divinepoints

[divinepoints]

the heart of the matter.

pairing: john walker x reader

word count: 5.8k

warnings: kind of vague suicidal ideation that's not ever acted on. john is a dick. reader is also kind of a dick. bucky meddles. so much swearing in here your toes might curl. i've never done a reader-insert before so i'm bad at this. this is me showing you my metaphorical fanfic dick please respond

a/n: as hinted above, this is my first foray into the reader-insert game. constructive criticism is welcome but if all you have in your heart is haterism please keep the thoughts inside. exes to lovers kind of except the ending is vague. follow up definitely possible. i don't really take requests but you're more than welcome to drop some thoughts/ideas in my inbox and if inspo strikes i will oblige. uhhh that's all i think? john walker girlies rise. stalking the tag is what brought me to this.

(also, not edited because i can't be bothered since this is all in good fun)

You had never thought that life would lead you back to John Walker. Or perhaps, that life had led the both of you back to each other. After all, this had been your world first.

You’d been an unfortunate accident long before anyone thought there would be a need for a successor to Steve Rogers. It wasn’t really worth recounting, given it happened as so many things did, something in a lab went wrong, and it broke you. Okay. Maybe broke wasn’t the word. It had changed you into something simultaneously greater and far worse. Whatever. It hardly mattered at this point. What mattered was that it was odd someone from your small, bullshit town had become an Avenger, odder still that it had been you. You hadn’t thought there was anymore odd to go around.

(You were deeply, deeply misguided.)

It had never truly been decided amongst you, Bucky, and Sam whether John had been picked partly because of you (John himself would insist it had nothing to do with it). Bucky was one-hundred percent convinced it had been done on purpose. It’s easier to swallow, he’d said, because people know how close you were with Steve, and since you and Walker have… a past.

Calling it a past was generous. You’d dated in high school, when you were a little dumber and he a little less obnoxious, then he’d enlisted and you’d gone off to college. It was an almost entirely expected and underwhelming end to what had been a classic high school relationship. It was hardly a past, it had really just been growing pains. With Steve, however, it was an on-again off-again situationship that felt far too juvenile at your big age, but had gone unexpectedly public.

So now you were the woman who had dated not one, but two Captain Americas, even if you were quick to insist that John had been little more than captain of the football team at the time. The general public had eaten it up when John was given the shield and still now, while Valentina was parading around her so-called New Avengers. A grave misnomer, you thought, considering this wasn’t exactly your rookie year. It was a hard pill to swallow.

Yelena insisted that you all as a team owned Valentina. You thought it felt a little bit like the other way around. At the same time, you knew it would take all of five seconds for you to tear the entire charade apart. As withdrawn as you were from, well, everything since Thanos, you knew you still held enough public interest that you could get on a stage and rip Valentina to shreds and end it all. But you couldn’t. There was just something about the strange little group that tugged on your remaining heartstrings.

It had been a fight, at first. Sam had been furious, but it had weighed far more heavily on Bucky than you. At the very least, you could look Sam in the eye and remind him that you had been around before the Avengers were even really a team. You’d been part of Nick Fury’s cobbled-together collection of misfits that could hardly be called a group, let alone a team. Sam might have been Captain America, but you were essentially the only original left. Tony and Natasha were dead, Steve was old, Clint and Bruce had families, and Thor was somewhere of in space doing… well, whatever the hell he wanted to, you supposed. You remained, heavy with loss and silently happy to see another group of misfits learning to stitch themselves together. Even if this time it was much, much messier.

Still, you resented the government control, and that John was involved.

You took it upon yourself to constantly remind him that he was only still around because you tolerated it, which he hated. It wasn’t that he was your ex, though you loathed to call him even that. It was that he’d take Steve’s legacy, tried to turn it to dust, and was still clinging to it. He insisted he was doing what he could with what he had, you insisted he could do better, and so the carousel turned.

The only argument he ever won, not that you’d ever admit it out loud, was when he reminded not just you, but everyone that he’d had you first. There was no argument against the truth. Even if you could insist that you were more serious with Steve (you weren’t), or that you’d loved Steve more (you weren’t even sure you’d been in love with Steve at all), it all circled back around to an undisputed fact: John Walker bested Steve in approximately one race and it was having you.

He had brought it up again, and you knew it was because he was feeling sensitive about something. You were fed up, and had snapped back a scathing remark you’d only ever thought before. You know, you keep bringing that shit up and someone might start to think you’re in love with me. You hadn’t said it because you thought there was any truth, but because you knew it would piss him off, because you were taking the one thing he could hold over your head and turning it back around on him. Bucky had openly laughed, which certainly hadn’t helped things, but John didn’t give into the fight you were expecting.

It gnawed at you all night and then began to worry you in the morning. You’d only ever known him to snap and give into baser instincts. Even in high school when he could have been called more mellow he’d always been ready to throw a punch or two. No response you’d ever seen from him consisted of steely silence or any kind of restraint. Though you wanted to take it as a sign of personal growth, you were more inclined to think it was something much worse. You imagined a brewing rage eating away at him like acid, and you had to wonder when it was going to boil over.

It wasn’t until Bob, sweet and generally unconcerned with John, mentioned it that you decided it was time to do something about it. Haven’t seen Walker all day, he’d remarked about the second most loud and imposing member of the team. Ava remarked that she was pleased with the development, but even Yelena looked disturbed. Alexei could not have cared any less as he shoveled Wheaties into this mouth, but Bucky… Bucky had leveled you with a look that suggested he thought something needed to be done too. That was the straw, you supposed. You might have been able to fight your own instincts about it, if Bucky had not looked at you like that, like he thought this might really become a problem sometime soon. 

You sighed heavily and lifted yourself off the couch with a dramatized effort. Bucky indicated downstairs in the direction of the gym rather than above to the quarters where you all had your personal spaces. You briefly wondered if you could convince Bucky to have a man-to-man conversation with him rather than leaving you to make nice with your most irksome teammate. Ultimately, you realized that Bucky likely would rather put himself in the ground. Annoying, emotionally-constipated super soldiers were really fucking your life up.

(Pot, kettle, Bucky would probably insist, even if you were more super and less soldier.)

Inside the gym, you found yourself realizing that other than you, John and Steve had something else in common. They both liked to treat punching bags like they’d been done great personal offense by every one of them. Even in his occupation, you knew he noticed you. Or, at the very least, he’d noticed that someone had joined him.

“Your absence is troubling Bob,” you stated simply.

He didn’t pause his assault on the bag, but he did choose to switch sides to look at you. “I doubt it.”

“He said he hadn’t seen you all day. Mentioned, therefore noticed, therefore…”

“Therefore you drew straws and you’re the unluckiest of the bunch?”

You wished you’d drawn straws. “If only that had been part of the equation. No. Believe it or not, I figured this is mostly my problem.” You left out the fact that Bucky had too. John didn’t have anything to say about that, but he did pause and begin to unwrap his hands, preparing for what you also imagined was going to be a very tedious conversation. One that, apparently, you were going to have to take the reins of. “I’m more than willing to fight this out, but just know I’ll wipe the floor with you.” He didn’t take the bait. “Seriously, what the hell is going on? You’ve been on my ass since day one about what feels like fifteen million years ago, but I make one comment and you’re— you’re…” You had no clue how to finish that sentence, but you certainly weren’t going to apologize for anything. 

He finally opens his mouth to actually say something, but it’s far from anything you’d have expected. “Does it really bother you that much? Thinking about back then?”

It was a pivot you hadn’t been expecting and it left you floundering for something to say. Did it bother you to think about? No. No, what bothered you was that it was constantly brought up in the context of being a thing to have been had, or a measure by which to pick who could have the shield. What irked you, was that John kept bringing it up like you were some kind of trophy rather than a person. Otherwise, as just something that had happened, as a relationship you had, there were fond memories if you didn’t apply the present-day John Walker of it all.

“It’s not important,” you decided to say, rather than admitting that he was constantly tainting what had previously been a genuinely pleasant example of what a first love could be. “It was forever ago, but you keep bringing it up like it’s another medal on your chest.”

And of course he zeroed in on what affronted him most. “Not important.” He was muttering to himself, mostly, but you heard it. “Just, you know, half of the sum-total of all my relationships in life. Not important.”

And that irked at you, when he’d gone onto have a wife and a kid and a brief white-picket-fence life that you’d probably never get to see because everyone in the world looked at you like some kind of commodity. A weapon to save the world, a face to plaster on tv and advertisements, a figurehead to say hey, look, this group must be good!

“My god, John,” you snapped, “you have a family. What the hell does some bullshit high school girlfriend matter? We were both nobody back then.”

“Because the family thing worked out so well for me,” he retorted.

“That was your own fault and you know it.”

A low-blow and you knew it, but you’d never be able to understand why he wasn’t constantly fighting tooth and nail to get back to them. You knew he missed his son, often caught him looking at photos that he’d gotten from somewhere. You weren’t sure if Olivia was doing a kindness and sending them, or if he was finding them by less-than-legal means, but you knew he looked at them longingly and still did nothing about it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, always fucking everything up.”

You exhaled frustratedly through your nose. This was not going how you’d planned. It had gotten far more hostile than you’d intended. “I’m not trying to dog on you.” Though it would have been so much easier, if you were being honest. Which, you weren’t being, you knew. Being honest would have meant just telling him that you were tired of being a referred to as a possession, and how every time he brought it up, it felt like a reminder that even your pathetic high school partnership was the closest to serious you’d probably ever be able to get. “But you’re the one who brings it up like it’s a joke, not me.”

His head snapped to you, gaze torn away from the mindless packing of his gym bag. “I’m the one making a joke out of it? You’re the one who wants to act like it never even happened.”

“Because you’re the one ruining it.” You weren’t yelling, not really. But the whole thing was striking a sensitive chord that you’d never intended on even acknowledging. “You’re the one acting like I was a trophy you had and then threw away. So excuse me if I’m not looking back with fondness at being a thing.”

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.”

If he was being serious or purposefully obtuse, you weren’t sure. Realistically it could have been either. He might have trying to turn the tables on you, to move away from his nearly twenty-four hours of petulance that you were supposed to have been addressing. Or, maybe he really didn’t know that he’d been biting away at decently pleasant memories ever since he decided to try to be Steve. Maybe he was just that ignorant. And maybe you were kidding yourself in thinking he hadn’t been your first love, even if he hadn’t been the great love of your life. Yeah, you would perhaps admit in the deepest recesses of your mind, maybe that was a big part of it all. 

Regardless, it was becoming exceedingly clear that perhaps neither of you were in the proper mindset for this conversation to go anywhere. John’s ego was clearly too bruised from your brief ribbing to think of anything beyond how things affected him, and you were just… well, you supposed you’d been hurting too much about everything for far too long. 

At least you could tell Bucky you’d tried.

⊛

Another team was falling apart before your eyes, which meant you weren’t sleeping. Or, at the very least, sleeping as little as you could without being plagued by memories turned nightmares. So maybe that was why you were particularly sensitive, which was perhaps why you felt like bursting into tears all the time.

It had been a shit week, though, so you were giving yourself some grace. You’d allow yourself tears if they really wanted to come, if you even had any left. 

The tension with John had gotten worse, and now there were sides to it all. Bucky was on yours, unequivocally, always. The rest of the team flip-flopped back and forth depending wholly on mood or which one of you had pissed them off more that day. Bob was the only one who sat entirely neutral, though you were certain that the whole thing was stressing them out. And all of it was, albeit on a much smaller scale, reminding you of years ago which made the whole thing more unpleasant.

In the end, it made you wonder if you were still cut out for this.

Losing another team would break you, you were sure of it. Even if it was a patchwork team filled mostly with people who grated on your nerves like it was a full time job, losing it would break you. So, you were kind of thinking it was time to remove yourself from the situation. Retirement wouldn’t have looked so bad, if you weren’t going to be alone in all of it. 

That all being said, it had not been a good decision to think about it all in Tony’s old tower, looking to space from the spot he’d built to land the suit. Valentina had called it good optics, but you thought it was more bittersweet memory. Things had been good here, then bad, then good again, and then nothing. Now it was… well, you weren’t sure what the hell to call it because everything reminded you of something else. Everything reminded you of them and it damn near tore you to shreds.

Yeah, you were really beginning to think that you weren’t cut out for this anymore.

Bucky appeared from a dark corner as he so often did, and you weren’t sure if he was trying to joke when he asked, “Do I need to be worried about you?”

Either way, you knew it was a lie when you said, “No, just can’t sleep.”

When you looked at him, you knew that he knew you were full of shit. So, it was like that then. He sighed heavily and stretched out on the floor next to you. 

“I’m going to stay here until you talk to me.” You knew he was serious, unfortunately. You’d uttered the same words to him years ago when Steve had you and Sam chasing his tail. “Or until we decide to kill Walker.” You looked at him sideways. “I’m mostly joking. But I did catch him drinking milk out of the carton again, so.” He shrugged as best he could while horizontal.

“This is not John,” you said. At least, not entirely. Sure, the tension still grated on you, but it only really served to point out how much everything started to bother you when a single element went wrong. One piece out of place and all you could think about was everything you’d lost. “It’s— it’s this whole fucking place, Bucky. I don’t think I can be here anymore.”

“This doesn’t work without you,” he says firmly. “You leave, this whole thing falls apart like a house of cards. I’m sorry, but it’s true.” You couldn’t help but think that was bullshit, and the way you looked at Bucky conveyed as much. “I don’t do this without you. Already told you, where you go, I go.”

The worst part was you knew he would. If you left, he’d follow just like you’d stuck to him like glue after Steve left to chase happiness. Steve might have said until the end of the line, but you and Bucky were the ones holding the rope. But even though you thought the team could pull themselves together without you, you also knew they had no hope of doing the same without him. 

“I can’t lose another team,” you admitted. Even with the admission you held back. Your natural, instinctual follow-up was that it had almost killed you last time, but you knew from your time in Bob’s void that it all still haunted Bucky. He still blamed himself for splitting the Avengers. “This is too good for you— all of you, for me to ruin it with all my bullshit.”

It almost looked like Bucky was considering it, the way his brow knit together and his eyes squinted ever-so-slightly. So, it took you by surprise when the man who’d been flying by the seat of his pants so recently looked you dead in the face and said, “If you’re willing to hear me out, I have a plan.”

⊛

You did not think Bucky’s plan was a good one, nor did anyone else. When he remarked vaguely about switching some things around and off-handedly mentioned bonding, you had not expected to end up here. This was what you got for hearing him out. Goddamn fucking nonsense.

“This is elaborate joke, yes?” Alexei asked.

“I look like I’m joking to you?” Bucky asked, frowning.

“I think we all wish you were,” Ava retorted.

Yelena nodded and added, “This is going to get someone killed.”

If Bucky’s plan was to unite you all against his asinine games, he’d succeeded. Nobody was sure how he’d convinced Valentina to fork out the funds to reserve an entire camp usually used for corporate retreats, but he’d done it. It was a forked tongue of an idea, really. It got you out of the government-funded press tour that was previously scheduled, but it also meant a week with only each other doing trust falls or whatever other crap white-collar idiots did to encourage teamwork.

Despite all complaints and reservations, you all piled into the car and allowed Bucky to cart you off to the middle of nowhere, albeit entirely silently. A butterfly landing could have frayed your last nerve, which was exactly what happened when you saw a file marked cabin arrangements. It had to have been a sick joke. You had half a mind to casually remark, hey, if you wanted me dead you should have just told me, but you didn’t think he’d have taken kindly to that and you weren’t in the mood for an involuntary psychiatric hold. 

Instead you told him, “I think this violates the Geneva conventions.”

“You and Walker have the most issues,” he responded. “And you said you’d hear me out. I really think this is going to work.”

Yelena was right, this was going to get someone killed. It didn’t matter if there was an assembled team of professionals waiting to teach you how to play nice with each other, either you or John would be dead come morning. Everyone else would just have to spend the rest of the week with the corpse. At least then there’d be an even number.

Only out of respect for Bucky did you swallow your pride and stomp off to your assigned cabin with John following close behind. Otherwise, you might have started a fight then and there, but he was right: you’d promised to hear him out, even if this was the last time you’d do it. 

Your so-called cabin reminded you more of a dorm room than a woodsy vacation. It was closer-quarters than you’d been with anyone since being on the run. It was just one room with two beds on either side that you likely could have reached at the same time if you stood in the middle and stretched a little. The only comfort was indoor plumbing. You might have become immediately homicidal if there had been any mention of an outhouse.

“Gonna kill him,” John was muttering as he unpacked.

Part of you wanted to tell him to get in line, but a much bigger part of you wanted another hours-long stretch of silence. This was your life for the week, whether you liked it or not, and you wanted to keep the baseline peace for as long as possible. It was hard to do, though, when the second you’d unpacked your own belongings and decided to relax on the bed, someone was knocking at the door. A voice you didn’t recognize cheerily announced that you were to meet at the fire pit for introductions. You plotted Bucky’s slow and painful death as you forced yourself to follow orders.

Ten minutes later, you were all gathered around the unlit fire-pit looking at not just each other, but four very normal people who looked nervous just to be there. How they were supposed to help you all get chummy when they could barely look you in the eyes, you had no clue. It was the woman who you suspected had also been the one to summon you that clapped her hands together and declared you would get started. Though she seemed to be putting her best foot forward, you saw the light in her eyes dim when Yelena drily marked there was no reason for introductions because you all knew each other already.

“Well, okay,” she said with her forced smile, “how about, a fun fact about each of you!”

You could think of a glorious list of fun facts entirely centered around the torture you had in store for your so-called best friend, but you didn’t say that. Which, of course, was not to suggest that the “fun facts” to go around were not equally horrifying. Little miss sunshine was more unsettled minute by minute, and her own staff looked ready to bolt. You reiterated to only yourself, this was not going to work.

It was not working when they put you in their “state-of-the-art” escape room which lasted all of two minutes before John kicked the door open. It was not working when they had you doing child-level arts and crafts on an assembly line, which ended promptly when Ava put scissors through Alexei’s hand. And it was definitely, most certainly, absolutely not working when you were eating lunch and Bob accidentally started a food fight, not in the fun way. It was a lost cause, and it harrowed the staff.

The cheery instructor was holding on by a thread when she declared that she thought some self-reflection time was due and so sent you all off to your respective housing. You swore you saw Bucky’s eye twitch as he headed off towards his own, blissfully single accommodations. Only a few hours in and the plan was falling apart like a child’s blanket fort.

You showered mashed potatoes out of your hair, beating John to the bathroom by seconds to his great frustration. You were not reinvigorated when you emerged clean, but you at least felt less heavy. As John brushed past you on his way to his own shower, you breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of a few moments truly alone. Three hours and you were already tearing your hair out. 

For Bucky, you wanted to put your best foot forward. He was serious about leaving with you, if that was the choice you made, but that pained you. He had found something here, something that could be important and do good, and you weren’t sure if it would kill you more to stick around miserable, or to tear him away. Still, you had told him the truth that night, you weren’t sure you could do it anymore.

Miserably and embarrassingly, a dam broke inside and you burst into tears at the exact moment John exited the briefest shower in human history. He looked at you alarmed and you promptly squeezed your eyes as tight as you could. Perhaps if you couldn’t see him, you could pretend it wasn’t happening at all. If he hadn’t been there hovering, waiting for who knows what, you maybe could have, but he did. John stood there statuesque in exactly the same way he had when you were teenagers, always unsure what to do when you cried. 

“Jesus,” he breathed. “The hell did I do now?”

You wanted to scream that not everything was about him, that you’d been miserable long before he ever reentered your life but there was no space in your lungs left to do so. Which meant you just sat there heaving sobs in front of the last person you ever wanted to show a vulnerable bone in your body. If he wanted to see you beaten down by life to feel good about himself, you were certainly giving him the show.

He took you back to high school again, which was both humiliating and a horrifying comfort. He’d never known what to do while you cried, but he’d certainly had a routine for after. You weren’t sure where he got the water bottle that he thrust into your hands ten minutes later, nor did you notice him disappear into the bathroom again for a toilet-paper sub for tissue, but he had. The whole time you shook while you cleaned yourself up and rehydrated so thoroughly you felt like puking, he sat on the floor with his back against your bed, radiating body heat against your leg without touching.

Then he asked you what he always had, and it still sounded like it pained him just like before, “Do you want to talk about it?”

No. You thought you wanted to die, really. You thought that maybe Bucky had needed to worry. And you were thinking that John was still a better man than you gave him credit for, despite all the space and time. Horrifying discover after horrifying discovery. Why you admitted the truth to him you’d probably never know. Why he shared the same would always make you wonder.

“I think I don’t want to be here anymore,” you said, cracking through chesty mucus that had settled in your lungs. The look on his face suggested he knew you didn’t just mean the cabin or trip. Soft eyes, like the very idea of it haunted him even though he shouldn’t have cared any less. It wouldn’t have removed the feather of you from his cap. He still could claim it: I had her. What a shame things went the way they did… It should not have mattered to him. He’d never given you any indication it would.

“I think,” you continued, “that almost everyone I’ve ever loved is dead or gone, and I’m wondering why I didn’t end up there too. So fuck you for thinking it’s you I’m crying over. I was miserable before you. I’ll be miserable after.”

He invoked again through a sigh and rose. “I’m going to go get Bucky.”

Your hand shot out and gripped his wrist as tight as you could. It wouldn’t bruise a super-soldier but he got the point. “You get Bucky and I’ll kill you, John.”

That would be the last straw. Bucky saw you like this and everything would be a goner. He was your best friend, and he’d do anything in the world for you, which made it so damn hard for you to do everything in your power for him. Bucky would never know.

“You’re goddamn demented, you know.” He relented despite what seemed to be protestation. “Fuckin’ crazy. Threatening to put me in the ground for trying to help you.”

“Fuck you,” you repeated, heatless and bland but all you had. “You aren’t helping shit.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying here, baby.”

If you had anything left to give besides the barest of oxygen in your lungs, you might have cried all over again. You could imagine clawing at him for having the audacity to call you that, accident or not, but your very bones denied it. Something must have leeched the calcium right out of them, the way you might have buckled if you had been standing. All while your blood was turning to sludge in your veins, John Walker muttered the first apology you’d maybe ever heard from him. Force of habit, he added, like the last time he had any right to say something like that wasn’t years ago.

There was a stretch of silence that could have been hours for all you knew. There were knocks on the door that you both ignored for some reason you’d never be able to explain. There was probably a search party underfoot, but it all seemed deeply inconsequential. At some point, you’d drawn your knees up to your chest, and he’d ended up next to you. Just the barest brushing of skin.

“I want this to work,” you admitted against all better judgment. “For Bucky. For me. I miss having people to rely on. I always liked having people in my corner.”

“I’m getting divorced,” he offered, a piece of his hurt for yours. “Liv might let me see my son. She had some real choice words when I called. So, I guess it would be nice to have some people in my corner, too.”

A real pretty picture to paint, to be sure. Far from being possible just because you decided there was really nothing left to lose. Even so, there was nothing left to do but try. 

⊛

So maybe Bucky Barnes was some kind of closet genius.

It was a bit like puzzle pieces clicking when you decided to give it a real go. You still wanted to kill John sometimes. A lot of the time. Maybe even most of the time. But you’d looked straight into each others’ gooey centers, and that would have changed things for anyone.

When you asked where the hell a plan like his had even come from, Bucky admitted it had been far more Sam than it had him. Couple’s counseling, he’d remarked which had explained a number of disappearances he’d previously left up for debate, we’d been going for a while, and when I was telling him he said it was too bad I couldn’t make everyone go. So I found a way. You’d just smiled and said, Fucking weird plan, Buck. You couldn’t deny the results though.

The next time you caught yourself gazing up at the stars recounting what you’d once had, it was John that joined you instead of Bucky. For the first time in a long time, it didn’t leave you with a bone-deep pain to talk about what had been. You grew to understand how Bucky held no resentment to Steve for chasing his own peace, even if it meant leaving forever. It didn’t freeze you to the bone to tell someone, even if it was him, that Yelena was reminding you more and more of Natasha with each passing day. It no longer felt like pulling teeth when you admitted that sometimes when you had a drink at the bar you thought about Tony. Now, when you looked at the sky you wished Thor only the best, rather than cursing him for leaving you for so long. Sometimes, John would tell you about his son and you’d smile for Bruce and Clint. 

Part of you recoiled when he echoed Bucky’s words to you. “I need to be worried about you?”

“Nah,” you said, the truth this time. “I’m… solid. Putting in the work. Therapy, medication, all that jazz.” It being mandatory now was only about half the reason you still visited a professional weekly. “I’m doing good, I think.” John repeated good several times as he nodded mostly to himself. You turned it on him. “I gotta be worried about you?”

At that, he shook his head. He echoed your sentiment about putting in the work at mandatory therapy. He was solid too, good even, practically verging on great. His fingers brushed yours as he explained he was having his first unsupervised visit with his son. Not at the tower, nowhere near the tower if he could help it. Not that it was a trust thing, he made sure to add hastily. He thought that maybe there would be a day he could show his son what “work” was now, just not so soon. You were genuinely glad for him all while ignoring a pesky blooming warmth in your chest at a tentative grasp of hands.

John Walker still had roots in you, that was certain, and you had a feeling you had a home somewhere in his ribcage too. 

“We were best friends once,” he remarked sometime after your pulse had stopped thrumming in your ears. “Think it could happen again?”

A small smile broke through very thin resistance, and you hummed for what seemed to be dramatic affect. “Spot’s taken… think I might have something else in mind for you, if you’re up for the challenge.”

Clasped hands raised, lips meet the inside of your wrist, your pulse flutters again. “Up for anything, baby.”