If I miss this—”

“You won’t.”

“I might.”

“You won’t.”

Another silence.

He couldn’t look at you. Not now. Not with the bullet half-extracted and your skin flushed with shock and fever and trust. Trust he hadn’t earned. Trust that felt too close to faith. 

And he was always bad at faith.

He adjusted the angle of the tweezers again, fingers tight with precision, breath shallow. If he moved just a millimeter too far to the left, he'd sever an artery. Too far right, and he'd leave metal behind. His mind kept listing the options like a file folder: all the ways he could fail you. All the ways he could lose you. 

“Keep talkin’ to me,” he said roughly, not looking at you. “You pass out, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“What, no pressure or anything,” you slurred, but he caught the strain in it. The thin layer of humor barely stretched over real pain.

The tweezers hit resistance. He felt it in his bones.

“You’re doing good,” he muttered. “You’re—fuck. Just hang on. Almost there.”

“Bucky.”

“I said keep talking.”

You let out a ragged breath. “You want a story or a monologue?”

“Dealer’s choice.”

Your voice wavered. “One time I saw Sam fall off a boat trying to impress a group of kids with his balance—”

“Not funny enough.”

“He hit his head.”

“That’s better.”

Silence ticked between your words. His grip steadied. He’d have to go in again. Just a little deeper.

You winced as the metal tip shifted.

“Fuck,” you whispered. “You know, I thought this would be the day we got pizza. Not playing Operation.”

“We’ll still get pizza,” he muttered.

“Oh yeah? You cooking?”

“I’m not cooking. I’m buying.”

You didn’t reply. And when he glanced up, your eyes were fluttering, breath shallower.

“Hey,” he barked. “C’mon. Eyes open.”

“M’tired.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

You laughed faintly again, breathe hitching, and it cracked something in him.

“Do me a favor?” You asked.

He hummed.

“If I lose consciousness…don’t let someone else try to patch me up.”

“Not a chance.”

“And if I die…”

“You’re not gonna die.”

“If I did. Hypothetically.”

His jaw ticked.

“If you did,” he said slowly, “then I’d kill whoever touched you. Then myself, probably.”

You let out a hoarse huff. “Jesus. That’s grim.”

“It’s honest.”

And it was.

Because he would. That was the part that terrified him. He would level cities for you. Not because it was right. Not because he’d made a vow. But because he couldn’t breathe without you anymore and he didn’t know when that had happened.

He leaned in. Flashlight shifting under his elbow. Blood soaked the makeshift cloth beneath you. The bullet was lodged against something slick and resistant. He knew the second he twisted, you’d scream.

He swallowed. Adjusted his grip.

“If this fucks up, it’s gonna hurt like hell,” he muttered. “So you need to stay with me, alright?”

You made a noise. Not quite a word. Not quite a yes.

He couldn’t stop now.

“Just keep talkin’, sweetheart. Anything. Tell me what kind of pizza we’re getting. Tell me a lie. Tell me where you see yourself in five years—”

“I’m bleeding out on a rotting cot in the woods, Buck,” you rasped. “Not interviewing for my dream job.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t wanna hear it.”

You blinked slow. “You first, then.”

He didn’t think. Couldn’t. The panic had tunneled too deep. He started speaking before he meant to.

“Five years from now,” voice low, working the metal free inch by inch, “we’re retired. You hate the house I picked but only complain about the goddamn mugs. You make fun of me for how I fold laundry. You still steal all the blankets. And some poor bastard down the road asks what it’s like being married to the grumpiest man alive and you tell them I’ve always been soft on you.”

His fingers adjusted instinctively, and there it was, the clean edge of the casing caught between the tips. A perfect hold. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. Just braced himself, every nerve wound tight as wire.

He cleared his throat. “Got it. On three.”

You didn’t speak.

“Three.”

He yanked.

A scream ripped from your throat, half-swallowed into his shoulder as you surged forward, clutching at his arm. Blood poured hot and fast, but the bullet clinked into the basin beside the cot.

He dropped the tweezers. Hands went to pressure. To cloth. To you.

“You’re okay,” he murmured. “You’re okay. Just keep breathing.”

You nodded faintly, head lolling back against the pillow.

He didn’t realize how close his face was to yours until the storm flash lit up the room—and he saw the way your eyes were fixed on him. 

“Did you mean that?” 

He blinked.

“What?”

Your lashes were heavy, lips pale, but there was no mistaking the way your gaze held him now. Steady. Anchored. Like you’d come back to yourself just enough to feel it. The weight of what he’d said, the shape it had taken, the shape it could still take if either of you were stupid enough to say it again.

“You said we’d be married,” you whispered.

His jaw ticked. “You were going into shock.”

“I wasn’t hearing things.”

“You were half-conscious.”

“And you still said it.”

He exhaled through his nose, sharp and shallow, dragging the blood-soaked cloth tighter around your thigh with more care than force. His hands didn’t match the way his mouth tensed.

“It was nothing. Just words.”

You didn’t believe that. He could see you didn’t. And that was worse. You weren’t teasing. You weren’t cornering him. You were just looking at him. Like maybe you’d known this was in him before he did. Like maybe you’d been waiting for it to slip out.

And god, he wanted to run.

Not because he didn’t mean it. But because he did. Too much. Too fast. In ways he couldn’t survive.

He pressed the cloth harder against your leg, then grabbed another strip of cloth from the field kit, wrapping it tight, methodical, just above the wound. Tourniquet style. Not too high and not too tight, just enough to slow the bleed. 

His hands moved on instinct, the muscle memory of field medicine kicking in even as his mind spun. He checked your pulse. Inner thigh. Faint, but steady. He exhaled. Forced himself not to shake.

“I wouldn’t mind,” you said softly, “being a Mrs. Barnes one day.”

He stilled.

For a second, you thought maybe he didn’t hear you right. Or maybe he’d frozen, like his mind shorted out and hadn’t rebooted yet.

His heart flipped. Fucked off entirely, probably.

You shifted slightly, voice smaller. “But only if you keep folding laundry the wrong way. And keep picking ugly mugs.”

His laugh cracked at the edges. Like old bark. Like something split down the middle.

“You hate those mugs.”

“Yeah,” you murmured. “But you love them. And I love you.”

His breath caught. Chest tight. No armor. No dodge. No shield left between the two of you now.

“You’re not allowed to say that,” he said hoarsely. “Not when you’re this fucked up.”

“I’m lucid enough,” you whispered. “Don’t make me take it back.”

He didn’t.

He looked at your hand, still curled near his arm. Blood beneath your nails. Pulse stuttering in your wrist.

“I don’t even have a ring,” he said before he could stop himself.

You laughed. Soft. Breathless. Real.

“That’s okay. You’ve got gauze.”

He swallowed.

“I’d want to do it right,” he said, more to the floor than to you.

You reached up, brushed your knuckles against his cheek. Just barely there.

“Right now,” you whispered, “you just pulled a bullet out of my leg and said you’d kill the world for me. I think that counts.”

He leaned into your touch. Just for a second. Just long enough to let the part of him that still believed in things like vows and porches and soft lives feel it.

“Mrs. Barnes,” he murmured, testing it, letting the sound break in his mouth. “You sure about that?”

Your lips barely moved. “Why don’t you ask me?”

His head lifted just slightly, eyes catching yours through the stormlight. And it hit him like a second shot to the chest—cleaner than the first, but just as deep.

Why don’t you ask me?

So simple. So fucking impossible.

Because it was too big. Because it wasn’t a joke anymore. Because the second he said the words, really said them, he couldn’t take them back. Not like all the other things he’d lost to time. Not like the names they’d stripped from him or the missions they’d made him forget. This one, he’d remember.

He looked down at your leg, at the blood still leaking through cloth. His hands had steadied. His breathing hadn’t.

Why don’t you ask me?

Because what if you said yes just because you were scared. Because you thought you were dying. Because he looked like a man who needed saving and you were always the type to offer your hands even when yours were already shaking.

He looked at you, chest tight, and thought you don’t know what you’re saying. Not really. Not now. Not like this.

But then your thumb moved. Just once. Across the hinge of his jaw. And the quiet in your eyes told him yes, you did know. You always had.

He dropped his gaze, voice rough. “It’s just…”

He let it sit there. Let it ache.

“It’s not supposed to be this way,” he murmured, eyes flicking to the bloodied gauze still pressed to your leg. “I was supposed to have flowers. A ring. I was supposed to have something better for you than a leaking roof and a med kit that expired in 2015.”

His throat worked. His jaw locked.

He should’ve said it right then. Should’ve just spoken.

But instead—

“I didn’t think I was allowed to want this,” he said, voice low, uneven. “Not after everything I did. Not after everything that was done to me.”

You didn’t interrupt.

He swallowed. Continued.

“I used to think if I ever got out, I’d live quiet. Alone. Keep to myself. Go somewhere cold. Make peace with the fact that I’d never get to be anyone real again.”

His hand twitched where it held yours.

“And then you showed up. Like some pain-in-the-ass fever dream with too many opinions and terrible taste in music. You just—you didn’t leave. You stayed. You made fun of my shirts. You memorized my nightmares. You never once flinched at what I used to be.”

He looked up, then. Just barely. Just enough to meet your gaze.

“You made me want things again.”

You blinked. He could see the tears gathering now, not falling yet, just clinging to the edges like dew. Shaking. Waiting.

He shifted, exhaled through his nose, then slowly reached toward the chain tucked under his shirt. The tags clicked quietly against one another as he drew them out—worn, scraped, edges dulled. He hesitated. Thumb running along the groove of his name.

Barnes, James B.

Property of the U.S. Army.

And below that werenumbers. Codes. The echo of orders that used to own him.

They were the only thing he’d ever been given back when he’d stopped being a person. They were the last thing that made him his.

He huffed a breath. Shaky. Wet around the edges.

“And I don’t know how long I’ve been in love with you. I think maybe it was the first time you told Sam to shut up without looking up from your lunch when you knew it was a bad day. Or maybe it was the time you stayed up with me for four hours just so I could get ten minutes of sleep without a nightmare.”

His mouth quirked, not a smile, just a break in the grief.

“I’d want to give you more than this. Not a safehouse or some half-muttered promise with your blood on my hands. I’d want to give you everything.”

He looked at you now. Really looked.

“But I can’t.”

Your breath hitched. “Bucky—”

“All I’ve got is this.”

His voice was rough, worn down to its bones. He lifted the tags where they rested, cold and inert against his chest, like they hadn't once hung heavy with every name he’d buried, every order he’d followed. He hadn’t taken them off in years. Not since Wakanda. Not since they rewired the storm in his head and called it healing. Not since he’d started remembering how to breathe without a trigger warning stitched into his ribs.

But now?

Now he held them in his palm like they were something fragile. Like they might mean more in yours.

“I know it’s not a ring,” he muttered. “I just... I didn’t want to wait.”

His heart was punching up into his throat, each beat louder than the last. He wasn’t sure when he’d started shaking. Just that it was everywhere—under his skin, in his voice, in the ghost of a life he’d never thought he’d want back until you gave it shape.

He didn’t look away. Couldn’t. You were still bleeding. Still half-broken in his arms. But you were there. And alive. And looking at him like maybe he wasn’t a ruin of a man. Like maybe, even now, there was something left in him worth holding onto.

So he asked.

“Will you marry me?”

It didn’t sound the way it had in his head. It wasn’t confident. Wasn’t clean. It cracked at the center, frayed at the edges, barely held together by the breath it rode in on. Wrecked and unguarded and true in the way only something broken and rebuilt could be.

But it was his. And it was real.

You didn’t answer at first. Just stared at him—wide-eyed, wrecked, like the question had hollowed you out from the inside. And maybe it had. Maybe this was a bad time. Maybe he was a goddamn idiot for doing it now, here, with blood on his hands and guilt in his lungs and everything still burning in the corners of the room.

But then you nodded. Once. Then again. And again.

“Yes.” A whisper. Broken glass and salt. You swallowed hard, voice splitting again as you said it louder. “Yes. Of course I will.”

The sob hit him sideways. He didn’t mean to. Didn’t plan it. It just caught in his throat and stayed there, and suddenly your hands were on his face, and he was leaning in, and—

He kissed you.

It was desperate. Salty. A little off-center. His lip caught on yours, and your nose bumped his, and neither of you could breathe right but it didn’t matter. It was messy and clumsy and wet with tears and still somehow perfect.

His hand cradled the back of your head like he thought you might slip away, like if he didn’t hold on, the whole world might tilt again. And yours fisted into his jacket like you’d forgotten how to let go.

You were both shaking.

You pulled apart only because you had to. Because the world hadn’t stopped spinning even if it felt like it had. And then, quiet again, he moved.

He brought the tags forward.

Didn’t rush.

Didn’t speak.

He waited until you nodded, slow, sure, already teary again, and only then did he lift the chain and slide it over your head. Careful. Reverent. Like it mattered.

The tags settled on your chest, clinking softly as they touched your skin. They were cold. Real. Still streaked faintly with red.

But they were yours now.

His breath caught again, sharper this time. Not because it hurt. But because it didn’t. Because maybe this was what hope felt like when it didn’t come with a body count.

He pressed his forehead to yours and closed his eyes.

Mine, he thought. Not the government’s. Not the ghost’s. Not the weapon’s.

Yours.

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Before I Could Say It

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Synopsis: The three times Bucky almost confessed his love to you, and the one time he finally does.

Word Count: 5.9k

Warning(s): can be read as gn!reader bcs I didn't use any gender-specific words (pls advise me if this isn't true). canon divergence. no use of Y/N. use of the nicknames sugar and sweetheart. insecure thoughts. bucky feeling like he's not good enough. unrequited love (or is it?). alcohol consumption. a bit hurt/comfort. profanities. use of weaponry, including but not limited to guns and knives. depictions of violence, blood, injuries, and murder. (near) death experience. angst. fluff. open ending.

Author's Note: Hii guys. I know I should be focusing all of my energy on Faithfully Yours right now, but I had the idea for this story and just couldn't pass it up!! We have a bit of an open ending here. I wasn't planning on making a part two but I'll see what the general consensus say and will decide whether or not a part two is due from the responses. anywayy hope you enjoy this one xx don't forget to comment, like, and reblog!!

When Bucky tried to think about the beginning, his mind always drew a blank.

It had been five years since the first time destiny orchestrated your paths to cross, six if one were to count the one-year cryogenic sleep that Bucky spent in Wakanda. The Soldat met you first, back when you, Steve, Sam, and Nat fought him on that highway shoot-out that revealed his identity. After that, you were everywhere—in Bucharest with Steve to coax him out of hiding, on the tarmac battle where you went against half of your own family for his sake, and even in Wakanda, where your eyes became one of the last pairs he saw before his body succumbed to the unforgiving clutches of darkness.

And when he was finally woken up, you were there, too, waiting for him.

Since then, Bucky struggled to remember a time when you weren't there. You supervised his deprogramming in Wakanda, becoming Steve's eyes and ears while the Captain roamed the world as both a fugitive and a vigilante. When the Sokovia Accords turned void, and the scientists in Wakanda assured Bucky that his mind wasn't going to betray his heart anymore, you took him back to New York, offering solace in the form of your warmth pressing against his side on the plane ride to the States. 

Even once the two of you landed on the compound's grounds, you never strayed too far—standing between Bucky and a begrudging Tony as if you were ready to launch yourself forward should the billionaire try to do anything untoward. As if the ruthless Winter Soldier needed a human shield to prevent him from shattering into fragile little pieces.

Before Bucky knew it, his entire routine—his entire life—became you.

From your morning spar sessions in the gym, the long walks around Brooklyn in the afternoon, to the weekly movie nights that you roped him into in the name of reacquainting him with pop culture—everything in Bucky’s life started to shape and smell like you. 

It was a constant. 

You were Bucky’s new constant.

And somewhere along the way, Bucky’s little troublemaker of a heart decided, once and for all, to anchor itself to yours.

True to his fashion, Steve was the first person to notice. All of the lingering touches and longing glances, the hard-etched lines of Bucky’s countenance that seemed to soften every time you were near—they spoke of an affection beyond a mere loyalty one might harbor for their teammate. It spoke of love, one that was so unadulteratedly pure and raw that Steve was sure there was no room left in the crevices of Bucky’s heart where a piece of you didn’t reside in.

“You’ve gotta say something, Buck,” Steve said to Bucky one evening.

The two of them were standing in the convention hall of a lavish hotel deep in the heart of Manhattan, surrounded by a guestlist of people that Bucky was assured were some of the most influential figures of the twenty-first century. People tried to swarm him since the moment he entered the party, shoving business cards to his face and dropping names that Bucky knew should have meant something to him. He paid none of them any mind—not when his eyes immediately found you in that sea of ties and ball gowns, just like a moth enticed to a flame.

You were all dolled up for the night, wearing a fancy little number that screams you if only with a little bit of additional sparkles sprinkled on top. Bucky watched you move through the ocean of people, confidence oozing out of every step, a blinding smile as you received each handshake with an indisputable poise. Bucky’s head whipped towards your direction at every echo of laughter, searching for the source, drinking in your infectious glee as if it were the only way to sustain the rhythmic beating of his heart.

Bucky shifted in his feet, Steve’s unprompted advice forcing him to tear his eyes away from where you were standing by Natasha’s side. The blond beside him smiled knowingly, a teasing yet sincere tilt in his voice as he added, “You’ve gotta tell at some point, pal. Better sooner rather than later.”

The line in Bucky’s jaw ticked. He brought the glass of champagne to his lips, tipping the drink back as though the liquid stood a chance against his enhanced metabolism. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Buck.”

“Punk.”

The Captain sighed, reaching for a drink of his own. “At least ask for a dance, will you?”

Before Bucky could register what was happening, Steve had shoved Bucky forward, sending him stumbling forth towards the direction of your canorous laughter. Steve hid his amused smile behind his drink when Bucky flipped him the finger, the latter continuing his steps on wobbly feet, trying to ignore the pounding travelling up his bloodstreams.

“Hey, Bucky,” you greeted as soon as he had reached you. The smile on your face could rival the sun even on its brightest day, and Bucky prayed to every divine being in the universe that he could be on the receiving end of that smile for the rest of his days.

“Barnes.” Natasha nodded. 

“Hey, guys. What’s up?” Bucky attempted a smile, tugging at the ridiculous material of his bow tie that Tony had insisted him to wear. In fact, Tony was the one who forced Bucky to attend this whole shindig in the first place—something about showing a united front to prove to the public that there was no bad blood within the Avengers’ team. 

It was a shit ton of bullshit, in Bucky’s opinion.

But at least, the party gave him a chance to see you all dressed up to the nines.

“Nothing much.” You shrugged, tilting your head slightly to the side. “Did you need something?”

“No. I mean, I do. I was, um, wondering—” Bucky cleared his throat, “—I actually wanted to see if you’d care to join me for a dance?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw Natasha’s eyes widen slightly. The redhead immediately scurried to the side, feigning interest in the tower of chocolate fondue just a couple of feet away.

Bucky’s heart nearly leaped out of his chest when you extended your palm towards him. “I would love to, Buck. Lead the way.”

Your fingers emitted warmth inside his hand, and for a moment, Bucky faltered. He kept his composure enough to guide you through the sea of couples on the dancefloor, willing the erratic thumping in his chest to quieten down as he pulled you flush against his body. The scent of your perfume slithered through the air, filling Bucky’s lungs, attacking each part of his senses until everything Bucky saw, heard, smelled, and felt was you.

“You look beautiful tonight, Sugar.”

The admission tumbled from his lips before Bucky had a chance to stop them, before he could thoroughly process the implications of such candor. You didn’t seem to mind, though. Instead, your persistent smile widened ever so slightly, your eyes twinkling under the glimmering lights of the chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

“Why, you look plenty dashing yourself, Bucky.” You hummed appreciatively, raking your eyes up and down Bucky’s suit-clad figure. “I must say, I was sad to see your long hair gone, but this looks great as well.”

Your fingers skimmed the hard contour of Bucky’s shoulder, leaving goosebumps on their wake, before sneaking through the short tendrils on the nape of his neck. He fought off a groan at the contact, the heavenly feeling of your fingers tugging at his hair sending shivers all throughout his body. Meanwhile, you were still smiling up at him all sweetly, completely oblivious to the rush of heat that you delivered through Bucky’s entire being.

“Sugar,” the nickname fell off Bucky’s lips in a low grunt, and for the first time that night, your composure staggered. 

Your breath hitched around a squeak when Bucky managed to tug you closer, circling his arms around your waist until there was barely room for air between both of your bodies. All around you, the world ceased to exist. The only thing that remained were your bated breaths, a raucous disruption through the electric field buzzing between where you and Bucky were pressed against one another. 

“I need to tell you something,” Bucky revealed, his voice low and sheer, stripped by unease and something akin to fear. 

Your forehead furrowed, undoubtedly sensing the trepidation shining out of the blue of Bucky’s eyes. “What’s the matter, Buck?”

Your palm landed on his stubbled cheek, and Bucky had to fight the urge to lean in, to chase more of your warmth like you were an oasis in the middle of his desert of a life. He grappled for the confession to come, for the feelings in his chest to solidify into something comprehensible. All Bucky had to do was open his mouth and seize the moment.

But just as quickly as it had arrived, the moment splintered through his fingertips.

“Good evening, everyone!”

Bucky's whole body jerked in surprise, his accusatory eyes instantly finding the MC standing on the stage at the front of the room. The music had stopped, replaced by the MC's welcoming remarks addressed towards a dozen supposedly prominent names that Bucky couldn't care less about.

“Hey, let's go find a seat,” you suggested, circling your tender fingers around Bucky's wrist before leading him through the maze of tables.

The two of you sat down just in time for Tony to deliver his opening speech as a representative of the Avengers. You glanced at Bucky in the middle of Tony's heartfelt sentiment about “shaping the future”, your hand finding Bucky's flesh one on his thigh, unaware of the kind of turmoil you have summoned from a single touch.

“You okay, Bucky?” you asked, squeezing his hand. “What was it that you wanted to tell me?”

I wanted to tell you that I love you, Bucky's heart echoed. I don't know when it started, and I don't know how, all I know is that you're every good thing that I have going on in my life.

Bucky's throat tightened.

He never ended up saying the words out loud. Instead, he smiled thinly. “It's not important, sweetheart. I'll tell you later.”

You assessed him curiously before offering him a small smile and directing your attention back towards the stage. Bucky sighed in the aftermath, feeling the wild beating of his heart settled to a normal one.

And just like that, the truth died on the tip of his tongue.

Weeks passed, and between countless briefings, missions, and reports, Bucky was forced to push all matters concerning his heart to the side. It wasn't easy, not when you occupied every facet of Bucky's otherwise monotone life. Every waking moment was a painful reminder that you were always within reach, but never close enough for him to have.

Following a successful infiltration into an illegal bio-weapon factory in the outskirts of Poland, the team had landed their jet on one of the safehouse grounds somewhere near the border of Poland and Germany. Natasha and Clint disappeared inside the house immediately upon landing, while Sam and Steve stayed on the quinjet to go over a few intels they had managed to gather from the factory.

Bucky's boots scraped softly against the grass as he crossed the distance towards the small lake just a few yards left to the safehouse. The surrounding trees rustled in the wind, a symphony of reds and oranges beneath the solemn autumn sky. On the shore of the lake, Bucky found you sitting, a rare serene look on your face as you closed your eyes to welcome the impending breeze.

“Hi, Bucky,” you greeted, eyes still shut tightly.

“How'd you know it was me, Sugar?”

“I always know when it's you.”

The moment your eyes opened, Bucky's heart stuttered in its cage. The smile you rewarded him was soft, embellished with a tenderness that a man of his repute would never deserve. He knew he should have looked away, but the selfish part of him wanted to hold your stare in place, to relish in your kindness no matter how much he believed he wasn't worthy of it.

“Come on, sit with me.”

You patted the ground next to you, and Bucky obeyed without further questions. He lowered himself on the grass, damp from the lingering chill of autumn air, and stretched his legs out. For a while, neither of you spoke, opting to enjoy the sound of water lapping lazily against the shore, a stark tranquility to the horrors you faced during the mission earlier.

The sky dimmed a tad darker as the sun ducked behind the cover of trees, leaving behind streaks of purple and gold on the horizon. Beside him, you heaved out a sigh, the remnants of sun casting your skin in an ethereal glow.

“Sometimes I wish moments like this could last forever,” you murmured.

Bucky's eyes slid towards you, studying the contours of your face like a historian would an ancient scripture. His fingers twitched, itching to feel every soft and hard edge of your features under the brush of his touch. 

You're the only thing in this world I want forever with.

The words resonated in his head and all the way down to his chest, settling like stone sinking underwater, slow and heavy. He almost said it out loud—nearly laid his heart bare for you to judge and scrutinize. But at last, he fabricated a grin and nudged his shoulder playfully to yours.

“You always get sentimental when you're tired,” he joked.

You laughed heartily at his jab, a melodic thing that wrested at every coil of Bucky's heartstrings. The two of you proceeded to watch the sunset together, the silence stretching between you, warm and comfortable. The sky burned in more explosions of hues, casting its reflection upon the lake like a dream neither of you dared to disturb. 

If Bucky were a braver man, a better man—one that wasn't weighed down by his history and remorse—maybe he would have told you. Maybe, in another life, Bucky would have charmed you at first sight, claiming you as his before the day could even end. But for now, Bucky was glad to settle for this—for sharing a quiet moment with you, and to bask in your company as though he were worthy of even a fraction of your attention.

For now, Bucky would let the four-letter word wither inside him, locked in a hidden fissure somewhere within his chest, keeping it safe from ever seeing any light of day.

Days flew by, and it was getting increasingly harder for Bucky to ignore the way his heart gravitated towards yours, to ignore the fact that you were always the first person he searched for in the morning and the last one he wanted to talk to before falling asleep. To pretend like the mere mention of your name didn't send a jolt that revived his entire being. Every single day was a battle between wish and logic—the unruly desire to make you his, and the rational reluctance of dragging you into the mess that was his life.

“This is getting ridiculous, Buck,” Steve said as he leaned back against the bar right next to Bucky, following the latter's eyesight to find you standing at the end of it. “You're just gonna avoid it forever? An eternal silent treatment? The two of you need to talk, whether you like it or not.”

Bucky inhaled a long breath, swirling the Asgardian mead in his glass without ever taking his eyes off you. It was your birthday—a joyous occasion that called for this merry yet intimate celebration with the entire team. The common room of the compound had been transformed into something warm and inviting, lit by the soft glow of string lights draped along the walls. A cake sat on the counter, half-eaten, its candles long blown out, but the remnants of your laughter from when you made your wish still lingered in the air.

From across the room, Bucky watched as Sam teased you about getting older, earning the bird-man a playful swat on his arm. Wanda handed you a small, neatly wrapped gift, and your eyes lit up in a way that made Bucky’s chest ache. He didn’t know what was in the box. He didn’t really care. All he knew was that he wanted to be the reason behind that breathtaking smile of yours.

And then, your eyes lifted.

The eye contact was fleeting. Brief. Gone by the time Bucky realized what was happening and forced his gaze away. Even then, Bucky still caught the hint of surprise as your eyes found his, replaced almost immediately by a longing that Bucky understood all too well. It clutched onto his heart, sinking its sharp nails until the life organ in his chest was bruised and brutally torn apart.

The Captain sighed. “You're being an idiot, pal.”

Bucky knew Steve was right—he was being an idiot. A coward, even. It was his own damn foolishness that had kept him avoiding you for weeks, skipping your morning spars, slipping out of any room you occupied before you could even notice his presence. All because he couldn’t handle the feelings that had taken root in his chest, the one that was growing stronger by the minute, infiltrating deeper into his system every time you so much as looked his way.

The party was still in full swing by the time Bucky decided to retire for the night, forgoing the goodbyes, heading straight to the elevator that took him back to his quarters. It was a few hours later when a clumsy knock sounded against his door, breaking through the quiet that had settled in his room.

“Sugar?”

Bucky's hand clenched around the door handle, his eyebrows knitting together at the sight of you in front of his bedroom.

“Hi, Buckyyy,” you greeted, your words slurring into uncontrollable giggles.

 Understanding dawned on Bucky's shoulders. “Sweetheart, are you drunk?”

“Am not!” You huffed, pushing past a stunned Bucky to enter the bedroom. 

You looked around for a moment, humming to yourself every time you came across a familiar token that decorated Bucky's room. There was a photo of you and him on the nightsand, a sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge courtesy of Steve hanging on the wall, and a few vinyl records stacked neatly on the shelf, gifted by various members of the team. At last, your steps halted beside the bed, and without a warning, you dove head first into the mattress, chuckling to yourself as you attempted to make snow angels with his blankets.

“This is sooo niceee,” you mused, burying youself deeper into one of Bucky's pillows. “Smells like you, Buck.”

The super soldier tried not to dwell too much on the sight of you lying on his bed, looking like you had always belonged in the same place that Bucky took his rest. A shiver ran down Bucky's spine as he closed the door behind him, his feet quiet against the carpeted floor before he took a tentative seat on the edge of the bed.

“Sugar?” Bucky took your shoulders in his grasp, turning you around until his eyes locked with yours. His heart staggered. “You wanna get back to your room? I could take you.”

His offer made you sit up in seconds, so fast that Bucky feared you might have given yourself a whiplash. He stared at you as your lips trembled, your whole body turning away from him until you were just a breadth out of his reach.

His fingers contracted in grief.

“Hey, Sugar? What's—”

“Why do you hate me?”

Silence.

Bucky's forehead creased in confusion.

“Hate you?” Bucky tasted the accusation on his tongue—the word being so foreign and farfetched from anything he could associate with you that Bucky had to wonder if he had misheard what you spoke. “Sweetheart, I don't hate you.”

“Liar.” You scoffed, scooting towards the foot of the bed, seemingly adamant to draw as much distance as possible between Bucky and yourself. “You have been avoiding me for weeks. You don't want to talk to me, or do anything with me. You hate me.”

Bucky blinked, stunned into momentary silence before shaking his head as if trying to rid himself of the sheer absurdity of your words. “That’s not true,” he murmured, his voice rough with something that sounded dangerously close to regret.

You laughed at his response—a wry, sarcastic laugh that was void of even the smallest hint of your usual warmth. “Then what other possible reason could you have for avoiding me, Bucky? Hm?” Your head turned towards him, and for the first time that night, Bucky finally saw the telltale sign of tears in your eyes, a glassy sheen that erased any remnant of the wits that Bucky had grown to know and love.

His stomach churned.

Guilt was eating at him alive. He couldn't believe that his stupidity had caused this—that he had hurt you due to his own incapability of controlling his emotions. Bucky didn't know what he was thinking when he decided that the best course of action would be to completely evade you, but he certainly didn't think that it would result in this.

With you, sitting on his bed, crying your eyes out while simultaneously breaking Bucky's heart in the process.

Bucky exhaled sharply, as if the weight of his own remorse was pressing down on his chest. He couldn't stand it—the way your shoulders quivered, the way you tried so desperately to keep your composure together as tears welled in your eyes.

"Sweetheart," he rasped, reaching for you, his fingers hesitant at first before firming in resolve. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”

You stiffened at his touch, your lips parting as if to protest, but Bucky was already pulling you into his embrace, holding you tightly against the muscular panes of his chest. His hands skimmed soothingly along your back, whispers of sweet nothings falling from his lips as he rocked you in the safety of his arms.

“I don't hate you, Sugar,” he murmured, voice shattering around the edges. “I've never hated you. How could I?”

How could I hate you when you are the only source of light I have remaining in this world? How could I hate you when loving you is the only thing about my life that I am absolutely certain of?

Your breath hitched against his shoulder, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. “Bucky—”

“Shh,” he soothed, pressing his lips to your temple in a featherlight touch. “Just let me hold you, okay?”

Slowly, he guided the both of you down onto his bed, his arms never loosening from where they were wrapped around your body. His heartbeat thumped steadily beneath your cheek, his fingers drawing lazy patterns against your back. The tension in your body melted bit by bit with each gentle word, the rise and fall of his chest lulling you into something softer—something safe.

“Don't ever do that to me again,” you warned shakily. “Promise me.”

Bucky's hold around you tightened. “I promise.”

“Good.” You sighed, exhaustion wearing down every inch of your bones. “You're my favorite person, Bucky.”

The admission pierced Bucky's chest like a lightning strike. He knew he should not have read too much into it, that the revelation was nothing more than a drunken slip of tongue that you probably would not even remember in the morning. But for now, Bucky chose to let that little detail slide, to let himself pretend that the confession had been made with more purposeful intent behind it—that the words had meant as much to you as it did to Bucky.

"Sleep, sweetheart," he whispered, his lips brushing against your forehead. "I've got you."

Since that night in his bedroom, Bucky had made a vow: he wasn't going to run anymore.

Bucky had learned his lesson. He wasn't going to let his own fears dictate his actions, nor would he allow his emotions ruin the precious friendship he had built with you over the past few years. Whatever he felt—whatever torment clawed at his chest whenever you so much as looked his way—it was his burden to bear. You didn't deserve to suffer for his cowardice, and he swore to himself that he would never let it happen again.

That thought lingered in Bucky's mind as he moved stealthily through the abandoned industrial site, gun drawn, boots scraping silently against the cracked concrete floor. The mission was straightforward: take out remaining hostiles, extract any valuable intel, and regroup. Simple. A basic in and out job that would be done just in time for dinner.

The team had split into pairs, and as fate would have it—or rather, as Steve would have it—Bucky found himself assigned to the west wing of the site alongside you. The direct channel to your comms in Bucky’s earpiece was quiet, and the super soldier took it as a good indication that your side of the mission was going smoothly. Meanwhile, he swept through his own side of hallways with methodical precision, checking every room, muttering a curt “clear” to his comms for each canvassed area. 

The air was eerie with cold and mold when Bucky entered the last remaining room in the hallway. There was nothing particularly different about this one. It was just as empty and as menacing, smelling of rat’s piss and years of abandonment, though his seasoned instinct—one sculpted from years of fighting and survival—warned him that something was amiss. His fingers tightened around his weapon almost instinctively, feeling an immediate unease venture up his spine, raising the very hair on the back of his neck.

The silence was too perfect.

Bucky’s feet skidded to a stop, turning on his heel to retrace his steps back towards the entrance.

Then, it happened.

The ambush struck like lightning on water. One second Bucky was alone, and the next, shadows had flooded the room, faceless figures in tactical gears leaping towards him at the same time. They were fast and ruthless, and even though none seemed to possess enhanced abilities, Bucky was still outnumbered. He dodged the first three attackers easily enough—disarming the blade from the first assailant’s hand, ducking out of the swinging baton of the second’s, and rolling on the floor before redirecting the third one’s bullet with the palm of his vibranium arm.

Bucky dashed out of the room into the one right across, the group of attackers still hot on his tail. He ducked behind a metal table and started opening fires at the entrance, taking out the threats before they even got the chance to enter the room. A curse fell under his breath when Bucky realized that he had worked through his rounds, scrambling to replace the ammunition as footsteps thundered into the room.

Slamming the fresh magazine in place, Bucky inhaled a gearing breath, only to be met with a sudden hush that descended through the air.

He raised his gun.

Instead of finding himself at the end of numerous gun barrels, Bucky was granted the view of bodies scattered all over the floor. The tang of iron meshed detestably with the spoor of grime, fog swirling around the edge of Bucky’s adrenaline-honed mind. When the dust finally stifled, his focus immediately zeroed in on the figure standing amidst the wreckage, rising out of the smoke like a doomsday’s salvation.

“Hi, handsome.” You smiled around a heavy exhale, a crinkle in your eye that seized the very life out of Bucky’s lungs. “Miss me?”

Bucky let out a rough breath, somewhere between relief and admiration. The grip around his weapon slackened ever so slightly, his body still thrumming with fight-and-flight, though the sight of your beautiful smile had managed to wash him with the kind of serenity that no other person could compel.

“Was wondering when you’d show up, sweetheart,” Bucky said, rising from his makeshift fortress behind the table.

“Sorry, Sarge.” You hummed, casually brushing the dust off Bucky’s shoulder as though the contact didn’t send him skyrocketing to heaven. “You know I like to keep people on their toes.”

Bucky failed to suppress his grin, nudging your shoulder as the two of you headed towards the entrance. With the hostiles neutralized, and the information uploaded to the flash drive discreetly tucked in the safety of Bucky’s inside pocket, the two of you were prepared for extraction. He redirected his comms to the main channel, alerting the other team members that the two of you were ready to wrap up and get the hell out of this dismal place.

He was barely a foot out of the door when a loud bang resonated in the air.

In a split second, Bucky sprung in retaliation, taking aim at one of the bloody assailants on the ground that had somehow taken hold of a gun, Bucky’s finger pulling at his own weapon’s trigger, assassinating him in place.

The silence that followed was deafening.

Bucky’s heart throbbed in his throat, a silent prayer on his lips at how close of a call it had almost been. His gaze took a quick scan of the pile of bodies on the floor, making sure that none of them would pull a similar stunt, only allowing his shoulders to deflate when he saw no remaining signs of life.

“Bucky?”

Your voice barely reached him, thin despite the echoic air of this dingy site, but something inside Bucky twisted the moment he heard it.

When he turned, the initial relief that had flooded his chest instantly collapsed.

You were standing there, just a breadth out of reach with your gun still tightly clutched between your fingers. But the side of your neck—God, the side of your neck—was slick with red, thick and dark as it ran in angry runnels down your skin, staining the collar of your tactical gear, pooling on your shoulder and drenching everything it touched.

Your whole body swayed.

Bucky’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach.

“No, no, no—” he rasped as he caught you, arms winding around your frame to prevent you from hitting the floor. His knees slammed onto the cold concrete below as he cradled you against his chest, the tremble in his body betraying the steel he was supposed to be made out of.

Bucky blinked, willing this moment to splinter into a dream, willing for his body to be transported back into the comfort of his bedroom where the scene playing out in front of his eyes would be nothing more than a heinous nightmare. But as Bucky’s arms tightened around your limp figure, the awful, gut-wrenching truth settled like ice in his veins. 

This was real. 

The blood seeping through your gear wasn’t imagined. The faint hitch in your breath, the loss of color from your face, the sheer terror clawing its way up his throat—none of it was a dream.

His chest crashed.

“Hey, hey. I got you, Sugar.” His voice cracked as he pressed a palm against your wound, despairingly staunching the warmth from slipping through his fingers. But no matter how hard he was grasping, the blood just kept on flowing—too fast and too much—soaking his hands and every corner of his battered soul.

“Shit. Stay with me, sweetheart. Please,” he begged. “Steve! Nat! Somebody get here now!” he barked into his earpiece, nails digging deeper into your skin. “We need a medic! We need a—fuck—just get down here!”

You made a sound, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper, your breath warm against his cheek as you murmured, “I-It’s gonna… gonna be o-okay.”

It was a lie.

You both knew it.

And it destroyed him. 

“Don’t do that.” Bucky shook his head, his voice cracking around a choked sob. He forced a smile as he looked down at your pale face. “You always suck at lying.”

Your lips parted, the faintest ghost of a smile trying to make its way through, only to be interrupted by a wet cough that made Bucky’s chest cave in.

“Gotta stay with me, sweetheart. Please,” Bucky whimpered. “The team’s coming. Help is on the way. Just gotta hang in there a little more for me, yeah? Just a little longer. Please.”

Bucky wasn’t entirely sure to whom he was begging—whether it was you, the universe, or any higher divine power that might have heard his wretched prayer and taken pity on him. A man who had lost everything and asked for nothing, who was now asking for someone—anyone—to save the only thing in this world that made his life worth living, even if it meant having to sacrifice his soul in exchange.

Your hand reached out tentatively, shakily, gripping the strap of his tactical jacket and giving it the faintest tug. 

“Bucky,” you whispered, voice dissipating like a wisp of smoke as soon as you had uttered his name. Your eyes, glassy and unfocused, searched for his, and when they finally found him, a weak smile curved at your lips. “I love you.”

A sound tore from his throat, raw and full of despair. His forehead dropped against yours, his entire body rupturing under the weight of your words.

“I love you.” Bucky’s voice stammered. “God, I love you—I love you, sweetheart, I love you so much.” He pressed his lips against your clammy forehead, again and again, as though he could tether you here, as though his love alone could be enough to keep you from slipping away.

He should have been happy—should have felt something else other than this hollow, scorching agony. The person of his dreams, the one he had spent sleepless nights longing for, had just made the one admission that his heart had been wanting to hear, and yet, all he could do was break. His whole being perished under the weight of everything left unsaid, every moment wasted, every regret carving him open from the inside out.

He should have told you sooner.

God, he should have just told you—should have braced past his insecurities and found the courage somehow, should have showered you with every drop of love he had neatly stowed in his heart until he was shriveled and had no else to give. He should have bought you flowers everyday, let you know that you were the most beautiful person Bucky had ever met on this goddamn planet—because you deserved it.

You deserved everything.

Not this.

Not bleeding on the filthy floor of this desolate place, fighting off death that had bludgeoned its way right through your door.

“You’re gonna be okay, Sugar. We’re getting out of here, you hear me?” His breath stuttered, his grip tightening as if he could physically gather all of your fragmented pieces and mend you as new. “I’m gonna treat you so good. You’ll see. Gonna spoil you rotten like I ought to. Just—please, just hold on—”

Your fingers twitched against his chest. Your eyes fluttered.

A quivering breath left your lips before your body went completely limp.

Bucky stilled.

“Sugar?”

Nothing.

No soft inhale. No faint murmurs of response.

No squeeze of your fingers against his jacket.

Bucky’s entire world came crashing down in the blink of an eye.

“No. No, no, no, no—”

His hand cupped your face, blood smearing from his skin to yours. Bucky’s fingers trembled as he tapped your cheek, as if the action alone could keep you here, could bring you back to him. His breathing ceased, his whole body shuddering as he rocked you in his arms, your name tumbling over and over again from his lips like a prayer, like a curse, like a plea to the universe to undo everything, to give him one more chance, to take him instead.

“Come back to me,” he whispered, his face wet with the fractured shards of his heart. “Please.”

The only thing that acknowledged him was silence.

And Bucky Barnes had never hated the quiet more.

---