kindleofhope - Tumblr blog

kindleofhope · 6 days ago

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when the sun hits (it matters where you are)

pairing: bucky barnes x emergency room nurse!reader summary: it’s your name, written in the soft fog of his breath. and his name, traced endlessly across your skin. you've always been meant to cross paths this way. (soulmate au!) word count: 11.4k words content warnings: 18+ mdni, fem reader, praising, piv, overstimulation, shower sex, creampie, face riding, dirty talk, ungodly levels of yearning, mentions of violence and clinical situations, death, explores heavy themes

You’ve gotten very good at waking up without hope over the years.

Your alarm goes off at 4:48 a.m. because you refuse to wake up on the hour like everyone else. It’s a small rebellion—pointless, probably, but in a life built from shifts and protocol, those twelve minutes feel like something you own.

The soulmark itches before you even lift the blankets. You don’t touch it. Haven’t in years. It rests on your left side, just under the ribs, where your arm folds when you cradle a patient or scrub blood from your skin. The name’s still there. James Buchanan Barnes. Etched like a brand.

You learned to stop reading it a long time ago.

You were thirteen the first time you felt it — not the weight of it, not really, but the press of inevitability. The skin just under your ribs itched for three days straight, and no matter how you scratched, how you pressed cold washcloths to it or distracted yourself with school or swimming or the terrifying newness of puberty, it pulsed with the promise of something you couldn’t name.

"Maybe you're allergic to something," your mom said, more distracted than concerned, passing you a bottle of calamine lotion while balancing a phone call.

Then, the name came in the middle of the night.

You’d woken up disoriented, not from a nightmare exactly, but from the sense that something had shifted. That your body was no longer just your own.

You pulled up your pajama shirt with trembling hands, stomach flipped inside out with something like fear. Or awe. And there it was, written in a careful, antique script like it had always been there — James Buchanan Barnes.

You said it out loud. Just once. Just to see if it sounded real.

The next morning, you pretended to look up World War II details for an eighth-grade project. Typed his name into Google with fingers that wouldn't stop shaking.

This—this definitely wasn't what you were expecting. You were expecting someone… someone at least closer in age, someone who was maybe going through the same strenuous expectations of middle school, someone… someone who was alive.

It was underwhelming at first. Just a name. A war vet. Deceased. You didn't think you'd find him so easily. You spiraled past Wikipedia into forums your school firewall probably would’ve blocked if they knew what they were doing. You dug deeper. Wikipedia spiraled into conspiracy forums. Articles turned into footnotes, turned into theories, turned into pictures. Redacted documents. Old photographs.

That was when your chest started to ache.

He wasn’t a boy.

He wasn’t even a man in the way people are alive.

He was history, frozen in sepia. James Buchanan Barnes, colloquially know as Bucky, a soldier, missing in action. You found an old black-and-white photo with him half smiling in uniform, arm slung casually around the Captain America's shoulders, and your throat closed like you’d been punched from the inside. Because he looked real. Not just an idea, not just a ghost.

And you loved him. You didn’t mean to. But there it was.

That summer, you begged your parents to take you to D.C. "For the exhibits," you said. "The history. Please."

You cried in the car. Your mom reached back and handed you a bottle of water. “Carsick?” she asked.

"Yeah," you lied, watching trees blur past as the pit in your stomach grew deeper.

At the Smithsonian, your eyes scanned every exhibit like you were searching for a face in a crowd. You found him in a war display—just a photo, again. Yellowed and framed. A plaque. Sergeant Barnes. You stood there too long. An older woman beside you glanced over, then away, probably confused as to why this pre-teen was staring at the display with such fervent intensity.

You didn’t touch your mark.

Not there. Not in public. But you felt it, a phantom pulse echoing under your ribs. Like it knew. Like it missed him too.

That was the first time you understood what it meant to lose something before you ever had it. To mourn a future that could never come.

That summer, you grieved a stranger.

The rest of those months passed in a fog. Friends talked about boy bands and sleepaway camps and the boy from seventh grade who cried during dodgeball. You started reading old war journals and relics and Stark experiments just to feel closer to a time you’d missed. By the start of the school year, you'd already gone through your U.S. History syllabus and back.

At night, you lay awake imagining what it would’ve been like to meet him before the fall. What you’d say. If he’d be kind. If he’d recognize you.

If he’d regret it.

By sixteen, you had your mind made up. Not because you wanted to save people—though you did—but because it felt like the only thing that made sense. Something tethered. Something present. You’d learned how to triage your own feelings, how to hold grief without crumbling under it. ER nursing made too much sense. You wanted the immediacy. The clarity of purpose. The adrenaline to chase out the what-ifs.

You told your guidance counselor it was about the job stability.

You didn’t say that you needed a life that moved fast enough to keep you from looking back.

You got good at it. Fast. Precise. Reliable. The type of person they called first when a kid came in coding, when someone’s chest had to be cracked open at bedside. You learned how to operate under pressure. How to compartmentalize. You learned to move toward chaos, not away from it.

And eventually, you stopped looking at the name. Not because it faded—it never did—but because it became too familiar. Like a scar. Like an old story you didn’t tell anymore, because no one would believe it.

Because you hardly believed it yourself.

You peel yourself out of bed, step into the shower. The water doesn’t stay hot for long, but you don’t need it to. You just need enough heat to convince your muscles to move, your brain to stop stalling. The morning ritual is muscle memory now: shampoo, rinse, conditioner (leave-in), scrub your face, try not to look at yourself too closely. By the time you’re dressed and out the door, you’ve spoken zero words and swallowed two ibuprofen with the stale dregs of yesterday’s coffee.

The drive to the hospital is quiet, but not peaceful.

The city’s in that strange twilight lull between night and morning, where the drunks have staggered home and the nine-to-fivers haven’t yet left their beds. It feels like a ghost town with too many ghosts. Some days, you swear the silence carries weight. Residual grief, maybe.

You park in the far corner of the lot because the closer spaces are already claimed by the truly unwell—nurses who never go home, residents who sleep in call rooms, attendings who live to round. You used to be like them. You’ve grown out of the martyrdom. Or maybe you’ve just run out of energy to perform it.

The hospital doesn’t smell like death, not exactly. It smells like ammonia and latex and that synthetic lemon cleaner that’s supposed to mask the rest. You wave to the front desk nurse, badge in, and clock your shift the way you have every day for the last six years.

Your soulmark is never mentioned. Not because people don’t see it, though you keep it hidden well, but because no one talks about soulmarks anymore. It’s passé. Soulmate matching used to be romantic. Now it’s considered a statistical liability. There are support groups for people like you, sure, but they mostly spiral into grief therapy and long-winded self-help monologues. You tried one once. A woman wept about her soulmate dying in Sokovia. Another talked about her mark changing. Yours never did.

Soulmate politics are complicated now. Too many anomalies. Too many cases like yours.

There’s a thread on Reddit dedicated to soulmarks tied to dangerous people. Super soldiers. Villains. Politically gray mercenaries. Your name—his name—comes up sometimes. You don’t engage. You lurk. Scroll through the comments. Watch strangers try to figure out what they’d do if it were them.

The consensus always boils down to one thing: If your soulmate is a killer, you have a moral obligation to reject the bond.

You don’t know if you agree. You don’t know if you disagree either.

Most days, you just ignore it.

Your shift starts like any other. A stabbing. A toddler with a fever. An elderly man who doesn’t remember how he got here. The trauma bay gets two back-to-back ambulance drop-offs, both from the same freeway accident. The paramedics hand off a broken woman in pieces. You get her on oxygen. You get her to CT. You get her prepped for surgery. You don’t think about her name, or her face, or what might’ve been the last thing she said.

You think about the steps. You think about the chart.

This is what makes you good at your job.

You care. You just don’t let it show anymore.

Lunchtime—if you can dignify that title with a limp vending machine sandwich and fifteen minutes of couch—is spent in the staff lounge, watching reruns of The Great British Bake Off with the volume off. The man on screen is assembling an architectural sponge cake. You feel emotionally invested. Mostly because you think it might collapse.

One of your colleagues—Zoya, you think, though you’ve never quite decided if you like her or not—slides onto the couch beside you with the weary grace of someone who’s been on her feet for nine hours. She’s got a protein bar in one hand and her phone in the other.

“I read the polls,” she says, chewing like the bar personally insulted her. “People are actually fired up this time around.”

You hum in response. Noncommittal. You don’t take the bait.

“They say Barnes is running for Congress,” she adds casually, eyes flicking sideways toward you. “That surprises me. Who woulda thought?”

You don’t blink. Don’t flinch. Just peel a piece of lettuce off your sandwich like it’s offended you. “Guess being an Avenger's not the high-paying career it used to be.”

Zoya snorts. “Seriously. You think he’s for real?”

You lift one shoulder. “I think I’ve seen stranger things on C-SPAN.”

She lets out a low whistle. “Still wild, though. Imagine finding out your soulmate is, like… that guy.”

You glance at her. Smile. Tight. Unreadable. “Yeah,” you say. “Imagine.”

She doesn’t press. You both go back to watching a woman on screen cry over underbaked choux pastry.

It’s easy now. Easier than it used to be. Pretending he doesn’t matter. Pretending you don’t know his voice by heart. Don’t remember the way your mark burned that day in the laundromat. Don’t still check the news for his name the way other people check the weather. It’s a skill.

And like all your best skills, it was learned the hard way.

When you get home that night, your legs ache, and your stomach hurts from too much caffeine and not enough food. You drop your bag on the couch, toe off your shoes, and stand in the middle of your kitchen for ten full seconds trying to remember what it means to rest.

Your phone buzzes on the counter. A missed call. Your ex. You don’t call back.

Instead, you go to the sink, wash your hands out of habit, and glance down at the faint outline of the mark under your scrub top.

You trace it, just once. Not enough to mean anything.

Just enough to remember that it’s still there.

You were twenty-four when you first saw his face in motion. In reality.

It was a Tuesday. You remember because it was your one day off that month, and you’d spent most of it in a laundromat trying to get the smell of bile and bleach out of your scrubs. You were curled up on the plastic bench by the window, still damp from rain, watching a battered flatscreen overhead.

BREAKING NEWS: GLOBAL MANHUNT UNDERWAY FOR FORMER SOVIET ASSASSIN.

You didn’t flinch when the words came up. At first, they didn’t mean anything. But then the photo appeared, grainy and indistinct—a security cam freeze-frame. Dark jacket, metal arm, face caught mid-motion.

There he was. James Buchanan Barnes.

You felt it like a punch. Air gone. Sound sucked from the room. Your hands tightened around a bottle of Tide.

They said he bombed the Vienna International Centre. Killed a king. Injured dozens. Your brain refused the narrative, but not because you knew better. You didn’t. It was just … incongruent. Cognitive dissonance. You couldn’t square the name on your skin with the cold, feral man on the screen. But that didn’t stop you from watching.

You didn’t leave the laundromat. You sat there long after your clothes finished drying. Hours, maybe. Absorbing every second of the footage. Reading every chyron.

You watched the raw surveillance clips when they hit the web—him running, being chased, fighting like something born in a lab. Like something not quite real.

And then, all at once, the world tilted.

He was real.

Not a myth. Not a name in a book or a mark burned into your side to haunt you. Real. He was breathing the same air, walking the same crumbling sidewalks, looking over his shoulder beneath the same indifferent sky. There was this thrumming under your skin—louder than your heartbeat, sharper than breath—that said he's alive. Not long-dead. Not lost to time. But here. On this earth. Behind your eyes. And somehow, you had to keep living like that wasn’t the most destabilizing fact you’d ever known.

You memorized the cadence of how people said his name.

At some point, you realized you were shaking.

That week, your mother called, like she always did. You didn’t tell her. She asked how work was. You said fine. She asked if you’d seen the news. You said you hadn’t.

You started keeping your left side covered, even in the shower.

In the weeks that followed, he became a name everyone knew. The Winter Soldier. The media dug up every blurry photo from seventy years of history, every CIA leak, every whisper in a dossier. You catalogued them without meaning to. It wasn’t obsession. Not exactly. It was survival.

Then came the reveal: it wasn’t him. Not exactly. Not only him.

Mind control, they said. Brainwashed. Hydra.

You read the words like they were gospel. Like they explained something they didn’t. Like they offered you absolution by proxy. You hated that you wanted to believe it so badly. You hated how much of yourself you saw in the hollow of his eyes when he was caught on camera again—restrained, confused, a man unraveling.

You hated that you understood it.

Then came the Blip.

The morning the sky broke, you were in trauma bay three with a man who’d been impaled on a metal pipe. You blinked, and he was gone. Just … gone. The pipe, slick with his blood, clanged against the floor, still warm. Your brain froze. Your hands kept moving.

Your friend Ashley vanished mid-joke during lunch break. Half your ER staff was gone by the end of the day. You worked thirteen more hours without blinking. You only remembered bits—someone screaming in the stairwell. Someone trying to break into the pharmacy. A girl with burns and no parents left to consent to treatment. You remember the air smelling like copper and panic. The vending machines ran out by day two.

When you finally got home, your building was quiet. Too quiet. The streets were deserted, eerie and raw like the aftermath of a dream you couldn't fully wake up from. Someone had looted the gas station across the street. You stepped over broken glass to get inside.

You turned on the TV. Sat down on the floor. Let the flickering images wash over you in silence. Aerial shots of cars abandoned mid-commute. Apartment buildings full of empty beds. Hospitals choked with the chaos of subtraction.

Then his name came up. Just for a moment. In a reel of the missing.

James Buchanan Barnes. Missing. Presumed dust. It seems like the world would never get tired of those three words recurring in your life like a sick joke, like a sucker punch.

You knew it before they even confirmed it. Knew it in your bones. The soulmark burned for days after. A phantom itch. A psychic scream. You whispered to the room, “No. No, no, no—”

You didn’t go to work the day they called it. That he was gone. That it wasn’t speculation anymore.

You called out sick, which you never did. Stayed under the covers with your curtains drawn and your phone turned facedown. You didn’t cry. Not in the way that would’ve felt cathartic. There was no release. Just weight. A steady pressure under your sternum, like your lungs were packed too tight with silence.

Grief like that doesn’t come all at once. It drips. Slow. Insidious. A lifetime’s worth of maybes collecting in your throat.

You tried to tell yourself he wasn’t yours.

That you didn’t know him.

That the mark didn’t mean anything.

That you didn’t feel the loss like your own skin folding in on itself.

But you stopped wearing crop tops after that. Stopped sleeping on your left side. Stopped reading the news altogether, because every time they mentioned his name—even in passing—it felt like someone reaching inside your chest to twist the knife, just to see if you’d bleed.

Your friends thought you were just burned out. Work was hard. Everyone was struggling.

“Have you tried meditating?” someone asked once.

“Have you tried shutting the fuck up?” you almost said. Instead you smiled. Said you were fine. You let them believe it.

You threw yourself into the ER. Picked up extra shifts. Took on the worst cases. Became the one they called for the ugly ones—the resuscitations that didn’t work, the organ donors, the impossible parents waiting for bad news. It gave your hands something to do. Gave your grief a mask.

You were so good at pretending you didn’t care that even you started to believe it.

But sometimes, on the drive home—when the city was too quiet and the sky too empty—you caught yourself glancing at the passenger seat like someone should be there. Like you’d forgotten to pick him up.

You imagined what he’d be like. Not the soldier. Not the assassin. Not the man they called the Winter Soldier like he was myth, not bone.

Just… a person.

Would he have been quiet in the mornings? Would he have let you take the last piece of toast? Would he have liked dogs? Would he have hated how sterile hospitals feel? Would he have looked at you like your name was written on him, too?

The mark never faded. You used to check. Stupidly. Desperately. You read somewhere once that when a soulmate dies, the mark vanishes. But yours didn’t. Not even a little. It stayed sharp. Clear. Unforgiving.

You don’t know if that made it better or worse.

All you knew was this: it didn’t matter if the world called him a ghost. He was real to you.

And he was gone.

And you had to go to work tomorrow, like none of it ever mattered.

Time passed. You got used to the silence.

Then, five years later, he came back.

Just like that.

No fanfare. No press release. Just a name in a sea of billions. Alive again. Somewhere in the world.

You didn’t sleep for three days after that either.

He resurfaced differently this time. Tactically invisible. Not a headline anymore. Then, out of nowhere—a year or two later—he announced his candidacy for Congress.

You nearly laughed. Not because it was funny. But because it felt so surreal, so absurdly mundane, that your brain short-circuited. It had been three back-to-back 12-hour night shifts. Your scrubs still smelled faintly of antiseptic and vending machine coffee. Your eyes burned. Your feet hurt. And there he was—your mark, your ghost—printed five feet tall next to a mattress ad.

You stared. Read the copy three times. Just to be sure it wasn’t a hallucination.

You told yourself not to look him up. Then you got home and did it anyway.

His campaign site was minimal. No donation pop-ups, no splashy endorsements. Just a simple landing page, a schedule of town halls, and a single embedded video labeled Why I’m Running.

You clicked play.

It started with silence. Then the low rasp of his voice, steadier now, filled your apartment.

“I’m not here to pretend I’ve always done the right thing,” he said. “I’m not here to sell redemption. Just accountability. I’ve seen what happens when systems break, when good people fall through the cracks. And I believe we can build better.”

There were no slogans. No party jargon. Just him, seated on a worn bench near a city garden, hair shorter than you remembered, jaw shadowed with a few days’ growth. Still armored, but softer. Realer. He didn’t mention soulmarks. Or the war. Or the weight of being a name that history couldn’t agree on.

But he didn’t need to.

You watched the video twice. Then again the next night.

And you didn’t vote for him.

You didn’t vote against him either.

You just… waited. Watched. Tracked the polls like you were taking a patient’s vitals. Checked for signs of movement. Hoped it wouldn’t all combust before the finish line.

When he won by 6.4%, you sat in your dark apartment, phone lit in your palm, and felt something in your chest go still. Not relief. Not pride. Just… a strange, anchored kind of knowing.

He was out there. Alive. Choosing something. Choosing this.

And somehow, that meant something to you, too.

You still don’t talk about it. But every so often, you read the transcripts from his interviews. You pretend it’s because he talks about legislation affecting healthcare infrastructure. It isn’t.

You’ve never reached out. Never driven past one of his town halls. Never liked a single post.

But you know which office he holds. You know the hours of his community clinic situated right by the VA. You know what color his suit was the day he was sworn in.

The name on your ribs has not changed. It probably never will.

And maybe he’s never thought of you at all.

It starts with a nosebleed.

You’re just off shift. Third one this week. Your badge is clipped to your hip, your hands smell like latex and soap, and your brain is somewhere between REM and resignation. You’re half-waiting for the crosswalk light to change when you see a man slump against the side of the public library and slide down like his bones have given up.

At first, you think: drunk. Happens more than you’d like to admit, and it's Brooklyn you're talking about. But then you see the way his hand curls against his thigh—controlled, but shaky—and the tight set of his jaw. His suit is immaculate. Not a homeless guy. Not a junkie. And that look on his face? That’s not intoxication.

That’s pain.

You cross the street. Instinct before thought.

“Hey,” you call, crouching near him. “You okay?”

He looks up. There’s a beat—half-second, maybe less—where neither of you speaks. His eyes are blue. Really blue. And he’s not just handsome, he’s specific. Recognizable in a way that drops into your stomach like a lead weight.

You know who he is. You've spent half your life committing him to memory, watching him coming and going like a revolving door.

Selfishly, instinctively, you can't help but glance down at his left hand—covered by a glove. He notices, shifting slightly, uncomfortably.

Finally, he blinks. “I’m—yeah. Fine.”

“That’s a lie,” you say, because you’re too tired to be polite. “You’re about to pass out. I’m guessing low blood sugar. Maybe dehydration.”

He breathes through his nose like it’s an old habit, like he’s used to being clocked and is choosing not to bristle. “I was just at a council meeting. Forgot to eat.”

“Drink anything?”

“Two coffees and a Red Bull.”

You stare at him. “Jesus Christ.”

His mouth twitches. Just barely. “I didn’t say it was a good idea.”

You glance around. It’s midday. Plenty of foot traffic, but no one’s stopped to help him. Of course not. Most people pretend not to see, even if he's a U.S. representative who's helped save the world a handful of times. New Yorkers have learned to mind their own business these past couple of years.

“Alright, Mr. Barnes,” you say, because you don’t want to say James or Bucky, not the name etched on your skin. “Can you stand up?”

He lifts an eyebrow. “You know who I am?”

You consider lying. “Yeah.”

His expression doesn’t change, but something in him goes still. A readjustment. Like he’s running probabilities behind the curtain of his eyes.

“And you still came over,” he says.

“Don’t take it personally. It's my civic duty; I’d help a mediocre politician too if they were about to eat pavement.”

A snort. Then, with the faintest tilt of his head: “Lucky me.”

You help him to his feet. He leans on the wall. Doesn’t quite use you for balance, though you think he might want to. You guide him into the nearest air-conditioned bodega and deposit him on a bench near the pharmacy counter. Buy two bottles of Gatorade and a protein bar. You don’t ask for reimbursement.

He drinks like it hurts to swallow. Like he’s out of practice with kindness.

“Thanks,” he says. Eventually.

You nod, sitting on the far end of the bench. “You should probably have a handler.”

“I do,” he says dryly. “She left five minutes before I remembered I hadn’t eaten.”

You glance at him sidelong. “So what, she’s in the wind?”

“Texted her,” he replies. “Told her I was fine.”

“You always lie to the people trying to keep you alive?”

Something flickers at that—too fast to name. “Sometimes.”

A silence settles. Not uncomfortable, exactly. But charged.

You glance down at your hands, then back at him. “Do you get nosebleeds a lot?”

“Not usually.”

“Good. If it starts again, you’re going to the hospital.”

His smile this time is faint, but real. He takes a glance at your scrubs, gears turning in his head. “You work there?”

“Yeah.”

“Doctor?”

“Nurse.”

He gives a little hum. “Makes sense.”

You frown. “Why?”

“Because you didn’t flinch.”

The statement lands oddly. “New Yorkers don’t usually flinch at guys hunched against the wall mid-day.”

“Not that,” he says. “Me.”

You meet his gaze. Don’t look away. “Well. Maybe they should.”

He stares at you for a long moment. You get the sense he’s parsing something. Not calculating. Listening. Not just to what you said, but how you said it.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” he says.

You open your mouth. Then close it.

And for the first time in your life, you think: If I tell him, he’ll know.

You’re not sure what scares you more. Him knowing. Or him not.

He notices the hesitation. His eyes drop—unintentionally, you think—toward your ribs. Just a flicker.

You say, quietly, “Don’t do that.”

He nods once. Doesn’t ask again.

Another moment passes. You hand him the rest of the protein bar.

He doesn’t say thank you again. He just eats it.

Eventually, he stands. A little steadier now. You watch him check his phone. You think he might offer to walk you somewhere, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he looks at you like he’s memorizing something. Then:

“You know,” he says, “there was a time I thought she’d be dead.”

Your heart skips.

You try to sound normal. “Who?”

He doesn’t smile. Not this time. Just studies your face.

“My soulmate.”

You freeze.

“Figured she’d died during the Blip,” he continues. “Or worse. Thought I felt it. But I came back and the mark was still there. So. Who knows.”

You inhale slowly. “What would you have done if it was gone?”

“Moved on,” he says.

You nod. Try to play it off. “That easy, huh?”

“No.” His voice drops a register. “But I would’ve had to.”

Silence again. He exhales. Checks the time. Nods once.

“Well,” he says. “Thanks for saving me from an embarrassing death outside a library.”

You stand too. “Wasn’t gonna let a congressman die on my watch, Mr. Barnes."

He gives a lopsided smile, and suddenly, you see a flicker of that man you saw in the Smithsonian all those years ago. “Call me Bucky. I'm just a guy, today.”

Then, softer: “See you around.”

You don’t say anything. Just watch him go.

When you finally look down at your ribs, you expect the name to be glowing or bleeding or something dramatic.

It isn’t.

It’s just there. Quiet. Permanent.

You don’t see Bucky again for months. He's gone from James Buchanan Barnes to Bucky, and it feels like foreign territory.

Not in person.

You follow his trajectory the way you follow the weather—warily, with one eye on the exit. A year into being entrenched in politics, and he gets pulled into a team, a superhero one, nonetheless. The new Avengers become a household name, or something close to it. You don’t pay for the streams, but you hear the headlines. They’re sent in to handle things that the rest of the government won’t touch. Places too messy. People too expendable.

Their first mission didn't have a name. Just a black void on every screen.

For New York, it was basically another Tuesday.

It starts mid-shift.

You’re in the middle of helping intubate someone when the power flickers—just once, like the building’s held its breath. Everyone stops. Monitors beep a half-second late. The trauma bay lights blink. Then come back. Then cut out again.

You keep your hands steady. Overhead, a resident says, “Is it just us?”

Someone else says, “No, it’s the whole block.”

And then your phone buzzes.

Not a call. A national alert.

EMERGENCY ALERT: ANOMALOUS EVENT IN PROGRESS. SEEK SHELTER.

You finish the procedure anyway. You don’t panic. You don’t run. You switch to battery-powered floodlights and keep your mask on. That’s the thing about being on the inside when the world starts to fall apart. You don’t get to pause.

Outside, the sky changes. It turns the color of old bruises. A gash opens above the skyline—wide, black, impossibly still. Something like a mouth. Something worse.

They call it the Void later. You never see it in person. Not really. You just feel the air change, the pressure drop. You feel the way every patient suddenly stops bleeding. The way everyone holds their breath.

And then, hours later, the lights flicker back on.

The void collapses into itself like it was never there.

And just like that, you keep working.

Afterward, the news trickles in. Bucky was there. Of course he was. He and the others were part of whatever last-ditch plan got the void to close. Whatever sacrifices were made, they’re classified. What isn’t: the look on his face when they put him on the podium afterward.

You watch it from the break room, over a vending machine lunch.

The new Avengers are announced. Not the old guard. A stitched-together lineup of whoever’s left, whoever didn’t run, whoever’s willing to keep showing up.

Bucky stands at the edge of the stage.

He looks like a man being honored at his own funeral.

You watch the broadcast until it ends.

You don’t say a word.

Two weeks later, you run into him again. And it’s so dumb, so ordinary, you don’t even realize what’s happening until you’ve already said yes.

You’re coming out of the pharmacy with three days’ worth of migraine pills and a jug of Pedialyte, and he’s just… there. Baseball cap, dark coat, looking like he hasn’t shaved in a week. The glove's off, his metal hand shining under the sterile lights. He spots you before you spot him.

“Hey,” he says, not quite surprised. “Funny seeing you here.”

You squint. “You okay?”

“I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

You glance down at the bag in your hand. “Pharmacy run.”

He nods. “I’m heading to get coffee. Want one?”

You open your mouth. Pause. And then, God help you, you say, “Yeah. Sure.”

You don’t talk about the void.

You talk about everything but.

The café is half-empty. He orders a black coffee and a lemon poppy seed muffin like someone trying to prove they’re still human. You ask for a chai. He insists on paying.

You sit across from each other, not touching. Not leaning. But there’s something in the air between you—charged, familiar. Like a room you’ve walked into before in a dream.

“Still at the hospital?” he asks.

“Yeah. We don’t really get to retire. Or take vacations.”

“That’s a shame.”

You shrug. “It’s a calling. Or a curse. Not sure.”

“I know the feeling.”

You sip your chai. He breaks the muffin in half and doesn’t eat it.

There’s a pause. Then—

“You never told me your name,” he says again. Not quite a question.

You watch him. Something in your chest thuds like recognition.

You set your cup down.

“I didn’t think you wanted it.”

He blinks. “Why wouldn’t I?”

You glance at the window, at the people outside walking past like none of this matters. Like the world didn’t almost end. Like the two of you aren’t teetering on some invisible edge.

“I don’t know,” you say finally. “Because you didn’t press.”

He doesn’t speak for a second. Just watches you, something gentle and old in his eyes.

Then he smiles. Soft. A little tired.

“Because I wanted you to give it when you were ready.”

The silence between you shifts. Not heavier. Just realer.

You say your name.

It fills the air between you like a quiet truth.

He breathes it in like it means something.

“Can I see you again?” he asks.

Your throat tightens. But your voice stays steady.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think you can.”

You don’t say anything as you leave the café. Just nod goodbye and let the door close between you. But later, when you replay the afternoon in your mind, it lingers. The quiet between words. The fact that he didn’t ask to see the mark. That he didn’t flinch.

The fact that when you said your name, it felt like exhaling. You don’t expect to see him again so soon. Not really.

But you do.

Twice that week, by accident.

First, it's after an especially gruelling night shift. The sun's barely even peeking through the trees yet, and you're covered in miscellaneous bodily fluids and there's bags under your eyes that weigh you down. Outside the bodega near your building, where you planned on getting bread and bananas and off-brand electrolyte packets. He’s coming out with a six-pack of seltzer and one of those microwave dinners that scream I-don’t-trust-a-stove as you're coming in. You nod at each other, and, looking down at your scrubs and your state, he asks if you just got done.

You nod. "Every Tuesday at 7 AM."

He asks how your shift went. You lie and say easy. He doesn’t call you on it.

The second time, you’re on a park bench halfway through a sandwich you don’t want, getting some much-needed air during your lunch break when a shadow falls across your lap.

It’s him, in jeans and a threadbare henley, hair mussed like he slept wrong. It's oddly domestic. You resist the urge to tuck a stray strand behind his ear. “Didn’t take you for a turkey club kind of girl,” he says, like this is the kind of thing you’ve always talked about. You offer him half without thinking. He takes it.

It’s not every day. Not even often. But you start to spot him in places you never used to. On the corner outside the pharmacy. At the edge of the farmer’s market. Once in the hallway of the clinic where you pick up your medical license renewal. He doesn’t make it obvious. He doesn’t insert himself. But he’s there.

And slowly, without meaning to, you start looking for him.

There’s a night when the ER is chaos and the weather is worse and your body is vibrating with exhaustion. Your car's given out on you. You miss your bus. You consider calling an Uber, then don’t. You’re standing under the overhang by the staff entrance, shivering in your scrubs, scrolling your phone for nothing in particular, when headlights sweep across your shoes and stop.

A car idles. Familiar. Black. Out of place like a shadow with wheels.

You squint into the window, and of course, it’s him. “Stalking me?”

He straightens, just a little. “You said your shift ended at seven.”

“I did,” you say slowly, walking toward him. “Didn’t mean it was an invitation.”

His mouth twitches. “Consider it a standing offer.”

You glance at the car, then back at him. “You gonna tell me how you got a vehicle this inconspicuous, or is that classified?”

He opens the passenger door. “Perks of being an Avenger.”

You eye him. “Is this kidnapping?”

“If it is, it’s the most considerate kidnapping ever. I brought snacks.”

You get in.

It becomes a habit after that.

That’s the first ride.

It becomes a habit. Not a routine, exactly. That would suggest he comes at the same time, says the same thing, follows a pattern. He doesn’t. He’s unpredictable in the way thunderstorms are—sudden, insistent, quietly necessary. He’s just… there. Enough times that your coworkers start raising eyebrows. Enough times that you stop pretending it’s odd.

You don’t talk about the soulmark. Not directly.

But you talk about other things.

The price of gas. The merits of different hospital coffee. He tells you, offhandedly, that he used to hate mornings until he had to start facing them at 5 a.m. with a loaded weapon. You tell him you’ve delivered twins in a supply closet. Neither of you laughs, but the air warms between you.

One evening, he brings you tea instead of coffee. He says it’s because you looked like you hadn’t slept. You want to ask how he knew. You don’t.

You get used to the way his presence takes up space. Quietly. Without pushing. You start saving podcasts to share. You start to notice the way his metal hand rests against the gearshift like he’s forgotten it’s not flesh.

He learns your tells. Which sigh means you’re burned out and which means you’re hungry. He doesn’t always talk, but he listens better than most people speak.

And slowly—terrifyingly—you start to want him to be there.

Bucky never texts.

Not once.

He calls.

Always.

Even for the smallest things. A grocery question. A movie suggestion. A let-me-know-when-you’re-done. Sometimes you don’t pick up, and he doesn’t leave a voicemail. Just calls again an hour later like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

One day, you ask him why.

He’s driving, one hand on the wheel, the other—metal—resting on the gearshift like it belongs there.

“I don’t like waiting for a response,” he says, after a beat. “Feels like talking to a wall.”

You nod. “Makes sense.”

He glances at you, then adds, “Also, I can't type for shit. And autocorrect thinks I’m a lunatic. My PR manager thinks I'm a walking liability waiting to happen." You don't know what makes you snort first; the thought of him keyboard smashing his phone or the fact that he has a goddamn PR manager.

Then, the first time you see the arm up close, he’s asleep on your couch.

You’re supposed to be watching a movie. You don't even know who initiated, who invited who over. But something old and black-and-white is flickering on the screen, one of his picks. But somewhere around the twenty-minute mark, he dozed off. His hoodie’s bunched up at the elbow, metal catching the lamplight.

You don’t stare. Not really. But you don’t look away either.

It’s not the glossy, hyper-chrome finish you remember from the surveillance footage. Not the Soviet brutality of jagged red stars and burnished steel. This one’s different. Sleeker. Sleek but brutal. Matte black and dark silver, subtle gold veins etched faintly between the segmented plates—Wakandan tech, you realize. Lightweight. Adaptive. The sort of engineering that moves with a person, not against them.

It looks like something alive. Something that remembers things.

You wonder if he remembers it’s there. If it registers temperature. Pressure. Pain. If the nerves ghost in that space the same way yours do when your fingers go numb from fatigue. If it ever aches when it rains.

You don’t ask.

Not yet.

He stirs, eventually. Looks at you through half-lidded eyes.

“Did I miss the plot twist?”

“You missed a wedding, a car crash, and three dramatic monologues.”

“Damn,” he mutters, stretching. His hoodie pulls a little higher. You glimpse the sharp, seamless lines of the elbow joint. Compact. Clean. Not like a machine—like an exoskeleton. Like armor. You look away. “We can rewind.”

You shrug, smirking into your mug. “I don’t know. I’m kind of emotionally invested now. I might want you to suffer through the confusion with me.”

He huffs a quiet laugh, still half-asleep, eyes flicking toward the screen.

You don’t rewind.

You just sit there, the credits rolling, and listen to him breathe as he falls back to sleep. You start to wonder what it would be like to fall asleep with his hand on your side. With the mark between you, not unspoken, but accepted. Real. You start to feel it again—that pull. The one you used to ignore. The one you used to press down like a bruise that wouldn’t fade.

This is what soulmates are about, you think. What they’re meant to be.

Not the fireworks. Not the rush. Not the storybook symmetry or the neat little bow at the end. Not the lightning strike of recognition. It’s quieter than that. Slower. Messier. Built of hours and questions and the space someone leaves you to be tired, to be flawed, to be real.

You think maybe it’s this — the way he handed you your coffee earlier exactly the way you take it without ever having asked. The way he watches the road when you don’t want to talk and turns the music up just a little, like a soft wall between you and the world. The way he never reaches for your hand, but always lets his linger close enough that you could.

It’s the consistency. The patience. The terrifying kindness of being seen when you’re not trying to be. When your armor’s off, not because you dropped it, but because he never asked you to put it on in the first place.

There’s something in your chest that loosens when he’s near. Some old tension that stops buzzing like an alarm.

And maybe that’s what the mark is. Not fate, not prophecy, but permission. A tether, yes—but one you can pull at your own pace. One you can choose.

And every day you don’t walk away, you’re choosing him.

Even if neither of you has said it yet. Even if neither of you knows how.

“You ever get tired of people looking at you sideways?” you ask him once, on a late-night walk back from a diner you guys have started to frequent together. You’ve both got milkshakes in hand because Bucky insists they’re a cornerstone of civilization, and you’re learning not to argue when he gets weirdly nostalgic.

He takes a sip. Shrugs. “Used to.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t care.” A pause. “It helps that you don’t.”

You look over. He’s not smiling, but he’s softer. Always is, around you. Less edge. Less shield.

“I used to,” you admit. “When I was younger. I thought it’d fade. The mark.”

He nods, like he’s heard that before. Like he understands more than you meant to say.

“It didn’t,” you add.

He glances at you, then at your side. Not lingering. Just a flicker.

“Good,” he says, so quietly you almost miss it.

You stop walking. “Why?”

He doesn’t look at you. Just finishes his drink. Crumples the cup in one hand.

“Because I’m still here,” he says, like it should be obvious.

And it is.

Somehow, it is.

He cooks, occasionally. Not well. But with effort. One night, he burns a grilled cheese so thoroughly the fire alarm goes off. You have to wave a towel at the smoke detector while he swears under his breath and throws the pan in the sink.

You’re still laughing when he sets two very sad sandwiches on the table and mutters, “Fine. Next time, we order.”

“There’s gonna be a next time?”

He gives you a look. “Unless I’m banned from your kitchen.”

You pick up half a sandwich. “You’re on probation.”

He watches you take a bite. Raises an eyebrow.

You chew. Swallow. “Tastes like regret and cheese.”

That gets a huff of laughter. He doesn’t laugh easily—not fully—but you’re learning the sounds he makes when he’s amused. The little exhales. The under-his-breath muttering. The half-smile he hides behind his hand.

You’re learning all of it.

And you’re starting to think he’s learning you too.

One night, he’s quiet.

Not in the usual way — not in the half-aware, hands-in-pockets, I’ve-seen-too-much kind of way you've learned he wears like a well-worn, favorite coat. This silence is heavier. Not a thing he’s hiding from you, but a thing he’s holding. Something sharp and delicate and dangerous, like broken glass wrapped in cloth. You don’t know what it is yet, but you feel it.

You’re curled up at opposite ends of the couch, legs almost touching, the ghost of his knee brushing yours whenever either of you shifts. The movie’s still playing, long-forgotten. It’s just noise now. A screen flickering in the background while your heart waits.

He inhales like it hurts. And then—

“Can I tell you something?”

His voice is quiet. Too quiet. And he’s not looking at you Blue eyes staring straight ahead at the TV, the little space between his brows wrinkled into something indecipherable.

You blink, slowly. “Yeah,” you say, just as softly. “Of course.”

That gets a breath out of him. Not a laugh. Not quite a sigh. Just something let loose. You watch him stare ahead, fixed on a point in the middle distance like it’s safer than you. Like your face is too much to hold right now.

“I used to hate it,” he says. “The mark.”

You don’t move.

You don’t breathe.

“I thought—” He rubs the heel of his hand over his sternum, just once, like something aches there. “I thought it was some kind of punishment. Like the universe picked me just to prove it could.”

Your heart twists.

He still won’t meet your eyes. But he’s speaking now, and it feels like something old and knotted finally starting to unravel.

“I didn’t know what it meant, not really. Not at first. Just this pain. A weight. And then the name came, and it didn’t mean anything. Just letters. A future that didn’t make sense.”

His hand tightens, flexes, then drops into his lap again. You watch the way his fingers curl, restless and bare.

“And then it did mean something. And it got worse.”

He swallows. Hard.

“Because I looked you up.” His voice dips, almost like he’s ashamed of it. “When I got the chance. I knew. Who you were. Where you were. For years. I didn’t—I didn’t do anything about it. But I knew.”

Something tightens in your chest. A coil. A knot. He looked for you. All those years, he searched and he reached and he wanted all the same. You want to reach for him, but you wait. You feel like if you breathe wrong, he might vanish.

“I kept thinking—if I left it alone, if I stayed away, maybe the universe would rethink it. Give you someone better. Someone cleaner. Someone safe.”

Finally, his gaze flickers to you. Brief. Bracing. The kind of look you imagine he’s given a thousand times in battle — checking to see if the person beside him is still alive.

“And I thought I could carry that,” he says. “I thought if I ignored it long enough, maybe it’d fade. That maybe you’d forget, or never know. And I could just—live around it.”

His laugh is bitter. Not sharp, exactly, but cracked around the edges.

“But it didn’t fade. You didn’t fade.”

You feel like you’ve stopped breathing entirely.

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, fingers knotted together. The mark under your ribs aches in quiet sympathy.

“You know what’s worse than feeling like you don’t deserve someone?” he asks, eyes fixed somewhere near your ankles. “Feeling like you do, for just one second. Like you could, if only you were different. If only everything hadn’t already happened.”

He sits back again. Slower this time. Exhausted.

Your chest is tight, full of static. Your eyes sting.

“I used to see your name and think, how cruel. That someone like you had to carry the weight of someone like me.” Bucky finally looks at you again, and there’s nothing distant about it. It’s searing. Devastating. “But then you showed up. That day at the library. And I—”

His voice falters.

He swallows again, blinking hard. “I’ve spent so long being looked at like I’m a weapon. Like I’m a ghost. But you looked at me like—” He stops, breath caught in his throat. “Like I was real. Like you’d known me. Like I wasn’t a mistake.”

You blink fast, because the alternative is crying.

“And I didn’t know what to do with that. I still don’t know what to do with that,” He exhales, a quiet tremor in his chest. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be the person who deserves this. Or you. Or the mark. But I want to be.”

He turns toward you fully now, and for the first time, he doesn’t look away.

“I want to try,” he says, softly. “If you’ll let me.”

You reach for his hand. Slowly. Carefully. Like it’s something sacred, and your fingers meet his.

You don’t say anything right away. There’s no need. His hand tightens around yours like an answer. Like a prayer. And under your ribs, where the mark lives, you feel it — not a tug, not a weight, but a warmth. Like the sun, breaking through after years of winter.

He doesn’t let go of your hand.

His fingers are rough in some places, calloused in others, warm where it counts. He holds you like he’s learning how. Like maybe the trick is not to grip too tight, but not to let go either. That sweet, aching middle ground. Like maybe you’re something breakable—but not fragile.

You’re not sure how long you sit like that. Just the two of you, suspended in this strange, soft liminal space between the past and whatever comes next.

The TV hums in the background. The couch dips where your knees almost touch. You swear you can hear his pulse—yours too—skipping every third beat, then rushing to make up for it.

He’s still watching you like he’s waiting for you to vanish.

You speak first. Barely a whisper. “I think I started loving you before I even knew what it meant.”

His eyes close, slow. As if the words are a balm. Or a blade. You’re not sure which.

“I used to feel you before I understood how,” you continue, voice steady now, stronger with each word. “Not in the mark. Not in the skin. But in the air. In the quiet. I’d be washing blood off my hands at three in the morning and think—I’m not alone. Not really.”

His throat moves with the effort of swallowing. He doesn’t speak. Not yet. You’re not done.

“I hated you for it too, for a while,” you admit. “For making me hope. For giving me something to lose before I ever had it.”

You shift, close the last few inches between you. He doesn’t flinch. Just watches, gaze dark and wide and impossibly open.

“I didn’t want this to be real. Because if it was, it meant I could break. That I had something to break for.”

He breathes out your name. Just once.

You touch his face. Thumb trailing the edge of his cheekbone, slow and deliberate. He leans into it like he’s forgotten what it means to be held. “I see you,” you whisper. “I see you. Not the headlines. Not the soldier. Not the mark. Just… you.”

And something inside him unravels. Not all at once. Not like a dam breaking. But like a thread pulled gently, deliberately, until what’s been bound up for too long begins to loosen.

“I love you,” he says, and it’s not polished. Not pretty. It’s real. Broken around the edges. Bare and breathless. “I love you, and it’s terrifying.”

You nod. Because you know.

He exhales. Then moves.

He kisses you like he means it. Like it’s the first and last time he’ll ever be allowed. His lips press to yours, slow at first, exploratory. Like he’s trying to memorize the shape of it. The feel. You breathe him in. Let your hand slip to the back of his neck, anchor him there.

He doesn’t rush.

His hands, warm and steady, skim your waist like he’s relearning what it means to touch without taking. To be given something instead of stealing it. He pulls you closer—not to possess, but to be sure you’re still there.

When he parts from you, it’s just for breath.

You lean your forehead against his. “We’ve already survived so much,” you whisper. “What’s one more impossible thing?”

His laugh is soft, unguarded. It shakes a little at the end.

You tilt your face, kiss him again—deeper this time. His response is immediate. Hands tightening, lips parting. You taste the urgency in him, the tremble beneath restraint. Your mouth moves against his like a promise. Like maybe this—you—was what the mark was always meant to lead to.

Not fate. Choice.

His metal hand brushes your hip, steady and impossibly gentle. He maps the curve of your ribs like he’s memorizing the lines of his own name. You press your palm to his chest, feel the echo of your name there too. Not carved in flesh, but in feeling. In ache. In the quiet places only the two of you have ever touched.

“Come here,” he murmurs, voice wrecked and low.

You’re already there.

Bucky kisses your neck. Your shoulder. The space just under your jaw. He doesn’t rush the way his hands roam—careful, reverent, like he’s turning pages of something sacred. You think your heart's going to burst or stop at any given moment, because there's no way he's real.

When he pushes your shirt and your bra up over your head, your hands quickly move up to knot through his hair, anchoring them there until he's groaning and mumbling against your skin. He leans down, open mouthed kisses along the way until he finds what he's looking for, taking a pert nipple into his mouth and playing with the other with his metal hand. "Bucky, I—"

He doubles down, holding you closer against his core so he can feel you bucking against him, grinding uselessly against the rough fabric of his jeans so he can feel you pulse, head flooding your core. "Fuck, don't stop. Please don't stop, Bucky, I'm—" You sigh breathlessly when you look down and he's got your nipple between his teeth, gently tugging as he looks up at you with too innocent blue eyes. Like he's not pulling you apart.

"I won't stop, sweet girl," Bucky shakes his head, laughing softly like he can't believe it. "Don't even think I could, if I tried."

The rest of your clothes end up as a pile on the floor, and then it was just Bucky slowly undressing in front of you between your knees. It's enough to make you lose your breath, but his next words sends another sharp heat to pool between your legs. "I'm gonna make you feel so good. You're so good to me, you—fuck, I'm gonna take my time with you. You gonna keep being good for me?"

"Yes, yes," You whispered, arms coming to wrap around him as he carries you to your bed, nails scratching lightly on the toned muscles of his back. "I'll be so good, I wanna feel good—just be with me."

He comes back to you, bare and ready and when you glance down, you can't help the gasp that escapes you. He's big. Bigger than you've ever had, thick and heavy and weeping at the tip. Gorgeous. Fuck, he's gorgeous. At the quiet sound, he pulls back a little bit, just enough to ask, with concern that's mixed with a little bit of amusement. "You okay, baby?"

Baby. Baby. The word rings in your ears, pushing another quiet, needy sound through your lips that Bucky's all too eager to swallow. But then suddenly, he stops and you have to resist the urge to whine. He presses a kiss against your skin, eyes searching yours. "Baby," Fuck, there's that word again. "I'm—I didn't bring anything with me. I don't wanna—"

You part your thighs without being told and the want in your voice is so clear, so evident. "Bucky, I'm clean. I'm on the pill, and I want you so bad, I need it. I need you inside me, want you to mark me, fill me until I'm overflowing with you."

He curses, looking at the way you're spread out underneath him. His hand reaches out to cup you where you're glistening and swollen and impossibly soft. "I can't say no to that, can I?"

"No," Your legs hook around him as he situates himself between your legs, your heart rate rising as he's so, so goddamn close, you can feel his body heat. "No, you can't."

When he finally sinks himself inside of you, you feel like you're being consumed. It's like your birthday and Christmas and the fucking Fourth of July, all in one, making you moan and swoon in a way that you know will have your neighbors sending a strongly worded complaint in the morning.

He's hard and fast and brutal, rocking against you while he sings praises into your hair, and you're wondering how you've ever been able to live without this. How you can't possibly live without this ever again, but then his hand, warm and on a mission, snakes its way beneath your stomach and pulls and pinches at your clit, and it sends you on another high.

Bucky groans. "Just what you needed, huh, baby?"

You nod, moaning out his name in reply.

One particularly hard thrust, after pulling almost all the way out and then rearranging you in a way that should be impossible, and you're falling apart on him as he fucks you through it. He loves you, he loves you, and he means every single word.

When he cums, it hits you like a train, still reeling from the aftershocks of your last orgasm when he groans and roars, putting his face to your throat and babbles—baby, sweet thing, the love of my life.

Afterwards, you just wanna lay in the mess with him, tangle yourself up with his legs and arms and get stuck there, but you're–the mess between your legs is sticky and quickly drying and the though of Bucky, soaking wet and dripping with water under the spray of your—

"Shower," you murmur. And Bucky nods against you, leaning down so he can wrap his arms around you and carry you down the hall to the bathroom.

It doesn't end there.

You ride his face under the shower. He's so good, on his knees like this was penance. For not being there for years, for not coming home to you sooner. His name rattles around your mouth and his tongue makes delicate, soft little shapes on your clit and nibbles against your thighs when you squeeze him just the right amount to make him a bit dizzy. A cool hand on your back, heat rushing in between your legs. His beard sending pinpricks up your spine as you curl your hips closer to his mouth.

Then—all at once, you on his tongue with a stuttered gasp, head spinning as he laves you with all sorts of praise. His other hand snakes up, circling and rubbing your clit like a man on a mission. "Oh god, oh god."

"Let me have all of it, sweetheart, baby, god. Let me taste you."

You do, of course, fucking of course, you let him. "My baby, taking everything ya want from me. I'll always give it to you. Christ."

When Bucky moves over your body, standing up to his full height, you're all too eager to taste him on your tongue. He's smiling lazily against your lips, like he's won a fight. It's sweet, it's a little sticky, it's—god, it's so fucking attractive, the way his lips and his stubble shine under the bathroom lights with your juices. "Say my name, Bucky, say it—"

He says your name, over and over and over and it's perfect. The water continues to spray above you, soaking both of you, but especially him as it dribbles down to the base of his cock. When he sinks into you, thick and heavy and ready until your shoulder blades knock against the cool tile, you both hold your breath until he's all the way inside, flush against your skin.

There's his hands on your hips, a momentary pause, before his hips start snapping against yours. His dark hair, sopping wet and falling into his face, barely concealing the way he grits through his teeth. "Fuck."

You love him so much. You don't think you've ever felt a love so all-encompassing, a love that sets you on fire. You'd give him absolutely anything, everything he wants. Your words fail you, but it's the only thing you can think of as he continues to pound into you, up against that sweet, sweet spot that sends your vision spinning. In the haze of your mind, you can hear yourself moaning, begging—

Then you're falling apart again, cumming with a silent scream.

"There you go," Bucky groans and suddenly, you can feel it too, the way he fills you up, throbbing and pulsing inside of you. Until he was empty and you were full. "There you go. So good, baby. Been so good."

All at once, it all comes back to you.

The bathroom is fogged with steam, the mirror a blurred memory of your shapes, blurred edges, the safe hush of water hitting tile. He doesn’t speak when you finally wrench yourself apart from him, just to move behind him, doesn’t tense when your hands press against his shoulder blades to guide him just slightly aside—enough to step in beside him, under the spray. He shifts automatically, lets you in. Like it’s instinct now.

The water is hot, almost too hot, but he doesn’t flinch. He crowds you a little, warm chest to your back, arms curving around your middle like you’re something to protect. Or anchor to. Or both.

You feel the kiss of cold tile against your front, his breath low against your shoulder. It should be overwhelming. Should make you squirm. But instead, it feels inevitable. Like exhaling. Like gravity doing what it always does.

You lean back into him, and he lets you turn. No push. No pressure. Just a subtle retreat that gives you space. When your eyes find his in the low light, he’s already watching you, his gaze open in the way it only is now, after. After everything. After the storm and the silence and the choosing.

“Pass me the soap,” you murmur.

He obliges. Hands you something dark and nondescript, expensive-smelling and deliberately plain, like everything else he owns now. The scent hits as you squeeze a dollop into your palm—cedar, maybe. Bergamot. Clean, and quietly masculine. Like him.

He runs a hand through his hair, rinses under the stream, half turning away from you, blinking water from his lashes.

“Uh-uh,” you chide gently. “Get back here.”

His brow lifts, bemused, but he obeys. Always does, when it’s you. You rub your hands together to lather the soap, then step forward—closer than necessary. Not because you want to tease. Because you want to see.

You start at his sides, palms gliding slowly over his ribs, where old scars have long since faded into muscle. He sucks in a breath, low and sharp. Not from heat. From the contact.

Your fingers move across his stomach, up over the dip in his chest, across the swell of his shoulders. He stands perfectly still—except for the breath hitching in his throat, the twitch of his jaw. You press your body to his, full skin-to-skin, and feel his chest rise beneath your breasts, slow and tight.

He watches you like he’s never been touched like this before. Like the softness is the part that breaks him. Not the hunger. Not the fire. But the care.

You rise up on your toes, sliding your hands over the back of his neck, around the nape. One hand slips down between his fingers, rubbing suds over the back of his hand. His metal arm stays still at his side, but his flesh hand… it flexes beneath yours. Tightens around your fingers like something unbearable is unraveling in his chest.

That’s when you look up. That’s when you see it.

He looks wrecked. Not from what happened in bed. Not from anything physical. But from this—this ridiculous, tender act of washing him like he matters. Like you’re not asking anything in return. No demands. No debt.

Just love.

And he knows. You can see it—see the realization in his face as clear as sunlight on glass. He knows now, as fully as you do, what this is. What you’ve been. What you are.

You want to look away. Want to laugh it off, run, bite something smart and quick and false between your teeth just to fill the silence. You don’t.

He takes your wrist gently in his flesh one—fingers cradling the inside like it’s something delicate. Then, with his other, his metal thumb presses to your skin, slow and deliberate.

He traces a letter. Then another.

It’s not rushed. Not uncertain. The motion is familiar. Repeated. You've traced over his name countless of times, and the rough pad of his pointer finger goes through a path you've known for half your life.

Your throat tightens.

“You,” he says quietly, voice rough from emotion and steam and everything in between.

He takes your hand gently and takes it to his ribs, where your name's resided for the better part of his life. “And me.”

You stare down at the mark he’s making, not because it’s visible, but because it’s real. You can feel it there, etched into the space between heartbeats.

“You and me,” he murmurs again. “Always was gonna be.”

Then, still holding your wrist, he lifts your hand to his lips and kisses your knuckles. Softly. As if you were made of prayer.

There’s nothing else to say. No big revelation. No sudden orchestral swell.

Just this. Just the sound of the water, the warmth of his chest against yours, the slow unraveling of every wall you ever built around the part of yourself that's wanted to believe in love since you were thirteen, staring at your skin in awe.

Later, there will be groceries. Buses. Shifts at the hospital. He'll have to go back to being an Avenger. Other lives moving in parallel lanes around yours.

But right now, it’s this.

It’s weightlessness.

It’s your name, written in the soft fog of his breath. And his name, traced endlessly across your skin.

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