#Electronic Process control

[countronicsind]

Digital Temperature Controller Manufacturer and Supplier

Countronics is a Leading Manufacturer, Supplier and Exporter of Digital Temperature Controller. A digital temperature controller is a device used to regulate and control temperature in various applications, ranging from industrial processes to household appliances. 

Digital temperature controllers are used in various industries and applications, including industrial automation, food processing, HVAC systems, scientific research, and more.

Our other PRODUCTS

DIGITAL TEMPERATURE CONTROLLER

DIGITAL TEMPERATURE INDICATOR

TEMPERATURE LOGGER

Ampere hour Meter

Calibrators

Clean Room Monitor

Conductivity Meter Indicator Controller

Data Acquisition Systems (DAQ), Data Logger Systems

Digital Counters

Digital ReadOut for Encoders

Digital Temperature Indicator, Controller, Logger

Digital Timers

Flow Meter, Indicator & Controller

Humidity Meter, Indicator, Controller

Peak Load Indicators/Loggers

pH and ORP Meter, Indicator, Controller

Process Indicator/Controller

Production Display Board

Tachometer, RPM Speed Indicator

For More Details Click here : https://www.countronics.com

[smartratework]

pvc electric red and blue wire #smartratework#tumblr

[ramautomations123]

Liebherr PCB Card 925086914 0002555 0601004 | High-Quality Control PCB Board | Ram Automations

Enhance your machinery’s performance with the Liebherr PCB Card 925086914 0002555 0601004, available now at Ram Automations. This high-quality Printed Circuit Board (PCB) offers exceptional reliability, precision engineering, and durability for a wide range of industrial and marine applications.

Designed for maximum performance and efficiency, this Liebherr PCB Card ensures seamless integration with complex control systems, making it ideal for critical automation environments and high-demand applications.

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[recallsdirect]

Vehicle Recall: Ford Explorer & Lincoln Aviator, Corsair SUVs:

[alwajeeztech]

Documents Library in ALZERP Cloud ERP Software

Key Features of the Documents Library

Automatic Document Uploads: Documents from various ERP modules, such as sales, purchase, vouchers, and employee transactions, are automatically added to the library.

Document Conversion: Image files are automatically converted to PDF format for universal compatibility.

Advanced Search: Easily find documents by date, number, type, or other criteria.

Multiple File Actions: Download single files or merge multiple PDFs for streamlined access.

Document Organization: Categorize documents into folders for better organization and retrieval.

Document Security: Ensure secure storage and access control for sensitive documents.

[prabhaelectronics]

Enhancing Safety and Efficiency with Prabha Electronics’ Self-Closing Valve with Safety Relief

In today's fast-paced industrial landscape, ensuring the safety and efficiency of fluid control systems is paramount. Prabha Electronics is proud to introduce the Self-Closing Valve with Safety Relief, a cutting-edge solution designed to address the critical needs of modern industries.

The Importance of Reliable Fluid Control

Fluid control systems are the backbone of various industries, from manufacturing and chemical processing to oil and gas. These systems must operate flawlessly to ensure smooth production and prevent catastrophic failures. One of the key components in these systems is the valve, which regulates fluid flow and pressure. A malfunctioning valve can lead to overpressure, equipment damage, and safety hazards.

Introducing the Self-Closing Valve with Safety Relief

At Prabha Electronics, we understand the challenges faced by industries in maintaining safe and efficient fluid control. Our Self-Closing Valve with Safety Relief is meticulously engineered to provide superior performance and reliability.

Key Features:

Automatic Closing Mechanism: The valve is designed to automatically close when the pressure reaches a predetermined level, preventing overpressure situations. This automatic feature ensures that the system remains within safe operating limits without the need for manual intervention.

Safety Relief Mechanism: Equipped with a robust safety relief feature, the valve safely vents excess pressure. This critical function protects both the equipment and personnel from potential hazards, ensuring a safer working environment.

High-Quality Materials: Built with premium materials, our valve offers exceptional durability and longevity. It can withstand harsh industrial conditions, providing reliable performance over extended periods.

Precision Engineering: Our valve is manufactured with precision engineering, ensuring accurate pressure regulation and consistent performance. This reliability minimizes downtime and maximizes operational efficiency.

Applications Across Industries

The Self-Closing Valve with Safety Relief is versatile and can be used in a wide range of applications. Whether in chemical processing plants, oil and gas refineries, or manufacturing facilities, this valve enhances safety and efficiency. Its robust design and reliable performance make it an ideal choice for industries where fluid control is critical.

Benefits of Choosing Prabha Electronics

Enhanced Safety: The automatic closing and safety relief mechanisms significantly reduce the risk of overpressure, protecting both personnel and equipment.

Increased Efficiency: By maintaining optimal pressure levels, the valve ensures efficient system operation, reducing downtime and improving productivity.

Cost-Effective: The durability and reliability of our valve mean fewer replacements and maintenance costs, offering long-term savings.

Peace of Mind: With Prabha Electronics' Self-Closing Valve with Safety Relief, you can trust that your fluid control system is equipped with the best safety features available.

Conclusion

In an era where safety and efficiency are paramount, Prabha Electronics' Self-Closing Valve with Safety Relief stands out as a vital component for fluid control systems. Its automatic closing mechanism, safety relief feature, and robust construction make it an essential tool for industries seeking to enhance their operations.

Contact No: 98888 54355

Visit Here: https://prabhaelectronics.co.in/

Address: Village Sundran, PO, Mubarikpur, Dera Bassi, Punjab 140201

[crispyeagleenthusiast]

Whirlpool W11537215 Dryer Control Electronic | HnKParts

[cyrusmehdipour]

DIY Temperature Controller for Molding Systems | Arduino Tutorial

[gallusrostromegalus]

The Van Has Officially Declared It Spooky Season

---

I've got my parent's van for the week and it seems determined to establish my status as The Local Cryptid by terrorizing an innocent 7-11 clerk.

...I might need to back up a bit.

My mother is an eminently sensible woman who knows herself well, and when The Plauge hit, she knew she'd need some sort of mentally and physically engaging craft project to keep herself from going insane and massacring the local zoning and water management boards (even if they have it coming). So she and Dad acquired a utility van and converted it into a camper van because while they love camping, they're past the age where their joints and immune systems will tolerate sleeping on the cold ground in a nylon tent.

They did a terrific job of it and my mom taught herself woodworking and carpentry and now the van has it's own cabinets, fold-away dining table, and removable queen-sized bed with memory foam mattress. My Dad was already a computer engineer, but he learned the dark magics of automotive software and electronics to install after-market backup cameras, a media player that would take a terabyte hard drive and a solar-powered battery and outlet so they could wake up and just turn on the kettle and griddle for breakfast without having to exit the van into a cold morning on an empty stomach.

Truly, the height of Camping Luxury.

My parents are both in their mid-seventies and my primary life goal is to be at least half as cool and hale as they are when I get old.

Anyway, they take it out at least a dozen times a year and it works fabulously, but, being as I am on good terms with my parents and also finishing the process of moving house, I've been borrowing it to move large and cumbersome objects that will not fit in the back of my equally lovely but minuscule Honda hatchback.

It's a Great Van. Very easy and comfortable to drive. Stunningly good MPG for it's size. The best cruise control I've ever had in a car.

It's just also. Quirky. Mischievous, even.

---

If this van has a fault its that it bears the unfortunate affliction that all lightly used white utility vans have in that the combination of an utter lack of branding features and the large dent/scrape I accidentally put on it while trying to escape a Denny's last Thanksgiving means that this vehicle is one addition of a Badly Spray-Painted "FREE CANDY" on the side away from being the sort of vehicle you see in an edgy horror movie.

It's got the same issue that Doberman Dogs have where they look like the sort of creature that likes to snack on toddler's faces whilst actually having personalities made of marshmallow fluff. This vehicle is unnecessarily menacing and I think nothing short of an airbrushed Epic Van Wizard will correct this. People see this van pull up and lean over and squint suspiciously at me when the driver's side door opens, and then look moderately confused when, instead of Charles Manson, a small, potato-shaped creature with neon purple hair and a statistically unlikely assortment of dogs emerges.

My own two dogs, Herschel the Hanukkah Goblin/Corgi and Charleston Chew The Taco Dumpster Dog, Do Not Like The Van. Even with the bed in it, they have a tendency to slide and roll around in the back, and both WILL chew through dog saftey belts or other attempts to secure them in there.

On the other hand, my house mate's dog, an exceptionally tall standard poodle whom we lovingly call "The Creature", loves the Van because SHE wears her doggy seat-belt with only mild complaining and gets to sit up in the passenger seat like A People.

Also like A People, The Creature likes to stand and walk around on her hind legs. It doesn't hurt her and it's entirely voluntary, but every so often I will feel a hand on my arm and instead of my husband or friend, it's a canine that's taller than I am on her hind legs who wants to stare at my face with soulful, concerned eyes. The Creature's favorite thing is that she is exactly the right height for me to hold her arm in Genteel Fashion and walk around the pet food or hardware store with her like I'm a count escorting a debutante around a royal ball.

---

As it stands, I am set to inherit this vehicle whenever my Honda gives up the ghost, and I fully intend to paint an Epic Van Wizard on it when that time comes.

The other peculiarity of The Van is that while Dad did manage to successfully install all his after-market electronics, not all the electronics get along. Sometimes, they fight for Dominance. The Terabyte Music Player and the Backup Camera have a particularly contentious relationship, and turning on the music has about a 25% chance of turning on the backup camera as well, and turning on the Backup Camera is equally likely to turn on the music.

Firthermore, The Van has a favorite song.

I am not kidding that Dad filled an entire terabyte hard drive with music and the software to sort it via the radio controls, but of all the Early Boomer Dad Rock (Kingston Trio over The Eagles) and Irish Folk and Symphonies and the entire discography of Weird Al Yankovic, The Van's favorite song- The one it picks to play as victory music every time it beats the Backup Camera at their weird electronic game of rock-paper-scissors -is The Liberty Bell March by John Phillip Sousa.

You all know this song already.

...but in case you've forgotten the tune:

Yeah.

The Van's favorite song is the goddamn Monty Python's Flying Circus Theme Music.

It does not play this song at a normal volume.

Every time I turn on the Backup Camera and it manages to turn the music player on as well, The Van insists on absolutely blasting this nonsense on at the maximum volume it's physically capable of producing, which I know is loud enough to be heard from the Denver International Airport's Pickup zone when they Van decided to start playing it from the economy lot about half a mile away.

Perhaps it's The Van's way of honoring the aesthetic sensibilities and sonic enthusiasm of Mr. Sousa.

...I can't help but wonder if the purpose of an Epic Van Wizard is to control this sort of faerie-like malarkey, and channel these chaotic energies into things like Spell of Don't Break Down In Nevada or Enchantment Of Always Have Good Parking.

---

So last Friday the 13th, I get a call from my friend and housemate, at said airport.

It's roughly 11PM at night, and I have already retired for the evening. I am in the exact minimum of clothing required to be a decent housemate and not scandalize the neighbors should I happen to walk by a window. My feet are up. There is a cat in my lap and fictional British people murdering each other in highly inventive fashion on the tv. -But my friend has returned from her friend's wedding,and either American or United Airlines has managed to lose her luggage, including, among other valuable possessions, the keys to her car. ...So she cannot just drive home as originally planned.

There are, as luck would have it, her spare set of keys not eight feet from me.

Being a good and decent person, I agree to bring the spare keys to her so she may get home before daybreak and not spend a semester's worth of tuition on an uber across the greater Denver traffic jam.

Being also that she Loves Activities, and it's her mom we're going to pick up, I elect to take along The Creature.

I am primarily focused on remembering how to get to the airport and not leaving my friend's spare keys on the counter, so I throw on a pair of flip-flops, step outside, remember that it's AUTUMN and my minimal evening attire is not sufficient thermal protection, step back in, grab the first coat in the closet I lay hands on, pull it on, check that I have her keys again and leave.

The trip to the airport is largely unremarkable, save that it becomes necessary for me to put on sunglasses to drive, despite it being nearly the witching hour and almost entirely darker than the inside of a cow.

It's necessary because this blissful darkness of night is violently punctured by a startling number of cars that seem to have installed miniaturized but no less powerful lighthouse bulbs in where their headlights ought to go so the oncoming traffic and sports cars that insist on tailgating me in the slow lane alike illuminate the road and my mirrors with the kind of radiance I'd normally associate with the arrival of a Seraphim.

I arrive at the distant highly discounted airport car lot where my housemate is waiting, deeply apologetic. It's nothing. I say. Once I see that your car starts up, I'm gonna go to that 7-11 across the way that I parked in front of, get a slurpee or something and I'll see you at home.

While she is retrieving her vehicle (an equally eccentric but much more stately Subaru that is old enough to be elected to congress) I rifle through the loose change in the glove box and discover that I have exactly $6.66 in small bills and coins. The Subaru, continuing it's long voyage into vehicular immortality, immediately starts up.

Upon her return, we all remember that my friend had all her camping gear in the backseat of the car and there is no room for The Creature to ride home with her parent, so I again assure her it's nothing, and will just take The Creature into the 7-11 with me. She is trained as a service animal and needs the practice after the plague.

I wave my friend off and turn to enter the 7-11.

I promptly trip over the jutting back bumper of The Van and fall, cartoonishly, face-first onto the sidewalk.

Fortunately, I have a lot of practice falling on my face, and have learned not to throw my hands out but instead cover my face, so my unexpected self-inflicted attempted curb-stomping lightly scrapes my hairline and nothing else -my sunglasses even stay in place- and I get up and resume my quest for a slurpee.

It's well known that the airport is a lawless place, and the 7-11 across from the discounted airport parking at the stroke of midnight is no exception.

I know it's the stroke of Midnight because there's one of those Audubon society bird-call clocks that makes bird noises, and my arrival is heralded by the twittering call of a Summer Tanager. I am almost charmed enough by the unusual choice of chronological device to excuse the exorbitant Airport-adjacent mark-up of Slurpee prices. I stand at the machine for some time, trying to decide on a size for the price and guess what the fuck "Blue Lighting Blast" is supposed to taste like.

The Creature is being Very Polite but is somewhat agitated, I assume because she *just* saw her mother for the first time in three days and then she LEFT with no explanation, so The Creature is on her hind legs, staring woefully into my eyes, asking to be escorted around the 7-11. Even though that's not what she's not supposed to be doing, there's nobody else in here, so I let her hang off my arm and discuss various Slurpee Flavor options with her.

We eventually decide on an experiment in which I try a Small Blue Lightning Blast, and discover it tastes a bit like licking a nintendo cartridge but in a pleasantly satisfying way.

I go up to pay and realize something is amiss.

The Cashier is a young man staring at me with wide eyes, one had over the register and the other wrapped up in his rosary.

I look down at myself.

In my haste to reunite my friend with her spare keys and service animal, I had left the house in the following accoutrements:

Flip Flops. Not matching. It's below freezing outside. That last part is not particularly odd footwear for the weather in for Colorado, but it's an important detail for the rest of the ensemble.

Assorted scrapes, bruises, cuts and welts on my arms and legs that come with doing outdoor work and living in a house with three dogs and a fully-clawed cat that all want to be in my lap all the time. It's cold out, so vasoconstriction has pulled the blood away from my skin, a trait that served my ancestors well during the last Ice Age, but leaves me with pale skin to contrast the various wounds and I look like a corpse that fell out of the back of a pickup truck.

The black Bootyshorts with "CRYPTID" painted in bright red gothic font across my ass, that @theshitpostcalligrapher gave me for my wedding present.

A peculiar but extremely comfortable garment that straddles the line between "Lacy Camisole" and "Industrial-Strength Sports Bra" like the Ever Given straddling the Suez Canal. It is also Bright Red. with black accents.

The Jacket I had grabbed out of the closet, which is in fact, a black Velour Dinner Jacket.

The Tokyo-Ghoul inspired reusable anti-covid mask a friend made me with the set of Coyote Teeth.

My sunglasses, which are shaped like a Halloween Bat. The lenses are the wings and the body is the nose bridge. It is ALSO bright red.

A Very Large and remarkably Humanoid Poodle that I have been audibly affectionately calling "Dear Creature" who is hanging off my arm like she's my Prom Date.

The Very Large and remarkably Humanoid Poodle is ALSO dressed up in a black Dog Sweater that has white bones printed on it to look like its an X-ray jacket showing off her skeleton.

I look like I am taking my Very Fancy Werewolf Girlfriend to a particularly casual Dinner Party for Vampires, but the thing that's really selling it and probably alarming the kid the most is the fun accessory I acquired in the parking lot not five minutes earlier:

The "Small Scrape At my Hairline" is actually a painless but PROFUSELY bleeding head wound that I had somehow entirely failed to notice covering my face, neck, decolletage and magnificent cleavage with blood like a Tarantino Film Extra.

This does explain why The Creature has been delicately trying to use her bodyweight to push me down onto the floor for the last ten minutes. So I don't injure myself while we wait for the paramedics she hoped this kid called to arrive, you see.

The Creature has such a High and Naive Opinion of humanity.

I decide this social situation is already fucked, and the only way out is through, and with haste, before I start dripping on the floor.

"Hi there!" I say cheerfully, to indicate this is a visually alarming but not terribly serious situation. "Just a Small Slurpee!"

The Cashier has entered the relevant code into the register before I finish the sentence. His gaze flicks off me just long enough to look at the total, and he grips his Rosary harder.

$6.66

"Oh cool! I have exact change!" I say, taking the money out of my as-yet-unsanguined pocket without looking and slap it down on the counter. "You have a good night and be safe out there!" I wave, leaving.

I get in The Van, mortified, buckle The Creature up, and as I make to leave, I have to put it in reverse, which automatically turns on the backup Camera.

It also turns on the music player.

I make eye contact with the cashier as the dulcet tones of John Phillip Sousa boom from the van hard enough to make the windshield and the windows of the 7-11 rattle for the nine-and-a-half seconds I have to wait to be able to turn the volume back down. Not knowing what else to to, I give him a thumbs up, and leave.

Anyway, now I know what my Future Van Wizard has got to be dressed like, and what their familiar is.

---

If you enjoyed this story, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Pre-ordering my Family Lore Funny Stories book on Patreon

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Epic Systems, a lethal health record monopolist

Epic Systems makes the dominant electronic health record (EHR) system in America; if you're a doctor, chances are you are required to use it, and for every hour a doctor spends with a patient, they have to spend two hours doing clinically useless bureaucratic data-entry on an Epic EHR.

How could a product so manifestly unfit for purpose be the absolute market leader? Simple: as Robert Kuttner describes in an excellent feature in The American Prospect, Epic may be a clinical disaster, but it's a profit-generating miracle:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-10-01-epic-dystopia/

At the core of Epic's value proposition is "upcoding," a form of billing fraud that is beloved of hospital administrators, including the "nonprofit" hospitals that generate vast fortunes that are somehow not characterized as profits. Here's a particularly egregious form of upcoding: back in 2020, the Poudre Valley Hospital in Ft Collins, CO locked all its doors except the ER entrance. Every patient entering the hospital, including those receiving absolutely routine care, was therefore processed as an "emergency."

In April 2020, Caitlin Wells Salerno – a pregnant biologist – drove to Poudre Valley with normal labor pains. She walked herself up to obstetrics, declining the offer of a wheelchair, stopping only to snap a cheeky selfie. Nevertheless, the hospital recorded her normal, uncomplicated birth as a Level 5 emergency – comparable to a major heart-attack – and whacked her with a $2755 bill for emergency care:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given

Upcoding has its origins in the Reagan revolution, when the market-worshipping cultists he'd put in charge of health care created the "Prospective Payment System," which paid a lump sum for care. The idea was to incentivize hospitals to provide efficient care, since they could keep the difference between whatever they spent getting you better and the set PPS amount that Medicare would reimburse them. Hospitals responded by inventing upcoding: a patient with controlled, long-term coronary disease who showed up with a broken leg would get coded for the coronary condition and the cast, and the hospital would pocket both lump sums:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

The reason hospital administrators love Epic, and pay gigantic sums for systemwide software licenses, is directly connected to the two hours that doctors spent filling in Epic forms for every hour they spend treating patients. Epic collects all that extra information in order to identify potential sources of plausible upcodes, which allows hospitals to bill patients, insurers, and Medicare through the nose for routine care. Epic can automatically recode "diabetes with no complications" from a Hierarchical Condition Category code 19 (worth $894.40) as "diabetes with kidney failure," code 18 and 136, which gooses the reimbursement to $1273.60.

Epic snitches on doctors to their bosses, giving them a dashboard to track doctors' compliance with upcoding suggestions. One of Kuttner's doctor sources says her supervisor contacts her with questions like, "That appointment was a 2. Don’t you think it might be a 3?"

Robert Kuttner is the perfect journalist to unravel the Epic scam. As a journalist who wrote for The New England Journal of Medicine, he's got an insider's knowledge of the health industry, and plenty of sources among health professionals. As he tells it, Epic is a cultlike, insular company that employs 12.500 people in its hometown of Verona, WI.

The EHR industry's origins start with a GW Bush-era law called the HITECH Act, which was later folded into Obama's Recovery Act in 2009. Obama provided $27b to hospitals that installed EHR systems. These systems had to more than track patient outcomes – they also provided the data for pay-for-performance incentives. EHRs were already trying to do something very complicated – track health outcomes – but now they were also meant to underpin a cockamamie "incentives" program that was supposed to provide a carrot to the health industry so it would stop killing people and ripping off Medicare. EHRs devolved into obscenely complex spaghetti systems that doctors and nurses loathed on sight.

But there was one group that loved EHRs: hospital administrators and the private companies offering Medicare Advantage plans (which also benefited from upcoding patients in order to soak Uncle Sucker):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8649706/

The spread of EHRs neatly tracks with a spike in upcharging: "from 2014 through 2019, the number of hospital stays billed at the highest severity level increased almost 20 percent…the number of stays billed at each of the other severity levels decreased":

https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/OEI-02-18-00380.pdf

The purpose of a system is what it does. Epic's industry-dominating EHR is great at price-gouging, but it sucks as a clinical tool – it takes 18 keystrokes just to enter a prescription:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2729481

Doctors need to see patients, but their bosses demand that they satisfy Epic's endless red tape. Doctors now routinely stay late after work and show up hours early, just to do paperwork. It's not enough. According to another one of Kuttner's sources, doctors routinely copy-and-paste earlier entries into the current one, a practice that generates rampant errors. Some just make up random numbers to fulfill Epic's nonsensical requirements: the same source told Kuttner that when prompted to enter a pain score for his TB patients, he just enters "zero."

Don't worry, Epic has a solution: AI. They've rolled out an "ambient listening" tool that attempts to transcribe everything the doctor and patient say during an exam and then bash it into a visit report. Not only is this prone to the customary mistakes that make AI unsuited to high-stakes, error-sensitive applications, it also represents a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of clinical notes.

The very exercise of organizing your thoughts and reflections about an event – such as a medical exam – into a coherent report makes you apply rigor and perspective to events that otherwise arrive as a series of fleeting impressions and reactions. That's why blogging is such an effective practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

The answer to doctors not having time to reflect and organize good notes is to give them more time – not more AI. As another doctor told Kuttner: "Ambient listening is a solution to a self-created problem of requiring too much data entry by clinicians."

EHRs are one of those especially hellish public-private partnerships. Health care doctrine from Reagan to Obama insisted that the system just needed to be exposed to market forces and incentives. EHRs are designed to allow hospitals to win as many of these incentives as possible. Epic's clinical care modules do this by bombarding doctors with low-quality diagnostic suggestions with "little to do with a patient’s actual condition and risks," leading to "alert fatigue," so doctors miss the important alerts in the storm of nonsense elbow-jostling:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058605/

Clinicians who actually want to improve the quality of care in their facilities end up recording data manually and keying it into spreadsheets, because they can't get Epic to give them the data they need. Meanwhile, an army of high-priced consultants stand ready to give clinicians advise on getting Epic to do what they need, but can't seem to deliver.

Ironically, one of the benefits that Epic touts is its interoperability: hospitals that buy Epic systems can interconnect those with other Epic systems, and there's a large ecosystem of aftermarket add-ons that work with Epic. But Epic is a product, not a protocol, so its much-touted interop exists entirely on its terms, and at its sufferance. If Epic chooses, a doctor using its products can send files to a doctor using a rival product. But Epic can also veto that activity – and its veto extends to deciding whether a hospital can export their patient records to a competing service and get off Epic altogether.

One major selling point for Epic is its capacity to export "anonymized" data for medical research. Very large patient data-sets like Epic's are reasonably believed to contain many potential medical insights, so medical researchers are very excited at the prospect of interrogating that data.

But Epic's approach – anonymizing files containing the most sensitive information imaginable, about millions of people, and then releasing them to third parties – is a nightmare. "De-identified" data-sets are notoriously vulnerable to "re-identification" and the threat of re-identification only increases every time there's another release or breach, which can used to reveal the identities of people in anonymized records. For example, if you have a database of all the prescribing at a given hospital – a numeric identifier representing the patient, and the time and date when they saw a doctor and got a scrip. At any time in the future, a big location-data breach – say, from Uber or a transit system – can show you which people went back and forth to the hospital at the times that line up with those doctor's appointments, unmasking the person who got abortion meds, cancer meds, psychiatric meds or other sensitive prescriptions.

The fact that anonymized data can – will! – be re-identified doesn't mean we have to give up on the prospect of gleaning insight from medical records. In the UK, the eminent doctor Ben Goldacre and colleagues built an incredible effective, privacy-preserving "trusted research environment" (TRE) to operate on millions of NHS records across a decentralized system of hospitals and trusts without ever moving the data off their own servers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/08/the-fire-of-orodruin/#are-we-the-baddies

The TRE is an open source, transparent server that accepts complex research questions in the form of database queries. These queries are posted to a public server for peer-review and revision, and when they're ready, the TRE sends them to each of the databases where the records are held. Those databases transmit responses to the TRE, which then publishes them. This has been unimaginably successful: the prototype of the TRE launched during the lockdown generated sixty papers in Nature in a matter of months.

Monopolies are inefficient, and Epic's outmoded and dangerous approach to research, along with the roadblocks it puts in the way of clinical excellence, epitomizes the problems with monopoly. America's health care industry is a dumpster fire from top to bottom – from Medicare Advantage to hospital cartels – and allowing Epic to dominate the EHR market has somehow, incredibly, made that system even worse.

Naturally, Kuttner finishes out his article with some antitrust analysis, sketching out how the Sherman Act could be brought to bear on Epic. Something has to be done. Epic's software is one of the many reasons that MDs are leaving the medical profession in droves.

Epic epitomizes the long-standing class war between doctors who want to take care of their patients and hospital executives who want to make a buck off of those patients.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/02/upcoded-to-death/#thanks-obama

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[countronicsind]

Digital Temperature Meter, Controller, Logger - Countronics

Countronics specializes in manufacturing electronic control instruments for industries. We have wide range of TDIGITAL TEMPERATURE CONTROLLER, DIGITAL TEMPERATURE INDICATO, Digital Temperature Meters, TEMPERATURE LOGGER

DIGITAL TEMPERATURE CONTROLLER, Controller, Logger are used where sensors are used like thermocouple , RTD sensor and other temperature sensor.

DIGITAL TEMPERATURE Meter is a type of feedback element in a temperature sensors it measure the temperature of boiler or other elements stored . The measured data by sensor is displayed on our Digital Temperature Meter.

The data is measured and displayed by digital meter can be controlled through Digital Temperature Controller. User can control the temperature of a boiler or other equipment in process industries.

Digital TEMPERATURE LOGGER is used for data storing. the measured and controlled data though can me logged into data logger;

Our other PRODUCTS

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Digital Counters

Digital ReadOut for Encoders

Digital Temperature Indicator, Controller, Logger

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Flow Meter, Indicator & Controller

Humidity Meter, Indicator, Controller

Peak Load Indicators/Loggers

pH and ORP Meter, Indicator, Controller

Process Indicator/Controller

Production Display Board

Tachometer, RPM Speed Indicator

For More Details Click here : https://www.countronics.com

[astra-ravana]

On Astral Travel

Astral projection is a practice associated with the idea of an out-of-body experience, where one's consciousness is said to travel outside the physical body to explore the physical or astral plane. Similar to lucid dreaming, astral projection is reflexatory. The more often it is carried out the easier the process becomes. Here is a general guide to astral projection.

Preparation

Find a quiet, comfortable space where you won’t be disturbed. Dim the lights, turn off electronic devices, and ensure a comfortable temperature.

Practice deep breathing exercises to calm your mind and body. Progressive muscle relaxation can help you ease tension from head to toe. Consider meditating to achieve a focused and peaceful mind state. Some even use a sleep state to enter the astral.

Techniques for Astral Projection

• The Rope Technique: Imagine a rope hanging above you. Visualize reaching out and mentally climb it, feeling the movement without physical effort.

• The Monroe Technique: Lie down and achieve a state of complete relaxation. Focus on the sensation of vibrations throughout your body as you enter the hypnagogic state. Try to "roll out" of your body with your non-physical form.

• The Wake-Back-to-Bed (WBTB) Method: Set an alarm to wake up after 4-6 hours of sleep. Stay awake for a short period and then return to sleep with the intention of astral projecting.

• The Visualization Technique: Visualize yourself floating away from your physical body or moving through a tunnel or pathway to another realm.

During the Experience

1. Stay Calm: Feelings of vibrations, floating, or other sensations are common and should be accepted without fear. Remain calm and open-minded to the experience.

2. Exploration: Once you feel separated from your physical body, explore your surroundings. Engage with your environment, but avoid getting too excited, as emotions can quickly end the experience. From this simple starting point come infinite possibilities. You can explore the physical world with your astral body, you can also gain entry to different areas of the astral plane through various gates and portals.

3. Home Base: You can usually establish a sort of pocket for yourself in the astral, with relative ease. Just tear open reality and enter the rift, with the intent of going home. Usually this area will start off as something familiar and comfortable like your childhood home or school, but similar to a dreamscape. You can alter and change this area as you see fit.

4. Creation: In the astral, especially within areas you control, you are capable of vast creation. You can build a magick library, a room full of toys, an enchanted mansion. You are limited only by your imagination.

5. Astral Body: Your astral body also has a default form. This is sometimes similar to your physical body, sometimes not, instead resonating with your soul instead. This body can be altered and shifted to different forms with practice.

6. Return to Body: Focus your intention on returning to your physical body. Gradually deepen your breaths and wiggle your fingers and toes to ground yourself. You may use thread or a cord to guide you back to your physical body.

After the Experience

After returning, take time to reflect and write down the details of your experience. Pay attention to any emotions, visuals, or insights gained. Like any skill, astral projection can improve with regular practice and patience. This is a rich and complex practice with many different approaches and belief systems. Experiment with different methods until you find a process that works for you.

Safety and Considerations

Approach astral projection with a positive and inquisitive mindset. Accept that not everyone will have the same experiences, and managing expectations is essential. Astral projection can also facilitate access to different realms, including the spirit world or Otherworld. These types of journeys can be dangerous. In some cases injuries to the astral body can extend to the physical body. Use caution and common sense when exploring.

Astral projection is a highly subjective experience, and the practice and outcomes can vary greatly from person to person. It is important to approach it with an open mind and proper knowledge. That being said, astral projection is like a reflex or a muscle of the mind. The more it is exercised the more natural the practice becomes. Practice and persistence are key. Once mastered, the possibilities are limitless.

[ahgasegotarmy116]

BANG-ABLE | Jeon Jungkook | Drabble 3

Summary: Running into someone from your past that you had hoped you'd never see again was not on your to do list today. Pairing: f!reader x Sex Bot Jungkook Word Count: 1.3k~ Warnings: Literally nothing lol enjoy~ Requested by @missmorningglory 💜

After Jungkook begged me over and over and over again I finally concede and brought him to the mall with me, giving him a very clear warning that if he picked up another mannequin or started touching everything again like he did last time I would ground him, leaving him promising me he'll be on his best behavior. 

We compromised after that and decided it would be best if I just let him hold my hand the whole time because he claimed he couldn't control himself. 

He's a literal robot and can be controlled but I'm too lazy to try and reprogram him for something as silly as that.

As we come upon the next aisle and start looking through all the newish electronics I see someone out of the corner of my eye that I regrettably recognize making me duck behind Jungkook, hoping he didn't see me.

"Is everything alright?" he chuckles, turning to face me, still managing to keep me hidden. "Yeah everything is fine. Completely fine. Just, don't move from this spot for a while yeah?" I say, peeking around him to see that the guy I recognized is getting closer. 

"Actually you know what? Why don't we go to the next aisle? I heard there's a new electric toothbrush that you can hook your phone up to and I really wanna check it out" I say, trying to tug him down the aisle but in the process bump into a speaker behind me, making a Sabrina Carpenter song shoot through it on full blast, startling all three of us and bringing the guys attention over to Jungkook and I.

"Y/n?" he asks, recognizing me immediately making me cringe, wishing the world would open up and swallow me whole. "Yeah, um hi...you" I say, not one hundred percent sure of his name making him chuckle. "Jake" he says, reintroducing himself and I snap.

"Jake! I almost forgot, silly me" I say, my awkwardness level up to a billion leaving all three of us standing there and I realize after having a long pause that I should probably introduce Jungkook. 

"Sorry um, this is Jungkook, my boyfriend. Jungkook this is Ja-" "Jake, got it" Jungkook says flatly, sizing him up and trying to figure out who exactly this man might be to me since he's never come up before.

"Nice to meet you" Jake says, holding out his hand to Jungkook and he takes it, making Jake's brows knit together and let go seconds later. "Strong handshake" he chuckles and shakes out his hand. 

"So um...how have you been?" I ask, internally yelling at myself to stop trying to make small talk. "I've been alright. I was wondering where you wandered off to but now I know..." he says, his eyes sizing up Jungkook right back. "Yeah Jungkook and I met a few months ago and we just...hit it off" I chuckle awkwardly.

"So you guys used to date?" Jungkook asks, Jake saying 'yes' while I'm rushing to say 'no' making Jungkook cock a brow at me. "We went out a couple of times bu-" 

'But I bet we'd have really good bed chem' Sabrina sings right on fucking cue, cutting me off preventing any sort of salvaging of this conversation.

The three of us all stood there awkwardly after that, the song as our backing track making me finally press pause, taking my blood pressure down just a bit. Those lyrics alone hinting at what had gone down between Jake and I. "Anyways, we decided it wasn't gonna work out" I explain making Jake chuckle bitterly. 

"We decided?" he echoes making me cringe, obviously not telling the full truth. "I...I decided" I concede making him nod in agreement. "Ghosted me is more like it" he mumbles making me feel bad, not having had to experience an encounter like this before.

"Yeah...sorry bout that" I say, but we all know I'm not sorry. If anything I'm more sorry that I have to go through this as a result. "I'll let you guys get back to shopping then. It was nice meeting you Jungkook...Y/n" he says, looking me up and down once more before leaving the aisle, making me let out a breath of relief. 

"Was tha-" "I don't wanna talk about it" I say holding my hand up to Jungkook's face to stop the conversation before it gets started leaving him chuckling at my expense. "Oh yeah laugh it up, we'll see where that gets you" I huff and walk in the opposite direction that Jake went, leaving Jungkook jogging after me to catch up.

"That guy looked pretty familiar" he says in my ear when we start making our way out and back to the car. "Really? I'm pretty sure I've never shown him to you. I don't even think I have a picture of him" I say thinking about it for a second and Jungkook just shakes his head.

"What?" I ask and he just shrugs his shoulder, "Oh nothing" he says and opens my car door for me. "No tell me!" I whine leaving him placing a kiss on my pouty lips. "I just thought he looked really familiar that's all" he shrugs again making my eyes roll.

"Who does he remind you of then?" I ask and his next answer makes me choke on air. "Me" he chuckles and pats my back to help soothe my coughing fit. "What?" I ask, not remotely expecting that since...let's be honest, Jungkook is a hell of a lot more handsome than Jake...but I'll never tell.

"It's okay to have a type. I just wasn't expecting to see the guy you modeled me after" he taunts, poking my cheek making me pout further. "I did not model you after him" I huff and close the car door on him leaving him laughing and walking around to the passenger seat. 

"Ava is the one that created you remember? I hardly had any part in it" I mumble and put the car into drive, heading straight home since I know I'll be forced to deal with his teasings for the rest of the night. 

"Yeah but you clearly have a type if she's able to make a sex bot for you with a similar vibe" he counters making me groan. "For the last time you are not modeled after him!" and he puts his hands up in defeat. "Whatever you say my love" he addresses me with the motive of taking the edge off. 

The car goes silent for a while until I can tell he's bursting at the seams to ask me another question. 

"So if I asked you to show me your previous boyfriends would you say yes?" he chances. "Absolutely not" I grumble and he laughs, "That's fine, I'm sure I can always as Ava" he smirks, satisfied with his plan.

"He wasn't even my boyfriend...but he wanted to be. And so that's why I ghosted him" I explain and he hums. "Pussy so good you got him whipped after a few tastes?" he says, his vulgar way of putting it catching me off guard.

"Jungkook!" I scold him, my cheeks heating up at that, making his chuckle that fucking cocky chuckle that makes me wanna get on my knees for him. "What? I don't blame the guy. I'd never wanna let you go either" he admits but I sigh, bringing myself back down to reality.

 "You're programmed to be obsessed with me so your words don't hold much weight in this context" I explain but he just shrugs. 

"From the way he was looking at you, clearly still wanting you...and the way he was looking at me, pissed that he wasn't in my place I know my calculations are correct. Call it what you want but you're addictive" he counters making me squirm in place, the compliment with evidence to corroborate it making me nervous.

"Shut up and let me drive" I huff and he stifles back his laughter, having mercy on me...but that mercy is short lived. His need to prove himself evident as soon as we walk in the door, making sure to remind me that no one could ever compare to him.

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[literaryvein-reblogs]

hi hello! hopefully what im asking for isn't too obscure, but do you think i could i get resources/tips on how to write a being that was synthetically made/and or coded? Much thanks in advance/for the chance!

Writing Ideas: Synthetically-Made Characters

some character tropes

Artificial Human: A human being who was created artificially rather than born naturally.

Artificial Animal People: Human-like animals or animal-like humans created through science.

Artificial Intelligence: In fictional works, AI most usually refers to artificial general intelligence — a sapient, self-aware computer system capable of independent thought and reason.

Bioweapon Beast: You create your own attack animal, genetically engineering existing organisms or creating your own. Maybe this new organism would rather just be left alone, and refuses to actually fight. Maybe it goes feral and becomes a dangerous monster roaming the wilderness. Maybe it actually works perfectly, but those in charge of it are far from ethical.

Clockwork Creature: May be purely mechanical, or, if in a fantasy setting, there may be a blend of mechanical and magical elements.

Mechanical Lifeforms: A race of robots or robot-like creatures that are also considered a honest-to-goodness species of living things. They're just like your everyday living organisms, except they happen to have metal for skin, wires for nerves, and so on. They're often silicon-based as well. These may be robotic animals, plants, micro-organisms, or sapient creatures. If they are sapient, they would never wish to Become a Real Boy because, as far as they can see, they are as real as that boy. The origin of such creatures is often never elaborated on or unknown to the characters. It's not uncommon for them to have creators Shrouded in Myth and mystified or outright denied in a sort of reversed creationism that are later further explained in plot-relevant and shocking revelations, similar to precursors for organic species. Sapient mechanical lifeforms tend to react as one would expect when they learn the nature of their origin, usually in some kind of denial and anger. There has been a trend of portraying mechanical lifeforms as formerly organic races that roboticized themselves either as the next Evolutionary Level or simply to survive some world-ending catastrophe that affected them in the past. However, it's also common for such creatures to simply arise without a creator in a process comparable to evolution.

Puppet Permutation: A person changes into a living puppet. They sometimes can control themselves, but this is usually not the case. These puppets are often controlled by outside forces.

Examples

Frankenstein's Monster is one of the most classic and well known examples. While it is stressed at certain points through the original Frankenstein novel that the monster is an entirely unique species, he certainly has a human intelligence and personality. It is left ambiguous whether creating the creature was actually a bad thing or not. The creature suffers (and subsequently causes suffering to his creator), not because it was created but because the creator abandoned it afterwards.

Celtic Mythology: Blodeuedd, the woman created from flowers to be the wife of Lleu Llaw in Medieval Welsh mythology.

A Greek myth tells the story of Pygmalion, a man who shunned real-life women but craved that his beautiful sculpture of one would come to life. He loved it so much that he prayed to Venus/Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, to grant him that wish. After he kissed the ivory-carved statue's lips, Venus worked her magic and it came to life. This is seen as a literal "Breath of Life".

Pandora in Greek myth was a sculpture that the Gods made and brought to life.

Japanese Mythology: Any non-electronic item can become a Tsukumogami if it's cared for and becomes old enough, which are Animate Inanimate Objects. This can also happen to toys, giving rise to the Living Toys trope.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: An alien civilization created at least one sentient supercomputer, Deep Thought, for the purpose of answering philosophical questions regarding the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

The Hunger Games: During the rebellion which led to the creation of the titular Games, the Capitol bred a number of genetically engineered animals called muttations (commonly abbreviated to mutts) which were used as living weapons against the districts. From the Tenth Hunger Games onwards, they became a regular feature in the arena, with the Gamemakers using them either to kill the tributes directly or to drive the tributes together and force them to fight each other. Examples of mutts seen in the Games include poisonous snakes which are programmed to attack anyone whose scent is unfamiliar, carnivorous squirrels which attack in packs and werewolf-like creatures which have been created to resemble fallen tributes.

Victor Frankenstein (2015): Victor proclaims to Igor that they will create a man after their own image. The process involves stitching together dead body parts and reanimating the corpse with lightning.

Isaac Asimov often averted this trope quite harshly in his Robot Series and related works, preferring to think of robots as tools rather than people. He only imagined robots being roughly humanoid when they needed to be able to perform tasks which human tools for already existed and it wouldn't make sense to replace every piece of equipment when one robot could be made to use them. They were always built to the job, and sometimes that job made for very unusual designs instead.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Hi, here are some related tropes you can use as inspiration. More examples and information on these in the sources linked above. Hope this helps with your writing!

[x-press-it]

Doll

Some names bruise deeper than others 🎞��🖤🌹✅

Soft!Bucky Barnes x Tech Girl!reader

Summary: Bucky’s been flirting with the team’s tech girl for weeks. She’s sharp, funny, always a step ahead of him—and their slow-burn flirtation has become the highlight of his days. They tease, they banter, they orbit closer. Until one word—just one—shatters everything. He doesn’t know why. Not at first.

What follows isn’t an apology. It’s a lesson in patience. In gentleness.

This is a story about trauma and tenderness. About how the wrong word can reopen old wounds—and how the right actions can help them start to heal.

Content Warnings: Heavy angst with happy ending. Pet names (Doll, Sweetheart.) Mention of alcohol and smoking (sort of). Mentions of car accident, loss, grief, emotional abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, references to non-consensual dynamics (no explicit scenes), trauma processing, dissociation, and complex PTSD.

This story handles survivor experiences with care, but please prioritize your own well-being if these topics are sensitive for you.

If I forgot some, please tell me, I'll add them.

Reader Notes: No Y/N, no physical description of the reader, but the protagonist has an established backstory, which is why this is written in the third person rather than the second.

English isn’t my first language so there might be typos/weird sentences…

Notes: Teased it in my last sneak peek.

I wrote this because I needed to.

In so many stories, Bucky uses the pet name “Doll”—and every time, it pulls me out of the moment. For a lot of people, it’s harmless or even sweet. But for some of us, it’s a word that’s been used to belittle, to erase, to control. To make us feel small. Breakable. Replaceable.

This piece was born from that. A quiet defiance, maybe. A reclamation.

I wanted a version of Bucky who doesn’t just avoid that word—but understands, why it hurts. A version who listens before he touches. Who knows that softness is stronger than rage, and that surviving isn’t something broken—it’s something sacred.

I’ve woven some of my own past into this story, in small, careful ways. Not enough to spill it all, but just enough to be honest. If any part of this resonates with you—you’re not alone. You’re never alone. And you deserve the kind of love that asks nothing of you.

Stay safe.

Edit: Did a few light touch-ups here and there for flavor after a few hours of sleep ^^"

Need some music? I’ve got you.

Word Count: 11.5K

Late afternoon settled over the compound—heavy, and still. The kind of slow quiet that only came once training sessions ended, when the sun dipped just enough to bleed through the glass-paneled corridors and dust danced in the light, glittering. Most people were elsewhere—burning off steam in the gym, sneaking snacks from the kitchen, or finally, blissfully, leaving work behind in the common room.

But not her.

She was still tucked in her little office, a soft pocket just off the main hall that people playfully called the tech wing. The glow of three monitors flickered against her face, casting her features in shifting blues. Empty mugs—too many—stood forgotten near the edge of the desk, the scent of something like plastic burnt in the wiring lingering faintly in the air. Her fingers flew across the keys, quick and precise, trying to breathe life back into a line of code that refused to behave.

A soft electronic beat pulsed low through her speakers, something calm, ambient, the kind of music that filled the silence and kept her focused.

Then—three knocks.

Firm. Intentional. Steady.

She didn’t bother to look up.

“If it’s about your playlist, Mr. Stark,” she called, a little dry, “I’m still not giving you clearance to hijack SHIELD servers just to blast AC/DC in the showers.”

Silence.

Then a voice that didn’t belong to Stark—lower, raspier, but with a curious kind of softness too. Like it wasn’t used to being gentle but tried, just for her.

“Wasn’t planning on singing in the showers,” it said, a touch of humor curling around the words, “but now you’ve got me thinking about it.”

Her hands stilled. Slowly, she lifted her head toward the door.

Leaning against the frame, like the space had been made for him to fill it, was James Buchanan Barnes. He had a tablet in one hand, the other casually shoved into the pocket of his jeans. The sleeves of his dark blue Henley were rolled to his elbows, exposing the metal gleam of his left forearm and the soft, warm skin of the right. His hair was messier than usual. Shadows clung to his jaw, under his eyes. He looked tired.

Tired in the way people looked when sleep didn’t come easy. Tired but in that unfairly handsome in the late afternoon light kind of way.

“You're not Stark,” she stated, finally.

He smirked, faint and crooked. “Glad you noticed.”

He lifted the tablet a little, like a peace offering. “I think I broke this. Or it broke me. Not sure which came first. Either way, it’s not working.”

She blinked once, lips twitching despite herself as she gestured for him to hand it over with an extended hand in his direction. “Let me guess. Forgot your password again after the last security update?”

“You change the rules every month. Feels like sabotage... or emotional warfare.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but there was a glint of mirth in them.

“It’s protocol, Barnes. Not everything’s a conspiracy. And no, you can’t pick ‘password123’ again.”

He stepped into the room like he belonged there, slow and easy, closer than necessary.

Close enough for her to catch that faint mixed scent of leather, metal, and the trace of gunpowder that seemed woven into his skin. But there was something else too, something warm. Something that didn’t belong to the soldier, but to the man underneath. The man who looked at her like he wasn’t sure if he deserved to.

He set the tablet gently in her open hand, fingers faintly brushing against hers, then didn’t move away. He stayed there, hip leaning against the edge, arms crossing over his chest as his gaze lingered on her—quiet, watching, like he wasn’t in a rush to leave.

“Gotta make sure you keep your job,” he said, voice low and a little too smooth. “Figure if I keep breaking shit, you’ll have to keep fixing it.”

She arched a brow. “This your idea of flirting?”

He tilted his head. “Is it working?”

She huffed out a small laugh, shaking her head as she started navigating the menus of the tablet, fingers brushing the screen, tapping through the security prompts.

“You’re lucky I like a challenge,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” he said, voice nearly a whisper. “Lucky me, doll.”

Her hands stopped mid-type.

The word—that word—hit like a knife between her ribs.

The smile she’d almost given him fell away. Her whole body seemed to still, breath caught somewhere just out of reach. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak. Just stared at the screen, as if it had turned to stone beneath her hands.

Like she was watching things only she could see. Things replaying in her mind.

Like if she didn’t move, maybe the past wouldn’t catch up.

“Don’t,” she finally said.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

Bucky’s brows knit, confusion creasing the space between his eyes as the teasing ease dropped from his voice. “Sorry?”

Her gaze met his. Steady. Flat. But underneath the emotionless surface was something sharp. Cold steel lined with something rawer, still bleeding.

“Don’t call me that.”

There was silence—thick, uncertain.

He straightened, just barely, but enough to show the shift in the air hadn’t gone unnoticed. He didn’t understand it yet—but he felt it. Like a tremor before a quake.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, quieter this time. Almost careful.

She gave a nod. A small, controlled gesture. But it wasn’t agreement. It was containment. A leash on a storm.

“I’m not a doll, Barnes.” Her voice didn’t shake, but there was an edge to it, like glass stuck in an old wound, reopening it from the inside. “I’m not some… pretty thing you can pick up and carry around when you’re bored and drop when you’ve had enough. I’m not yours to name like a toy. So don’t call me that.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. His jaw clenched, and for once, James Buchanan Barnes—the man made for war, the ex-assassin, the soldier who never seemed rattled—looked like he realized he’d just stepped into a minefield.

“…Okay,” he said at last. Rough. Honest. A little wrecked around the edges. “Okay. I won’t.”

The quiet that followed wasn’t empty—it was heavy. Suspended.

Not awkward. Tense. The kind of silence that presses on your chest like guilt. Like grief. Like something fragile had cracked between them and neither knew how to glue it back together.

She didn’t look at him again.

She turned back to her work, face set in lines too still, too clean. No more teasing smirk. No more jokes. Just methodical typing, every keystroke measured like it mattered more than him standing there.

A wall had gone up.

Solid. Impenetrable.

Laced with barbed-wire—built not just to keep him out, but to make sure he felt it if he ever tried to cross.

Bucky lingered there just a heartbeat too long. Long enough to feel the absence of whatever had been there before, curling around them like smoke.

“…Right,” he murmured, shifting his weight like it suddenly didn’t sit right in his own skin. “Thanks for helping.”

No answer. Just the faint tap of her fingers on the cool surface and the cold glow of the screen.

She typed until the lockout cleared, then set the tablet on the desk quietly. No flair. No flourish. Just another problem solved.

“Here. Done.”

Flat. Dismissive.

Already, her hand was moving back to her keyboard. Like he’d never stepped inside. Like his voice, his smirk, his mistake, had never touched the air.

He watched her, chest tight with something he couldn’t name. Something that twisted low in his stomach. Coiling like a cold snake.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected—maybe a sarcastic you’re welcome, maybe a glare—but this quiet dismissal? It made his skin itch in a way any mission, even the most crazy and suicidal ones, never had.

He picked up the tablet slowly, fingers brushing the spot she’d just touched, like it might give him back a piece of the warmth he’d just lost.

“…Alright. I’ll, uh. See you around.”

Still nothing.

And maybe that was the worst part.

He turned—quiet, always quiet—but it felt different this time. Like he was walking out of a room that had shut him out before he ever left it, like whatever had been forming between them had just died on the operating table.

He reached the door.

Paused.

Something tugged at him—not her, not a sound, just something. Regret maybe. Or the echo of her voice, her words, in his bones.

Hand on the doorframe, he looked back over his shoulder. Just once.

She hadn’t moved. Still typing, still half-hidden, shielded behind her monitors, like they could make her invisible. Like it was safer not to be seen.

“…I didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” he said, softer now. The kind of softness that came from standing in the wreckage of something you didn’t realize was breakable. “I’m sorry.”

Then he left.

The door shut softly behind him.

Only then did she stop typing.

Her fingers hovered uselessly above the keys, shaking, and for a long second, the only thing that moved was the slight fall of her chest as the breath she’d been holding slid out in one long, deflating exhale.

The screen in front of her was still glowing, lines of code sharp and insistent—but she didn’t see any of it.

Instead, her mind replayed every word. Every look. The sound of his voice when he said that word.

And then—after she’d lashed out—how his mouth had tightened. Not anger. Just shock. Confused. Hurt.

Because it wasn’t him she was angry at. Not really.

It was everything else. Everything before.

The way it had hit too close to old wounds, too identical to how she had felt all those years ago. All the names she’d been given without permission, the way she’d once been someone’s possession instead of a person. The way she’d let it happen, because it was what was expected of her. But also just to feel loved. Just to feel seen. Just to feel alive again… not just a fucking walking corpse…

And now Bucky—of all people—had said it, not knowing what it unearthed in her. Not knowing how deep it could cut.

And it wasn’t fair, not to him. He hadn’t deserved the frost she’d wrapped around her voice like a knife.

But the words had come out anyway.

And now all that was left behind was the low, dull throb of guilt.

She leaned back slowly in her chair, the stiff material creaking beneath her, and closed her eyes like that might somehow keep the ache from spreading.

“…Shit,” she whispered, barely audible.

Her eyes lingered on the closed door.

She had overreacted. He probably hadn’t meant it like that. And he deserved more than a sharp silence—sharp enough to slice back. Meant to hurt. Meant to make him feel it. To make him bleed the way his words had. It hadn’t been fair. But in that moment, she’d wanted it. A blade to skin with his name on the steel, deliberate, designed to cut deep.

And then she was moving—almost without thought, her body pulled forward like a string had yanked tight in her chest. She pushed up from the chair like staying still might break her open.

He’d looked hurt. Not wounded like in a fight. Hurt, like he’d been trying and she’d shut the door anyway.

Not defensive. Not cocky.

No.

He looked guilty.

Just sorry.

She stepped into the hallway with quick, urgent strides, rounding the corner like she could still catch him.

And she did.

But he wasn’t alone.

Natasha Romanoff leaned against the wall like she owned it—casual, elegant, unshakable. Her arms were crossed loosely over her chest, and something he said made her smirk, the kind of smirk that knew things—intimately. Bucky tilted his head toward her, his expression soft. At ease. Like nothing had gone wrong today.

A low, honest laugh escaped him. The kind of laugh she hadn’t heard from him directed at her, ever.

She stopped walking.

Just… stopped.

From this far away, the words were a blur, but the picture was clear enough. Natasha’s hand drifted lightly to his arm, and Bucky didn’t pull away. Didn’t even flinch. His lips tugged into a crooked grin similar to the one he had given her earlier, before she had slammed her armor into his face.

It made something twist sharply in her stomach.

They looked right together.

Easy.

Whole.

And suddenly, she felt like a jagged edge in a world of smooth pieces.

Natasha could take a nickname like “doll” and spin it into something smart and flirty. She could disarm it. Own it. She didn’t carry the same kind of ghosts. She didn’t freeze up. She didn’t bleed out over nothing.

Her jaw clenched. Her hand curled into a fist, fingernails digging into her palm like maybe pain would keep the rising tide at bay.

“Never mind,” she muttered, her voice hollow.

She turned.

And this time, she walked slower—like her bones were heavier now, filled with something bitter and sinking. The fight had drained out of her legs. The words she’d meant to say sat unsaid in the back of her throat, sour and sharp.

She didn’t look back again.

But the image of them—smiling, close, fitting—stayed with her, burned into the backs of her eyes.

She returned to her office like she was retreating, not walking. Like the door would protect her from the ache clawing up her spine, in her chest, at her heart.

The code still sat unfinished on her screen. Her chair waited, still turned from when she’d pushed out of it in a rush.

But the warmth was gone.

The quiet playlist felt different now—too quiet. Too cold. Too impersonal.

And the taste in her mouth?

Still there.

Still bitter.

Still lingering.

Bucky was still laughing at Natasha’s comment.

Or at least, it looked like he was.

The sound was there—low, familiar, warm enough to pass. But it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Not the way it should have.

Like his body knew how to go through the motions, but his mind had lagged behind.

Still caught somewhere else.

On someone else.

Like he’d brushed past barbed-wire, and the sting lingered at the back of his mind.

The next laugh came quieter than the one before—softer, thinner, as if whatever had sparked it was already fading from his grasp. A moment, gone before he could hold it.

Just a quick movement.

His gaze drifted, pulled by something he hadn’t meant to notice.

Just a flicker.

The ghost of a shadow at the edge of the hall.

A retreating blur of familiar fabric. The shape of her hair catching the light before vanishing around the corner.

He squinted. Tilted his head. Leaned slightly, like maybe—just maybe—that would call her back into view.

But there was nothing.

The hallway was still.

Silent.

His body—his whole weight—shifted. He turned, instinctive and slow, like his chest was tugged by a thread he didn’t fully understand.

But—

“Hey,” Natasha’s voice cut through the haze, sharp enough to pull him back. “You see a ghost or something?”

He blinked, the mirage fading like smoke, turning his focus back to his friend. “What?”

“You looked like you saw a ghost,” she said, raising one brow. Her gaze flicked toward the hallway, curiosity tugging her attention for half a beat—like she was trying to catch whatever he’d seen—before sliding back to him.

She leaned in, casual and unshakable, crossing one leg over the other like she had all the time in the world. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Too fast. A deflection polished by habit.

He shook his head, like he could physically toss off the tight pull still lingering in his chest. “Thought I saw someone, that’s all.”

“Mmm.” That sound told him exactly what she thought of that answer.

Nat never bought his I’m fine, especially not when he served it up that quickly.

Her eyes flicked to the tablet tucked under his arm, and her mouth curved into a smirk—sharp, knowing, amused.

“Wait… Let me guess.” She pointed at the device like it held a piece of juicy gossip, a secret she was dying to unwrap. “You went to see the tech girl, didn’t you?”

Bucky’s jaw ticked despite himself. A flicker of a reaction, small enough most wouldn’t notice—but Natasha did.

“I needed my password reset,” he said, deadpan.

“Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?” she teased, her tone sugar-sweet with a razor underneath. “Password resets and awkward flirting?”

“There wasn’t—” He exhaled hard through his nose, shifting his grip on the tablet. “It wasn’t flirting.”

Natasha gave him a look that practically screamed sure, sweetheart.

“You flirt with her every time you walk into her office,” she said, arms folding. “And she flirts back.”

“She didn’t this time,” Bucky muttered.

Soft. Quieter. Like the words hurt to say out loud.

That paused her.

The teasing faltered, just enough for something else to slip through—curiosity, maybe. Concern. Her smile didn’t vanish, but it changed. Tilted. Recalculating. Like she was reevaluating the board mid-game.

She didn’t press.

Just leaned in and tapped the tablet with one perfect nail. “Careful, Barnes. Those quiet ones? They’ll wreck you if you let them.”

He didn’t respond.

Didn’t need to.

His eyes had already wandered back to the hallway.

Back to the place where she’d been.

Or where he thought she’d been.

And the space was empty.

Too empty.

Like something had been there a moment ago—someone—and now it was gone.

Like something delicate had cracked open in his hands—something that had trusted him to hold it gently.

And he'd shattered it, without meaning to.

And now all that was left was the echo.

He didn’t even know what he’d done—how he’d broken it.

Just that it had once been his to protect.

And he hadn’t.

It’d been days, and the moment still lingered like a bitter taste in Bucky's mouth.

Sharp.

Metallic.

Like blood he hadn’t meant to draw.

He’d catch himself thinking about her in the most random moments—mid-mission briefings, quiet breakfasts, even when he was watching something dumb on TV just to fill the silence. It crept in without warning: the way her whole body had changed in an instant. The way her eyes had gone blank. Like a switch had flipped.

One word. That’s all it took.

Doll.

He hadn’t even meant anything by it. It had slipped out, natural as breathing. A soft note in a playful conversation that had felt—up until then—familiar. Safe. Like something they were building, brick by careful brick.

He’d called a hundred women “doll” in his life—before. Before everything. Before he forgot how to be a person. Before he became a weapon, a tool. The Winter Soldier.

But she… she’d looked like he’d hit her, like he’d stabbed her in the chest. Like he’d peeled open something she’d been trying to keep buried.

And he couldn’t stop replaying it. Couldn’t stop feeling it. That flicker in her eyes, the way she pulled inward like she was bracing for a blow.

So that evening, when the compound had gone quiet and her shift technically ended half an hour ago but a soft glow still shone under her office door, Bucky made his way down the hallway.

He carried two glasses and a bottle of honey whiskey he’d picked up days ago. Not for himself. He didn’t even drink much these days.

She’d mentioned it once. A passing comment to one of her colleagues in the cafeteria while stirring sugar into her coffee—something about how she liked to unwind with a glass after a long day. She’d smiled when she said it. Not one of those polite workplace smiles, but a real one. Tired around the edges, but honest.

Unarmored.

It had stuck. Lodged itself somewhere under his ribs, like a fragmented bullet, and refused to leave.

He stopped in front of her door, heart tripping over itself in a rhythm that felt unfamiliar. The light beneath the frame didn’t move. No shadow. No footsteps. Just stillness.

He knocked, soft. Two taps with his knuckles. No metal. Just skin and hesitation.

“Come in,” she called, distracted.

The door slid open, and Bucky stepped inside. The soft click of it closing behind him felt final. Too final. Like walking into something he couldn’t walk back out of.

Her office was dim, lit mostly by the eerie glow of her monitors—three screens reflected in her glasses, alive with what looked like moving lines of code that made no sense to him.

She didn’t look up at first.

He stood there, silent. Just watching. The way her brows knit together, how her lips pressed into a thin line when something didn’t behave the way she wanted. She was always beautiful, but like this? Focused, brilliant, unaware of him?

It made his throat ache.

When he finally took a step forward, she glanced up. And there it was—that beat of hesitation. Too long to ignore. Like she didn’t know who he was to her anymore. Like she didn’t know who she was to him.

Her fingers didn’t stop typing, not completely.

“Locked yourself out of your tablet again?”

Dry. Not cruel. But void of the warmth they used to pass back and forth like a shared cigarette.

Bucky lifted the bottle slightly, the glasses clinking gently in his other hand. “Nope,” he said, voice as easy as he could make it. Like he wasn’t standing there with a fucking apology trembling in his chest. “Thought I’d come bury the hatchet.”

She raised a brow, skeptical. But she didn’t tell him to get out.

“I mean,” he added, moving up to the edge of her desk, “I can’t have my favorite tech person mad at me. Who the hell would I go to next time I need something fixed? Tony? He’d make me do a favor first. Probably something humiliating.”

That got the smallest twitch at the corner of her mouth. But it was like watching a smile die in real time. It didn’t land the way he wanted. Not all the way.

His own smile wavered. Just a flicker—but enough. The tightness between his brows gave him away. And she noticed. Of course she noticed.

She always noticed.

The way his shoulders were too stiff beneath the hoodie he wore like armor. The way his fingers curled too tight around the neck of the bottle like it was the only thing keeping him anchored.

He was trying. Really trying.

And for a moment, that office wasn’t filled with the hum of computers, or the glow of code—it was just them. Standing in the space between what they had been, and whatever came next.

And it hurt.

Damn, it hurt.

And that nagging thought she’d had since she saw him with Natasha—he’s probably into her, that makes more sense—started to crack just a little.

Because this wasn’t a man who’d brushed it off.

He looked like he’d been carrying the scars he made on her barbed-wired armor around every single day since.

Worn them like a weight. Quiet. Invisible. Heavy.

Licking them like a wounded animal.

When she didn’t immediately reply, Bucky didn’t push. He just set the two glasses down gently on the desk and unscrewed the cap, the scent of honey and oak drifting into the room like a peace offering.

“I, uh… sorry, I didn’t bring ice cubes,” he added quickly, pouring the amber liquid into the glasses without looking at her. “Figured it probably wasn’t the best idea with all this tech stuff around. And, y’know, didn’t have enough hands anyway.”

He let out a breath—short and low—like maybe he'd practiced that line in his head and still hated how it sounded.

He offered a small, sheepish shrug, like he wasn’t sure if he was being charming or just awkward. Maybe both.

Maybe he didn’t know how to be either with her anymore.

The bottle gave a soft clink as he set it aside. He slid one glass toward her without forcing it, without asking if she wanted it. Just… placed it within reach. Like a gesture more than a drink.

A way to say, I’m still here. If you want me to be.

He leaned against the edge of her desk, turning his glass slowly in his hand, eyes down on the rippling whiskey like it might give him the courage to finish the thought.

“I’ve been thinkin’ about the other day,” he said, quieter now. “I know I probably stepped on a landmine without realizing. And I didn’t come here to make you explain it. You don’t owe me that… or anything for that matter.”

He finally looked at her again, blue eyes steady but softer than usual. Still haunted, maybe—but this was a different kind of ghost behind them.

Not the kind that came from bloodshed or war.

The kind that came from hurting someone you care about and not knowing if you’d ever be let close enough to make it right.

“I just… I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said simply.

No excuses.

No charm.

Just truth.

And it hung in the air like a thunderbolt.

She sighed. The kind that slipped out before she could catch it, heavy with everything unsaid.

Everything she'd swallowed down for days.

All the old pain she thought she’d buried deep enough to forget.

Bucky glanced up at the sound, gaze searching her face like he was bracing for another verbal grenade. But she didn’t detonate this time.

Instead, she leaned back in her seat, finally dragging her eyes from the screen to him. Her fingers curled around the glass, still warm from his hand, and she stared at the whiskey for a beat before lifting it to her lips.

Just a small sip. Just enough to chase down the lump in her throat.

“Thanks,” she murmured, the edge in her voice softened now. “For this.”

He nodded, barely a shift of his chin, like he was afraid moving too much might make her retreat again.

Like he knew exactly how delicate the moment was.

How close it hovered to unraveling.

She didn’t look at him when she spoke next, but her voice was steadier. Quieter, too.

“I, uh… I overreacted,” she said. “You didn’t know. It’s just… that word. It reopened something. Old wounds.”

Her fingers tightened a little on the glass, then relaxed again. She still didn’t offer more, didn’t owe him more. But even that sliver of honesty was already a lot.

More than she’d given most people in years.

And Bucky, who’d been holding his breath like a soldier waiting for the next bullet, exhaled.

“Okay,” he said gently. “I get it.”

There was a silence, but it was a softer one now. No tension. Just the space between two people who were cautiously lowering their armor again.

Piece by piece.

Careful. Quiet.

“I won’t call you that again,” he said, voice quiet but steady—an understanding, not a question.

Because yeah, he cared.

And maybe… maybe he always had.

“Good,” she said simply, eyes steady on him now. “Don’t.”

There wasn’t a tremble in her voice, but there was weight.

Years of it, maybe.

A decade buried, folded behind a single word.

And it landed like a stone in his chest.

He nodded once, slow and sure.

“Okay,” he said. No argument, no pushback. “I won’t.”

Another silence bloomed between them. But this time it wasn’t uncomfortable—it just was.

Like static in the room that hadn’t quite found a frequency yet.

Like grief and grace trying to coexist.

And maybe, in that fragile quiet, something had started to mend.

Not fully. Not yet.

But the first stitch had been made.

She sank into her chair a bit more, eyes drifting, unfocused, as if pulled into some memory only she could see. The kind that still had claws, and fangs, and spikes—that still drew blood when she looked too long. Her thumb slowly traced the rim of the glass, absent and automatic—something to do with her hands while the rest of her tried not to splinter under the weight of it.

Bucky didn’t move, just stood there, sipping quietly, like he understood she needed the silence more than the sound. Like he knew how not to crowd someone who was fighting ghosts of their own.

Because he did.

When she blinked herself back to the present, the first thing she noticed was that he was still standing. Still watching. Still there. The sight of it twisted something in her chest—something sharp and untrusting.

She frowned softly. “You’re making me feel like I’m being interviewed by HR.”

He arched a brow, puzzled, until she reached over and tugged a second office chair with her foot. The wheels squeaked softly against the tile, loud in the quiet room, like a tiny protest from the world outside their tension.

“Sit down,” she said, nudging it closer to him. “You’re giving me a neck cramp.”

He huffed something between a laugh and a sigh—like even that simple sound carried a weight he didn’t know what to do with—and took the seat, lowering himself into it like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to make himself comfortable here. Like comfort was something he had to earn in her kingdom now.

She watched him over the rim of her glass again as he took another sip. Watched the way his fingers curved around the drink like it was something to hold onto. Watched the crease in his brow that hadn’t left since he walked in. Like he hadn’t let himself breathe since the last time they spoke.

Something about the way he sat, the way his shoulders held tension even now—like he was still waiting for her to push him away—made it harder to dismiss him.

She could feel her brain trying to pick apart the code. To debug the situation. Trying to determine: Is he doing this because he genuinely cares? Because the thought of hurting me kept him up at night?

Or was it just another tactic, another mask? Something polished. Practiced. The way others had smiled at her before they stole something they had no right to.

Or worse—maybe he wasn’t just trying to take something. Maybe he wanted to keep her. Add her to whatever collection he had, like a thing that looked good beside all the others.

Conquests. One-night stands. Girls. Women.

However he was calling it.

His eyes met hers just then—maybe he felt her watching.

Or maybe he was always watching her—just not head-on. Quietly. Like he didn’t want her to notice.

Like a habit he couldn’t shake.

But he didn’t look smug. Didn’t look like a man who thought he was halfway to a victory.

He looked… guilty. And maybe a little sad. Like something inside him was unraveling in slow, silent threads.

That was harder to fake.

She took another sip and quietly asked, “So… why come back? You already said sorry.”

Her voice wasn’t accusing. Just curious. Careful. Like touching a bruise to see if it still hurt.

He didn’t answer right away.

The question hung in the air between them like a challenge—but not the sharp kind. Not the prove it kind. The kind that said: I want to believe you. Please don’t make me regret it.

Bucky stared at the whiskey in his glass for a beat, rolling it gently in his hand like he was looking for answers in the amber. Then he exhaled through his nose—slow, the kind of breath you let out when you finally stop pretending something doesn’t hurt.

“Because I meant it,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was steady. “And because saying it once didn’t feel like enough.”

She didn’t move, didn’t look away—just let him speak. Let the words fill the spaces left by all the things unsaid.

“I keep thinking about the way you looked that day. Like I’d flipped a switch in you. One word, and you just… shut the door.” His jaw tensed. “I didn’t know. I couldn’t have, but I still did it. And I hate that. I hate that I did that to you.”

Her throat worked as she swallowed slowly, but she stayed silent, giving him room.

Maybe because part of her wanted to believe this wasn’t just him trying to make peace for his own gain. That it wasn’t some move to ease his guilt or smooth things over just enough to get what he wanted.

Maybe because something in his voice—the strain of it—sounded like it came from the same kind of broken she knew too well.

He continued, fingers tightening just a little around the glass. Like he needed the sting of it to stay grounded.

“It’s not just guilt. It’s not just wanting to make things right so it doesn’t feel awkward the next time I need something fixed.”

A faint, dry smile tugged at the corner of her lips at that, but she stayed quiet.

Not because she didn’t want to speak—but because if she did, she wasn’t sure what might spill out.

“I kept thinking… if it hurt me that much to see you like that, to know I caused it—then it’s not just some fleeting thing, or whatever.”

He looked up at her again, eyes clearer now, like something inside him had clicked into place.

“I care about you.”

The words weren’t dramatic. They didn’t come with a grand gesture or heat behind them.

Just quiet truth. The kind that ached in the silence after.

The kind that left no place to hide.

He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees, the drink forgotten in his hands.

“And I know we don’t know each other that well. But I want to. I want to figure this out—whatever this is.”

Her chest tightened, a flutter blooming somewhere between fear and hope—two old ghosts that never showed up alone.

Fear, because she’d been here before.

Hope, because somehow this felt different.

It always feels different, doesn’t it?

But this… this carried a tremble, like her ribs were bracing against something breaking open.

A part of her already wanted to run.

Another part had never wanted someone to stay so badly.

Bucky looked down again, then back at her, softer now.

“So yeah. I brought the whiskey to say sorry. But I stayed because I’m not ready to give up the way you smile at me when you’re in a good mood. Or the way you tilt your head when you’re trying not to laugh at something dumb I said.”

His mouth twisted into the faintest smile, but it was lined with something older than regret—like he was letting her see a crack in the armor he always wore.

“I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose you, even if I never really had you to begin with.”

She studied him for a long, quiet moment.

Eyes narrowed. Teeth pulling lightly at her lower lip, the rim of her glass cradled like it might hold her together. Still, she didn’t look away. She couldn’t. Her gaze was pinned to his like a lifeline, her brain still trying to catch up to the weight of his words.

She was weighing them—each syllable scraping softly against the bruised corners of her trust.

And he didn’t try to smooth over the silence this time. Didn’t offer more to cushion the blow.

Just let her take her time, the flicker of a frown still ghosting between his brows—quiet, pained, like he was already bracing for her to push him away. For her to close the door for good this time.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she gave the faintest little nod, like she’d just negotiated something with her own heart and barely won.

Slowly, she extended her right hand toward his—flesh, not metal. Human.

Trembling, just a little.

Open.

Tentative.

“Apology accepted,” she said, voice soft, brittle at the edges like it had cost her more than he’d ever know.

He blinked, caught off guard—like part of him had already accepted that she wouldn’t.

Then he reached out without hesitation, fingers curling around hers—not possessive, not desperate, but careful. Gentle.

A handshake, yes—but not formal.

It felt like something sacred.

Like a wound being touched for the first time and not flinching.

Like trust.

Then her lips tugged into the faintest smirk as she added, “But next time, I expect ice cubes.”

Bucky gave a quiet huff of a laugh, deep and rough in his chest, and without letting go of her hand, he met her gaze and said, serious and low, “There won’t be a next time. I won’t hurt you again. Not if I can help it.”

And her smirk faltered, melted—softened into something unguarded and warm. Something real.

She held his eyes a second longer, like she was memorizing the way he looked when he promised something with his whole chest and nothing to hide behind.

Then she pulled her hand back gently, the ghost of his touch still clinging to her skin, and leaned into her chair with a slow sigh that carried too much.

Her glass caught the light as she took another sip, something inside her loosening—just a bit. Just enough.

Outside the office, the compound had gone quiet for the night.

Only the low hum of life carried through the halls—voices behind closed doors, footsteps, laughter too distant to reach them.

Everyone else had already folded into comfort and routine.

But in this small pocket off the main hall, in the quiet breath of the tech wing, something else had taken root.

Something raw. Unspoken.

Understanding.

And maybe, the first thread of something that could hold.

It didn’t happen all at once.

But slowly—over shared tech fixes and clinking glasses of whiskey—with the whiskey stones she bought him a week after their little peace talk (“so you don’t have to carry ice around like a caveman,” she’d teased with a grin that caught him off guard and made him stare a beat too long before looking away.)—something shifted.

One afternoon, she helped him pair a Bluetooth speaker. He could’ve figured it out eventually, maybe, but he didn’t try that hard. Not when it meant sitting next to her on the small couch of her office, her leg brushing his every time she leaned forward, her breath close enough to fan over the side of his neck. The speaker crackled to life with one of his playlists—some old blues mixed with newer instrumentals—and she smiled like she hadn’t expected his taste to be so… gentle.

He didn’t say it, but that moment stuck with him. Her presence curling into the corners of his space, not intruding—just being. Like it had always belonged there.

She helped him figure out an app on his phone once too. Something dumb Tony had insisted everyone use to sync schedules across the team. They’d sat side by side on the couch in the common room—half solving the tech issue, half just… talking. Laughing.

And somewhere in the middle of her showing him how to swipe notifications without accidentally opening seventeen windows, she’d leaned into him. Just a little. Unthinking.

He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t flinched. He just… let her.

And it felt nice.

Safe.

Like falling into something warm and steady, that smelled faintly of aftershave and motor oil. A kind of safety that didn’t come from walls or weapons, but from someone.

There was no big declaration. No flashy move. Just a moment—quiet and utterly unspectacular—when he looked at her across her desk one day and asked softly, “You wanna have dinner with me sometime?”

She blinked, unsure she’d heard him right. “Like… dinner dinner?”

He chuckled, a low sound that rumbled beneath the stillness of the room. “Yeah. But not restaurant dinner. Something real. Just you, me, and good food. You don’t have to dress up unless you want to.”

“Do it for yourself,” he said, and his voice had dipped—playful, but still sincere. “Not for me. Though—”his smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, eyes a little darker now, “I’d probably stare either way.”

And now, here she was.

Standing in front of a house he’d texted her the address to, her hands light against the hem of her simple black dress. Something soft. Something that made her feel good. It wasn’t flashy. Wasn’t a mask. Just her. A version of herself she was still learning to like.

She’d fixed her hair loose around her shoulders, makeup just enough to bring out her features—but nothing too precise. She’d adjusted the neckline three times in the reflection of her car window, cursed her reflection once, and still nearly turned back twice.

But she didn't.

The house wasn’t massive. Wasn’t even particularly Bucky, not at first glance. But there was something lived-in about it. Quiet. Cozy. Like maybe it had belonged to someone kind, once, and he’d borrowed it for the night because he didn’t want dinner to feel like a mission.

Still, her instincts hadn’t shut off entirely.

She’d texted her best friend the address with a joking "If I go missing, tell the Avengers Bucky Barnes killed me. JK. (Probably.)"—just in case. Old habits died hard. Trust didn’t come easy.

Now, she stood at the doorstep, breath catching somewhere between her ribs. She reached up and rang the bell.

The chime echoed inside—too loud, too final. Her heart did a strange little jump, not from fear but from something messier. Like her body was trying to brace itself against how much she might want this. Him.

She smoothed her dress again, hand brushing across her stomach. The nerves were stupid—unfounded. She knew she didn’t have to be nervous with him. He wasn’t the type to judge, not about things that mattered. But that was the problem, wasn’t it?

He made her want to melt. And she didn’t know how to armor herself against that.

Didn’t know how to be held without flinching.

Not yet. But maybe… tonight.

The door opened with a soft click.

And there he stood.

Bucky Barnes, in clothes that straddled the line between effort and ease. Dark slacks. Button-up shirt rolled at the sleeves, top buttons open like he couldn’t pretend to be someone else even if he tried. His hair was pulled back, low and neat—but a strand had escaped and brushed his cheek, softening the hard line of his jaw.

He was smiling—until he saw her.

Then he just… stopped, like he hadn’t seen her in years.

And for the first time in a long while, she didn’t feel like she had to look away.

His expression stilled—unguarded, open—like someone had unplugged his brain. No words. No movement. Just breathless, caught, like she’d just knocked the wind out of him and he didn’t quite remember how to exhale yet.

His gaze moved slowly, almost reverently—from her shoes, up her legs, the curve of her dress, to the exposed line of her collarbone. It paused, just briefly, around her mouth—then snapped up to meet her eyes, like he was afraid he’d lingered too long.

“You’re…” He blinked, shook his head just enough to break the spell. “Stunning.”

She rolled her eyes, but it was a flimsy shield at best. Her lips twitched into a reluctant smile, one she didn’t try to hide as heat rose in her cheeks. She stepped past him, lightly brushing his arm.

“Yeah, yeah, smooth talker,” she muttered, but there was no edge in it. Only breathless warmth.

He laughed low in his throat and closed the door behind her with a quiet click. “Just being honest,” he murmured, and something in the way he said it made her feel like maybe he wasn’t just talking about her dress.

Then the scent hit her.

Warm. Inviting. Delicious.

Garlic. Herbs. Something roasted and slow-cooked with care.

It was the kind of smell that clung to the edges of a home—not just a kitchen. The kind that made your shoulders relax without you realizing. Made you forget everything else for a second.

“Come on,” he said, tilting his head toward the steps. “Dinner’s upstairs.”

She followed, heels tapping softly on the worn wood, one hand brushing the railing as if grounding herself.

“Just so you know,” she said as they reached the second floor, “I gave the address to a friend. In case you planned to, you know… murder me or something.”

He glanced back at her, amused, and she caught a flicker of something warmer behind it. Not offended—not even really teasing—just… touched. Like he understood exactly why she’d done it, and didn’t blame her.

“Smart move,” he said.

There was a beat of silence. Then that little crooked smirk crept in.

“But I’d have to find someone else to fix my tech if I did. You’re too useful to kill.”

She snorted. “Wow, what a romantic sentiment.”

“You’ll learn to love it,” he tossed over his shoulder, and pushed open the rooftop door.

And it was her turn to stop.

The air shifted—cooler, crisper. It curled around her like a soft breath, brushing past the nerves she hadn’t been able to shake and carrying them off like petals in the wind.

The rooftop was surrounded by half-walls, high enough to offer a sense of privacy but low enough to let glimpses of the city sneak through. But she barely noticed any of that.

Because this… this was all she could see.

Strings of warm LEDs hung overhead, like stars caught in a gentle net. They dipped and arced, soft light pooling like smooth gold over a small table for two. Candles flickered along the low ledge—some in jars, others floating in glasses—casting delicate shadows that swayed with the wind.

The table was already set. A bottle of wine waited.

Two plates. Two chairs.

And from the corner, a small Bluetooth speaker played low, calming music—instrumental, familiar, something soothing that settled into her chest like a lullaby.

She blinked, recognition dawning.

“Wait,” she said, glancing at the speaker. “Is that the one I helped you pair?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish now, the confident version of him slipping just slightly. “Yeah. Thought it’d be better than whatever playlist Stark tries to blast every time someone mentions the word ‘date’.”

She looked around again, her eyes wide—overwhelmed in the way that made your throat ache a little. Like something inside her wanted to reach out and hold the moment still.

“Bucky, this is…”

He scratched his jaw, his nerves suddenly so visible she wanted to cup his face and tell him he didn’t need to try so hard.

“Too much?” he asked quietly.

“No,” she whispered. “No, it’s… perfect.”

He smiled, and it was small, unsure—but real. One of those smiles that didn’t quite reach the surface until someone else pulled it out.

“Good. I wanted it to feel right. For you.”

And it did.

Not like some grand, glossy gesture meant to impress.

But like something carved gently out of quiet intention. Thoughtfulness. A space made with his hands—not just for her, but because of her. She hadn’t expected that, but it fit him so well now that she knew what lived under all that armor.

It felt like someone seeing you for who you were and saying, stay anyway.

He pulled out her chair, a little awkwardly, but with both hands—one gloved, one not. That contrast always made her heart stutter a little.

“Shall we?” he asked.

Her fingers brushed his ungloved hand as she sat—warm against warm, skin against skin—and the touch lingered longer than it should’ve.

She met his gaze, something soft and searching behind her eyes, as if she were still trying to convince herself that this wasn’t some dream she’d wake from.

That maybe, this time, she didn’t have to keep running.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Let’s.”

Dinner was amazing.

Not the kind of amazing that called for flashy praise or dramatic sighs—no. This was quieter. Softer. The kind of amazing that lived in the silence between bites, in the small hums of contentment shared without needing words. In the way her eyes kept drifting to him, like she couldn’t quite believe Bucky Barnes had made all this happen. Like something in her chest kept stuttering every time she remembered this was real.

At one point, she teased him—something about bragging over dancing and never following through—and without even thinking, he’d taken her hand. The soft music still whispered from the speaker, and they ended up swaying together, barely more than a slow lean into each other, like gravity had softened just for them. No steps, no rhythm—just the warmth of his chest against hers and the weight of her head resting lightly near his collarbone, like maybe this was the only place in the world where she felt truly still.

Eventually, the dance melted into something quieter.

They’d ended up on the bench near the rooftop’s edge, tucked beneath a soft throw blanket that smelled faintly of fresh laundry. She was curled against him now, shoulder pressed to his side, head leaning on the solid comfort of his arm. He was so warm. So steady. The kind of quiet that didn’t demand anything—just let her be. And somehow, that silence between them felt more intimate than any kiss.

Each of them held a glass of whiskey, the stones clinking gently when she lifted hers.

He caught the sound and gave her a small, crooked smile. “I still can’t believe you got me whiskey stones,” he said, voice low and rough-edged with amusement.

She tilted her head, giving him a smirk. “Told you I expected ice cubes next time. Had to make sure you’d be ready.”

He chuckled softly, the sound warm against the cool night. They both took a sip, the amber liquid a soft burn in their throats, grounding them in the now.

A pause settled in—stretching long and quiet beneath the faint twinkle of stars. The city murmured far below, all its noise dimmed by the distance, like they were tucked inside a separate world entirely. A delicate pocket out of time, untouched and safe.

She shifted just slightly, tilting her head to look up at him from beneath her lashes. Her voice came quiet, fragile in its sincerity.

“Thank you for tonight,” she said. “It was perfect.”

He glanced down, and for a second his smile looked almost bashful, like the compliment hit somewhere deeper than he expected.

“Had help,” he admitted. “Natasha gave me pointers. And I, uh… I watched so many romcoms.”

She laughed into her glass, the sound breathy and light. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. If I see one more Christmas-themed love story with a baking competition in a small town, I swear I’ll lose it.” He grimaced in exaggerated pain. “I think I got diabetes just from the dialogue.”

She giggled, nudging his side with her shoulder. “Worth risking your life for me, huh?”

He didn’t answer with a joke this time. Instead, his smile softened. Quieted.

“Yeah,” he said, without a flicker of doubt. “I’d do anything for you, sweetheart—”

And then he froze. The word still hanging in the air like the tail end of a wish he hadn’t meant to speak aloud. His eyes snapped to hers mid-sentence, wide and uncertain, like the ground had shifted beneath his feet.

“Shit. Uh—sorry, is that okay? I didn’t mean—‘sweetheart,’ I mean. Not like… you know... ‘doll’ or anything.”

She blinked, caught off-guard by the sudden stammer, then gave him a look—half amused, half touched. One brow arched just enough to tease, lips tugged into a soft smile.

“Sweetheart’s fine,” she murmured, her voice dipped in warmth. “Actually… I kinda like it.”

And Bucky—God, the relief that washed over him was palpable. His shoulders eased just slightly, like he’d been bracing for rejection and found only kindness waiting.

“Good,” he said, voice soft now. More reverent than relieved. Like it meant something more than she realized.

She turned back, resting her cheek against his shoulder again, and he leaned in, gently tilting his head to touch hers. The stars shimmered faintly above, distant and unbothered, and the whiskey sat cool and heavy in their hands.

She exhaled, slow and deep—only now realizing how long she’d been holding her breath.

“About the ‘doll’ thing…” she said, voice barely louder than the breeze brushing their faces.

He didn’t hesitate. Just turned slightly, watching her with that careful, open steadiness he gave her when she needed space to fall apart.

“Hey,” he murmured. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. Not if it’s hard.”

“I do,” she said. There was no waver in it. Just quiet determination. “If we’re gonna go further, you have to understand.”

He didn’t speak. Just nodded—slow, steady. And then his flesh hand came to rest on her shoulder. The brush of his thumb was gentle, grounding. Not pushing. Just a tether. A silent I’ve got you. A promise she could feel echo in the bones of her chest.

He knew this was going to hurt. And he was ready to hold space for every word of it.

She stared out at the night for a long moment, then looked down at the amber liquid in her glass before exhaling slowly.

“I’ve never talked about it before,” she admitted quietly. “Not to anyone.”

Bucky stayed silent, listening.

The city pulsed far beneath them, distant and quiet. She didn’t look at him when she began, eyes fixed somewhere past the stars—like the past had curled its fingers around her throat, and she had to look away just to breathe.

“Twenty years ago, I was with someone. We were young, in love. Thought we had all the time in the world. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good, in that messy, sweet, figuring-it-out kind of way. We had plans, dreams… For almost five years, it felt like one of those movies you probably tortured yourself with to plan this date.”

He smiled faintly but didn’t interrupt. His presence wrapped around her like quiet armor.

“And then it all just… stopped.”

Her voice caught—just for a second. Just long enough to fracture the air between them.

“There was a car accident. He didn’t make it. I did.”

Bucky's thumb stilled for half a beat, then resumed that slow, soothing motion. Like he was reminding her she was still here. Still breathing. Still held.

“And I had to relearn everything after that. How to be alone. How to breathe when my entire world had been gutted.” She shook her head, lips pressing together like they were holding back a scream. “I was broken. Physically, emotionally. For a while, it felt like I’d died too, just… kept walking.”

The kind of pain that rewrites your bones—that was what clung to her voice. Her eyes. The slump of her shoulders.

A long breath left her lungs, like it had been stored there for years. She swallowed hard, lips twitching like she was deciding how much to say.

“Then, someone stepped in. A mutual friend. We grieved together. He helped me relearn how to laugh. And eventually, I needed to feel something. Alive. Touched. Human. So after six months, we started… sleeping together.”

Her voice was soft, steady now, like she was reciting a memory she’d rehearsed a thousand times in her head. But every word still carried weight, dragging behind it invisible chains.

“It was supposed to be casual. No strings. I just needed to feel alive again. I had just lost the man I thought was the love of my life. I wasn’t ready for anything else. Didn’t know if I ever would be, even. And I thought he got that.”

Her fingers tightened around her glass. The stones inside barely moved, held fast despite the tremble in her grip.

“But he didn’t. He’d been in love with me for years—long before the accident. And I didn’t know he saw that moment as his opening.”

She let that settle between them like ash from a long-dead fire.

“He started telling me he loved me. Every time. Over and over. And I didn’t answer, not at first. But after a while… I felt guilty. I was confused. And tired of hurting. So one day, I told him I loved him too.”

She shifted slightly—not to move away, just to ease the tightness in her chest, like the weight of what she carried had started pressing too hard against her ribs.

“It wasn’t a complete lie. I did love him, in a way. Like a friend. Like someone who helped me through hell. And I thought… maybe that could be enough.”

She stared up at the stars now, her voice flat but fragile. Every word like ice pressed to skin.

“Problem was, my parents were moving to another country. I had been staying with them during my recovery, and now I needed to choose. Either go with them to a place where I barely knew the language, or find a place to stay…”

She closed her eyes for a moment, lashes trembling.

“So I moved in with him.”

Another pause. Longer this time. Colder.

“And that’s when the nightmare began.”

Bucky said nothing. His hand hadn’t left her shoulder. But he was coiled beneath it all—tight and still, the kind of stillness that came before a storm. She could feel him tense, holding back—every instinct in him probably screaming to ask what happened, to hunt someone down, to protect her retroactively—but he just waited. Gave her space. Gave her control.

She took another sip of her whiskey, needing the burn this time. Then she looked down at the stones inside and clenched her teeth.

“He got possessive. Intense. I was still grieving. Still tired. But he didn’t care. He always wanted more. And I just… let it happen. Sometimes he’d coax me into things. Other times, I just… lay there. Looking at the ceiling. Making grocery lists in my head while I waited for it to be over.”

Bucky’s grip tightened, just barely—but he didn’t speak.

Didn’t move. Just let her talk.

Just let her finally let it out.

“It lasted almost five years,” she said quietly. “I didn’t know how to leave. I had no energy. No will to start again. And society doesn’t exactly hand you a roadmap. I was almost thirty. Everyone else was getting married, having kids. And I thought… maybe this was it. Maybe this was what I was supposed to settle for.”

Her voice broke just slightly, then steadied—like a dam with a thin crack, barely holding back the flood.

“I worked. He didn’t. He drove me to the office and picked me up every day. Always there. Always watching. And then his best friend got married. And I just knew he was going to propose. I could feel it.”

She took another sip of whiskey, like it could burn the memory away—but it didn’t. Nothing ever did.

“I couldn’t breathe at the thought of being trapped like that forever. So I packed what I could carry and left. Moved in with a friend until I could stand on my own again.”

Silence fell. Heavy. Absolute.

When she finally looked at him, her eyes shimmered with tears, with the weight of what she’d shared. They weren’t dramatic tears—they were quiet, the kind that slip down your face when you’ve forgotten how not to hold things in.

“So yeah. That word? It takes me back there. To that grim apartment. Lying on my back. Staring at the ceiling. Wondering if this was all life had left for me.”

She let out a breath—shaky but freeing, like she was finally letting the ghosts out with it.

“I’m not there anymore. But it lingers. Like the bitter taste of ash.”

She let the silence drag for a few seconds, then added, quieter than before—like the words might shatter if she said them too loud:

“And it changed how I saw men.”

He still didn’t move. Still let her talk, knowing it wasn’t over. He didn’t dare rush something that had taken her years to hold together.

“Because before things turned bad, he was sweet. Funny. A good friend. The kind of guy you trust without even thinking about it.”

She exhaled a short sigh through her nose—the kind that sounds like regret. Like someone blaming themselves for not seeing the wolf hiding beneath a familiar smile.

“So now… when someone approaches me, I can’t help it. I overanalyze everything. Every word, every look, every shift in tone. Waiting for something to crack.”

She gave a weak smile—not quite bitter, not quite sad. More like it had just worn out.

“I didn’t do that with you. Not at first. Not until you called me... that. Then I froze... lashed out... to hurt you in return as a defense mechanism. Because it hit a place I thought I’d buried.”

A pause. Then, softly—too softly:

“But I know you’re not him. Or at least… I hope to whatever higher power you’re not.”

That last sentence hung in the air like mist—fragile and trembling. The kind of hope that comes from someone who’s been used too many times to ever trust their own instincts again.

Bucky looked down, his jaw tight, expression unreadable. He didn’t speak immediately. Just stared ahead into the night, whiskey untouched now, caught in the weight of everything she’d just given him—everything she'd carried alone for far too long.

And beneath it all, something dark and hot simmered in his chest. A fury he hadn’t felt in a long time. It curled in his gut like fire licking at the edges of his restraint. Every word she’d spoken echoed like a wound reopening inside him—but he kept it there, buried. Contained. Because this wasn’t about him. Not now.

He could scream later. Break something later. She didn’t need rage. She needed someone steady. Someone who would hold her pain without adding to it.

So it took a long moment before he shifted, jaw still clenched, eyes burning with emotion as he set his glass down on the small wooden table in front of them.

Then slowly—carefully—he turned toward her.

His vibranium hand came up, gentle in a way that seemed impossible for something made out of such a hard material, and tilted her chin until their eyes met.

And when he spoke, his voice was low. Roughened by emotion. Almost breaking.

“You’re safe with me. If you want me.”

Her lips parted slightly, but she didn’t speak. She couldn’t.

“I’m not perfect,” he went on, quietly. “Not even close. I still wake up choking on my own nightmares, remembering things I did when I wasn’t even me. I still feel like I’m something broken. A weapon. A relic from a world that should’ve stayed buried.”

His thumb brushed her jaw, soft as a feather—like he was afraid she might vanish if he touched her too hard.

“I don’t feel like I deserve ninety-nine percent of what’s come my way. Including you.”

His voice dropped even lower, like it wasn’t meant for the world to hear.

“But I’d do anything for you. No strings. No expectations. Just whatever you need.”

A long breath. His eyes didn’t leave hers. Like he was anchoring her to this moment, offering her all the steadiness she never got before.

“I wish I could erase all those years. The ones that made you feel like that word could strip you bare. I’ve seen hell too. Lived it. Carried it in my bones.”

A self-deprecating laugh—low and worn, like it had been dragged through the dirt.

“Still do, if I’m being entirely honest.”

His fingers curled slightly at her cheek, as if grounding himself in the present—because if he let go, even for a second, he wasn’t sure where his mind might spiral.

“But you, you made it through your own. You clawed your way out. You’re standing here. Breathing. Laughing. Trusting, even just a little.”

He gave the faintest shake of his head, in awe—but there was grief in his eyes too. For all the years neither of them could get back.

“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”

His voice broke slightly at the edges—too full, too raw.

“And I don’t think I’ve ever admired anyone more.”

Her lips curled into a faint smile—small, almost fragile. Not bright, not giddy. But real. The kind of smile that only comes after surviving something you never thought you’d crawl out of.

There were tears in her eyes, unshed but shimmering in the moonlight. And it wasn’t sadness, not really. It was something softer. Something quieter. A deep exhale after holding in too much for too long.

Because he hadn’t turned away.

He hadn’t doubted her, or minimized her, or changed how he looked at her.

He’d just been there, listening with his whole heart. And when he spoke—it had been like sunlight through broken glass. Gentle. Honest. Whole.

Her throat tightened, and she had to clear it softly to ease it. Even then, it didn’t help much. Her heart was pressing up against her ribs like it wanted to be seen for once.

She set her whiskey glass down beside his on the small table with a quiet thud, then reached out and rested her palm against his cheek. The cool metal of his arm near her skin steadied her somehow—but the warmth of his flesh cheek beneath her fingers made her chest ache in ways she didn’t have a name for.

Her thumb brushed along his cheekbone, and her gaze stayed locked to his—steady despite the emotion shimmering behind it.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I want you.”

His breath hitched—just enough to tell her this meant as much to him as it did to her.

“With the nightmares. With the strings. With everything you are. The good. The bad. The sweet. The bitter.”

Her voice trembled just slightly, like it might break if she tried to hold back anymore.

“All of it.”

And then she leaned in, slowly, her eyes fluttering shut as her forehead brushed his. She felt him lean in too, breath warm against her skin, his own eyes closing as their lips met.

It wasn’t a desperate kiss. It wasn’t hurried, or rough, or hungry.

It was slow. Deep. A quiet promise shared in silence, sealed with warmth and trembling reverence.

He kissed her like she mattered.

And she kissed him like he was home.

They stayed like that for a long time—lips barely parted, foreheads resting together, breath mingling between them. Like two pieces of something shattered long ago, trying to remember how they once fit.

The world didn’t rush them. The rooftop felt like a quiet sanctuary far above the heartbeat of the city. Somewhere soft and safe, tucked away between constellations and the low, distant hum of life.

Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to.

His arm wrapped around her, pulling her gently into his side. Her head came to rest against his shoulder again, her fingers still loosely curled near his chest, like she was holding onto the moment with everything she had.

Their glasses sat forgotten on the small table beside them, amber liquid catching the faint glow of the rooftop lights—a quiet testament to the things they’d let go of tonight.

The stars shimmered above, uncaring and eternal.

Below, the city breathed—cars passed, lights behind windows turned on or off, music drifted faintly from a nearby building—but up here, time had slowed to a hush.

Just the two of them.

A woman who had learned to live again.

A man who never thought he could be wanted.

Two souls stitched back together by quiet strength and patient hands, sharing warmth beneath the endless sky.

From a distance, the rooftop looked like just one more light among millions, glowing gently in the dark.

But for them, it was their own safe little world.

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