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cosmiccandydreamer · 2 months ago

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Ifs, Buts, and Maybes | Bucky Barnes x reader

Summary: Bucky and his love think about the life they could have had if they’d met in 1945.

A/N: Not to toot my own horn but I almost made myself cry with this one (it’s very late here, but still) also, please someone tell me you get the joke with the title (@itsswritten don't leave me hanging)

Word count: 2.5 k

Warnings: all the fluff. all the feels. it’s so cheesy. a twinge of angst if you squint (also, not proofread)

Bucky was close to drifting off to sleep when he felt her stir against him. She turned in his arm, head leaning against his shoulder, and when he cracked open an eye, he found her peering up at him with her chin tilted up. At the sight, the corners of his lips twitched of their own accord.

His voice was thick with sleep when he asked, “What is it, darlin’?”

She stirred more, turning to her stomach until she lay half on top of him. She flattened a palm against his chest, resting her chin on the back of her hand. “I can’t sleep,” she whispered.

“Hmm,” Bucky hummed deep in his chest. Running cool metal fingers down the curve of her spine, he delighted in the slight shiver she gave. “Well, I can, so shush.”

He’d barely closed his eyes when a snort cut through the silence, and she poked the finger of her free hand into his side, drawing a grin to his face.

“Rude.”

A deep inhale rose his chest—and her with it. Bucky lifted his metal hand to his face to rub his eyes with his thumb and index finger. When he squinted at the alarm clock on his nightstand, he found the bright green numbers demoralizingly low.

Turning back, he found attentive eyes on him. The eery green light reflected in her irises. He could see her quite well despite the darkness.

Vibranium thumb brushing along her temple, he hummed again. “I love you.”

Her cheeks lifted, and when she nuzzled her head into his palm, Bucky felt his chest contract in an aching pull.

“I love you,” she echoed, skipping the ‘too’. She always skipped the ‘too’. She thought it made the phrase sound like less than it was. “What was it like in the 40s?”

Bucky’s brow quirked at the odd change of topic. “What?”

“Being in love,” she paused. “Dating. What would it have been like if we’d met back then?” Her voice was low as she spoke, breath fanning over Bucky’s chest. He could feel her words vibrate gently against him.

“It would have been… I don’t know, different.”

“Different how?”

Bucky’s lips curled at the corners. “You have the most interesting midnight thoughts, darlin’.”

She rose a shoulder as best as her position allowed. “I just realised that I have no idea what you were like back then. All I know are those old photographs. The cheeky ones,” she added with a teasing glint in her eyes.

A quiet chuckle shook Bucky’s shoulders, hand once again beginning a slow tracing of her spine. Up, then down again, always halting just above the curve of her ass.

After a long moment, he said. “If we’d met in the 40s, I would have laid all my charm on ya.” Tilting his head deeper into his pillow, Bucky traced the lines of her lips with his eyes. “I would’ve spotted you from the other side of a dance hall, and after one or two shots of liquor I would have finally found the courage to talk to you.”

She giggled quietly. “Oh, please. Like you needed alcohol back then. Steve told me you were a smooth talker through and through, yapping your way into every girl’s heart.”

Bucky hummed, hiding a smirk. “Not with you. Woulda swallowed my tongue the minute you looked at me.”

“Sure you would have,” she smiled, eyes gleaming as she tilted her head to the side to place her cheek on the back of her hand, watching intently as Bucky continued talking.

“I would have asked you to dance. The jitterbug probably. I would have made an absolute fool of myself, but hearing you laugh would have made every embarrassment worth it.”

Her smile became soft now. “Don’t tell me James Buchanan Barnes can’t dance.”

“Have you seen a jitterbug before? It’s lucky we didn’t meet back then. I would’ve broken a hip trying to impress ya.”

Her laugh came through her nose this time—a gentle exhale to brush his skin once again. Bucky’s hand slowed now, coming to a rest in the crook of her neck, thumb running along the base of her hairline.

“I would have offered to buy you a drink after. Assuming you would have agreed to dance in the first place.”

“Of course I would have.” She sounded so sincere that Bucky did not dare question it. If anything, he was eager to believe her.

“We would’ve talked all night, and I would have offered to walk you home after, just to spend a little more time with you. Then I would’ve shown up at your doorstep the next morning with flowers I stole from my ma’s garden. Just to make sure you didn’t forget all about me already.”

“You wouldn’t have kissed me goodnight?”

“Oh, I would have been dying to kiss ya, darlin’,” Bucky mumbled deep in his chest. “But that wouldn’t have been very proper, now, would it?”

She giggled again. “Like you cared about what was proper and what wasn’t. I don’t believe you for one second.”

“Mind you, I was very proper.”

“You were a candyman.”

Bucky blinked. “A what now?”

“Like the song?” When Bucky’s expression remained blank, Y/N lifted her head from her hand, soft outrage on her face. “By Christina Aguilera? Sweet-talkin’, sugar-coated candyman. I can’t believe you don’t know that song!”

“Sounds like I really missed out,” Bucky deadpanned, to which she clicked her tongue and placed her head back on his chest.

“It’s a great song. And it’s exactly how I imagine you back then. Walking around, making all the panties drop.”

“Believe it or not, I wasn’t nearly as bad as you think I was. Being a candyman”—Bucky barley kept a straight face at the word—“back then is nothing like being one right now.”

“Fine,” she sighed. “So no goodnight kiss for little old me.”

Bucky smirked, curling his fingers into her hair on the back of her head, massaging gently. At once, her lids drooped a little heavier.

“I would have brought you flowers, and I would’ve asked you out properly. We would have gone to the pictures, or the fair; shared too much popcorn or cotton candy. You would have worn one’a those pretty dresses with the nice white collars and the petticoats, and I probably would’ve dragged Steve along to make a double date out of it with one of your girlfriends. If Steve and her hit it off, we would have snuck away at some point. We would’ve laughed a lot. I would’ve talked your ear off, telling you about ma and Becca, and then—behind a tent, or in an alley by the cinema—I would’ve kissed you a little.”

Her face pulled into a dreamy smile—like she was right there with him, in that alley in his mind, imagining another time, another universe where they shared an innocent kiss, high on sugar and infatuation.

“You would have held my neck the way you do when we kiss, and you would have tasted like cotton candy and watered-down lemonade,” Bucky continued quietly, almost wistfully. “And after, you would’ve wiped your lipstick off my face with your thumb. Steve probably would’ve taken one look at me and known I was done for.”

Her palm now found his face, and the soft pad of her thumb ran along his bottom lip as though she was reenacting the scene.

“You would’ve had me fully wrapped around your little finger by the second date,” Bucky muttered against her skin, eyes locked with hers. “I would’ve courted you properly. I would have introduced you to my family, and met yours, too. You would have gotten along phenomenally with Steve, and it would have been one of the reasons I would have known that you are the one.”

Silence settled like a blanket over them then, heartbeats blending into one, and slow hands tracing skin like the most precious of artworks.

Bucky had hoped that he was talking her to sleep, that a soothing tone would cure her momentary insomnia. But instead, he felt her heart pump hard against his chest, fluttering with the warmth that coated her cheeks at his story.

“I wouldn’t have tried anythin’ funny with you,” Bucky continued after a while, his voice suddenly gravelly and low. “We would’ve kissed a lot, maybe done some other things, too, but everything else… sex would have been totally up to you. It wasn’t as safe as it is now, and there was still a lot of judgement around it, especially for women.” Bucky paused, narrowing his eyes when he gently pressed his fingers against her scalp. “But if you’d decided that you wanted to, I would’ve gladly taken you back to my place. We would have had to be quiet so that the neighbours wouldn’t hear, and after, we would have smoked those nasty little cigarettes they used to hand out to soldiers. We would have sat at the window and talked. Just talked. For hours. Like we do now.”

Bucky could tell that she’d inched a bit closer now, a hazy look in her eyes as her gaze flickered between his eyes and his mouth. She craned her neck a little, and Bucky leaned forward to meet her in a slow kiss.

They took their time with it, and when they parted, he pressed another, quicker kiss to the corner of her lips. She smiled then.

“And after that?”

Bucky hummed, fingers brushing loosely through her hair in thought. He could taste her now. It distracted him.

“We wouldn’t have dated for too long,” he said quietly, smiling at the mild surprise that rose her brow just a breath higher. “My ma probably would’ve shoved my grandma’s ring in my hand the day you walked through the door. I would have held off on proposing for a few months, so as to not scare you off. But I would have known right away.”

“I would have said yes on that first date,” Y/N breathed with a soft smile to brighten her eyes.

Bucky leaned forward to kiss her again, deeper this time. His mind was swimming when he leaned back in his pillow.

Clearing his throat, he said. “Steve would’ve been my best man. We would have invited just a few people. Small. Intimate. And then… well then, I would have spent the rest of our lives wondering how I’d gotten so lucky.”

Bucky thought back to everything he had thought to one day have. “We would have moved in together right away, and we would have been able to be as loud as we wanted to be, because the neighbours wouldn’t matter anymore. We would’ve gotten some regular old jobs. You would have been a nurse, or a secretary, or a teacher, and I probably would have worked some construction, or maybe in a factory, or down at the docks. And who knows, after a while, maybe we would have had some kids.” Bucky paused for a moment, swallowing before he continued. “Steve would have visited regularly, probably married to Peggy at that point. We would have been… happy. At peace. And by now we would be well over 100, still happy. Still at peace. Still together. If not in this life, then in the next.”

It hung unspoken between them—the realities of what Bucky had lost through the war, through Hydra. The life he would have had, had things been just a little different back then.

She didn’t speak for a very long time, and Bucky thought he saw a shimmer in the green light of her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

When she smiled, she looked sad, a warm palm cupping his cheek for her thumb to run along his stubbled skin soothingly.

“I’m so sorry, Buck,” she breathed near inaudible.

Bucky’s brows twitched together at her words. Lifting his hand, he cupped hers against his cheek, turning his face to press his lips to the centre of her palm.

“Don’t be.”

She shook her head softly. “You lost so much.”

“I didn’t lose anything.” This time, actual confusion washed over his face. “It’s nice to think about, but it would never have happened, darlin’. You were born some 80 years after me.”

“But you still lost that future. Everything you wanted back then. If not with me, then with some pretty dame who was born in your half of the century.” Bucky noted the half-hearted joke when she copied his vernacular, but it fell flat in the context of her words.

Bucky’s eyes softened, both palms now finding her cheeks. He looked at her for a long while, memorising every inch of her face as he’d done so many times before. When he spoke, his voice was calm, assured.

“If I had to choose between this life with you and that life with someone else, I would always, always choose this one.” He shook his head in amazement. “It’s not even a question.”

“But—”

“No but,” he interrupted gently, wiping beneath her eye. “I much prefer the dating customs of this century anyway.”

She laughed thickly, and Bucky leaned in to seal their lips in yet another kiss. It was a little more desperate now, a little heavier after this change in mood, and after a long moment, they parted for air, panting gently in unison.

“I love you,” Y/N breathed as she pressed her lips to his jaw. “And who knows, with all of this multiverse nonsense going on, maybe there really is a version of us out there that met in your time.” She offered a smile, the tip of her nose almost touching his.

Bucky wrapped his arms around her. “I hope I will find you in every version of the universe.”

Her head found the crook of his neck then, breath once again fanning gently against his skin. She smiled against him. He could feel it. “So that I can keep every version of you awake at night?”

Bucky laughed quietly, pressing his lips to her hair. “It’s the best feeling in the world to wake up to you. No matter the time.”

“Hey Buck,” she whispered, palm finding a smooth cheek in the dim lighting of the moon that shone through the window. They’d kept the blinds open tonight. They no longer needed to hide from nosey Mrs Gusterson who lived across the street—not with the silver wedding band that gleamed on her finger.

Bucky stirred, nose scrunching as he came to. “What is it, doll?”

She was still giddy from the last few days, still giddy to be a wife now. With a smile that was a little too awake, she leaned her head against Bucky’s shoulder to peer up at him. His arm tightened around her, eyes softening with love as they met her gaze.

“I can’t sleep,” she whispered.

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cosmiccandydreamer · 2 months ago

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Home is where the heart is 🏠❤️

(disclaimer, due to the recent news I must stress, I am not a trump supporter. I just enjoy Joe's character. Writing for him is not agreeing with his political stance, happy reading)

Chapter 2

Roman reigns x reader (past Jason mamoa)

No warnings on this chapter.

Jason sat back in the plush seat at the corner of his trailer. The sun beat down on his tanned skin. He squinted his hazel eyes towards the horizon. This was such a beautiful location. He couldn't help but wonder where y/n was, where he hadn't seen her all day for this shoot. He hasn't gotten a chance to chat with her either. He was hoping to say hello and break the awkward silence or tension. He didn't have a problem with her; it was the opposite. He was worried that she had a problem with him. He hadn't seen her all day of filming, and the absence felt solemn. He was hoping that she would not have tense feelings. He took a deep breath and began reminiscing about the moments they shared.

They had bonded quickly while working together on Game of Thrones, and what started as a brief romance had morphed into a deep and intimate friendship. But now, with her distant demeanor, Jason worried he had crossed the lines too far in the past to cause this coldness. Did she regret ever having such an intimate bond with him? After the breakup, they had agreed to remain friends, but with her answering phone calls and texts less and less, it was apparent something was wrong, despite his attempts to fix any mistakes. He hadn't gotten a chance to chat with her, and they needed to speak at least once on this project.

He missed her; he missed her a lot. What he missed the most about her was her laughter, her eyes that would sparkle, and her hands becoming animated when she talked about her passions. He was determined to dispel the tension between them. He hoped to find a way to bridge the gap, reconnect, and salvage whatever was left of their friendship. He knew she was dating the WWE star Roman Reigns and knew of the close relations between their families. He had not had the chance to get to know Roman before this movie. He questioned whether her relationship with the WWE star affected her decision to end things with him. Was it her growing feelings for Roman that led her to end things, or had his eagerness pushed her away? Though he had never met Roman, he knew they were close through texts, calls, FaceTime, and more. He tried hard not to have animosity towards the wrestler, but he felt that deep gnawing in his gut whenever he thought about him.

He and Y/n were on location for a few months, and they continued their relationship when they returned to Los Angeles. She had been the one to end the relationship. He reflected on the conversation that led to her calling it quits. He had asked her to move in with him and possibly settle down with the idea of marriage and children. On the day in question, they sat across from each other in a small cafe on a bright Los Angeles afternoon. They hadn't seen each other for weeks and worked on different projects.

Jason:" So I've been meaning to talk to you. We have been having fun, but I want to be more serious. Let's "Consider the whole marriage and kids route, which means you should quit your job and move in with me."

"Woah, Jason. Look, I appreciate that you feel confident in our situation, but if I'm being honest, we should go back to being friends."

"Friends? Why? I thought we were having fun and enjoying our time together."

"That's exactly it. We were good friends, and we got along better as friends. Lately, we've been arguing, and there's been tension between us. I don't want to lose you as a friend, but that's what will happen if we keep trying to push something that isn't meant to work. I feel like we bonded over the trauma of working on that set, and I'm grateful for our connection, but I believe this is as far as it was meant to go."

"It's about Roman. I bet it's because of him; you two are close."

"Jason, it is not because of him; he and I are just friends. We don't fit into each other's lives like we used to. I don't want us to hurt each other, and I hope you still want to be friends."

"Honestly, I don't want to lose our friendship. You mean a lot to me, and I love you. But I want you to be happy, so I can work with it if that makes you happy."

After that day, the two tried to be friends, texting, sharing memes, checking in, and occasionally stopping for a coffee when one was in town. But as y/n moved on? Jason had not; he wasn't lying when he said he wanted to be friends and did not want to lose her. But he would have lied to himself if he hadn't admitted he still wanted a relationship with her. He felt she might need time to figure out what she wanted because she was much younger than he was. He could admit that he had been slightly controlling. he did not want to lose her, but holding her too close pushed her away.

One day, while watching TMZ, he saw a segment revealing that she was now dating WWE heavyweight champion Roman. This infuriated him; she had lied to him in his mind. Was Roman the one influencing her all along to leave him? Either way, he was furious. To cope with his feelings, he decided to drown them at the hotel bar, getting increasingly drunk. His thoughts swirled; he felt he should confront her and make her explain herself—she owed him that much.

As he walked back to his room, he didn't even realize he had passed some news reporters until they shoved a microphone in his face, asking if he had seen the recent news and how he felt about it. He replied, "I feel happy seeing her, but not much about him." "Do you think they were seeing each other behind your back?" Is that why you left her? "She left me." " Is that the reason she left you?" "No idea," he said, not turning to look at the man. "Ask Roman." The reporter became frantic, asking him more questions until he finally closed the door in their face.

Grabbing his phone, he began composing a text to her.

timestamp 1:42 am

Hey [y/n],

Guess what? Here I am, just watching the news, and lo and behold, it looks like you're with Roman now. After everything?It feels like a damn slap in the face. I see you've moved on, and with all the people you could have picked. Did your brothers put you up to this? I always felt they didn't like me and were being fake to my face.

I thought we had something real, but clearly, I was wrong. Were you lying to me the whole time? Seeing you with someone else so soon after we ended things is frustrating, to say the least. I don't know why I even bothered to stay friends; you can not be honest. Wasn't he just in a relationship, too? When he breaks your heart, please call me so I can say I told you so. All I wanted was to make you happy; do you think he can do that for you? With him always traveling and possibly getting hurt in his career? We argued because you felt I was trying to tell you what to do, but I love and want to keep you safe. I don't know what I'm saying anymore.

— Jason

timestamp 3:42 am

Hey y/n

Shit, I am so sorry for that last message, not that it is an excuse, but I was very drunk, and well, my jealousy got the better of me; that also is no excuse to lash out at you; I should have communicated how I felt like an adult instead of being a coward. Please forgive me. You deserve all the happiness in the world, and I hope we can talk this over and put it behind us; please don't end our friendship. Please give me a call soon.

-Jason

As the days passed, Jason still had not heard back from y/n; he was filled with regret and shame for how he spoke to her. What was wrong with him? He was a grown man, for Christ's sake. He hated to admit it, but he felt a deep, growing sense of jealousy take root in his gut whenever he saw another article or picture of her and Roman. He hated to admit that she looked happy. But why did she have to look so happy with someone else? Why was it not him? he began becoming obsessed with learning everything he could about their relationship. He stumbled across an interview where Roman had admitted he had gotten her the wrong flavor of ice cream on her cycle and got a playful earful. "She said, Do you even know me at all?" Ro laughed, looking over at Jimmy Kimmel. 'I would have known her favorite," Jason thought to himself as he continued to study every inch of Roman through the TV screen. He found himself sending her multiple texts after that day, anything to try and elicit a response.

Timestamp 3:00 pm

Hey, there. Let's talk soon.

timestamp 6:00 pm

hey, I know you're pissed, but I need you to know it came out of a good place in my heart.

-J

At midnight,

are you sure he makes you happy?

-J

timestamp 1:00 am

incoming text

hey j

My phone has been broken for a few days, and I just got all these messages. I'll read them when I wake up.

unread message

Hey J, it's Marley Daywne's agent. I was told you were interested in trying out for his new movie. I'm emailing you the script now to see if you are interested. I know your ex is in it, as is the rest of the Fatu and Anoa'i family, but if that's not a problem on your end, this movie will be a hit. Please email me or text me as soon as possible.

Unsaved number 1:30 am

Hey J, it's Roman

y/n doesn't know I'm texting you; her phone has been broken for a few days, and she hasn't gotten these messages, she's sleeping right now.I will only say this once you keep her name out of your mouth and know your place. She is my girl now, and if you end up doing this movie with us, it's all good on my end as long as you remember that.

-R

Thank you for reading please like, reblog and comment❤️❤️

#roman reigns x reader #roman reigns

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