#Fixing and the Role of the Designer

[podoro-vines]

[oc] Humanly Desires 🪐✨

[oc] Godly Temptations 🌻

[saint-hymn]

what ur favorite dsmp character. like i feel like its wilbur but i wanna make sure. my favorite is technoblade cause adowdiafjjef idk man i love him so much

[darkmagenugget]

You ever just find an old drawing and redraw it from time to time? Well, I took this piece from 2013 that was a redraw of 2005 (I was not great at this when I was 11. XD) My only rule when drawing this character again was I couldn't change the core design but just how I drew him. So 2005 vs 2013 vs end of 2024.

This was the first character I ever created, and now is relegated to benchmark tests. Might be repurposed in the future but for now, I don't know what to do with him otherwise. XD Drew this in a magma session with some friends.

[asmodeauxx]

oc redesign planning stuff

[mobgabriel]

foils

ok so before echoes of wisdom came out Lin had said that she planned on making aurora as a foil to flora, wich is something that makes sense as both are zeldas who spend a long time sleeping/containing an ancient evil and return in a post apocaliptic scenario... but i swear that someone at Nintendo is reading lin's fanfic because echoes of wisdom fits waay to perfectly with lin's plans for aurora to be completely acidental especially because it makes Echo and flora perfect foils to each other

one of the big plot points in pre great calamity is that flora cant really access her divine powers that come from her royal lineage despite trying everything in her power in order to do so, only managing to use said power to barely save link when its too late and hyrule cant be saved anymore wich relegates her into damage controll as she uses herself to seal ganon

on the other hand Echo's story is packed with relevant religious symbolism and her power from the very beggining of echoes of wisdom, Echo's first and most famous weapon is the tri rod wich draws its power directly from the tri force like the tris allowing her to create echoes, the very first thing Echo does when finishing the tutorial is to change into a disguise behind a statue of hylia wich if it wasnt literal you could probably turn into a metaphor for hylia shedding her divinity in order to incarnate as sun/the first zelda, and in her first adventure she is(as far as i'm aware) the first and only character in the franchise to speak directly to the golden godesses, in her second adventure(Cadence of hyrule) her spellcasting prowess is expanded even further as she is able to cast 2 of the godess spells from smash bros (nayru's love and din's fire) while most zeldas can only acomplish one and echo of the past shows her breaking 2 of Bind's limitations from her games being able to not only cast it independently from tri but also being able to bind her lifeforce to the magician

the paralels dont even end there, both of their main enemies are what initially seems to be a mindless apocaliptic force who aims to reduce hyrule and the world into nothing(calamity ganon and Null's introduction as a primal force of nothing who wishes to consume all) only to then reveal itself as a far more intelligent and cunning threat (TOTK Ganon and Null's cunning manipulations during EOW)

flora's story begins with her being powerless to stop the looming threat but ends with her being able to reclaim atleast some of her humanity post draconification in order to help link fight ganon when the time comes, with her only growing stronger as the time passes while Echo's story is a fall from grace, she begins as one of(in my opinion the most) powerfull zeldas only to have that taken away from her as she is defeated by what is probably the weakest antagonist in the series

when flora needed the most her powers awakened wich allowed her to save herself and silence and hyrule survived the great calamity, when Echo needed the most her powers failed her(because of a spell but still), despite she being able to reduce the eventual damage by taking her killer down with her her fall still would lead to the worse tragedy in hyrule second only to the great flood

zeldas are from @linderosse wisdomverse, go take a look, she just posted a new chapter from the link's side story

[arodykeism]

some bobbles (+ two unfinished things)

[quetiapinnapark]

hey tumblr ummm what the Fuck did you do to the notes bar ????? are you fucking insane

[clemkesh]

my go to background noise lately has become players from the reality tv show survivor playing mafia/traitors/blood on the clocktower

and its given me the worlds silliest brainworm which is "maybe i should go on survivor so i can play streamed games of mafia with these cool people"

i would be so bad on survivor no one let me pursue this impulse

[oc-cinematic-universe]

Oooo okay so since u take asks here I would LOVE to hear how Eden kills Reverie and what the breaking point is for Eden to do so?? Reverie’s reloading causes so much pain to Eden so is it that and is the kill reluctant or desired, by that point what are Eden’s thoughts towards Reverie?? —music anon 🎶

MAN. I THINK ABOUT IT. OK, SO, THIS NEEDS A PROPER FULL EXPLANATION FOR YOU TO TRULY UNDERSTAND THE MINDSET EDEN WAS IN

it all came to a boiling point when they finally hit "the end" of the game. the final boss. they were getting ready to fight engel, with eden far past her limits before they had even started. she was dissociating hard because she hated every second of this but knew that she Had to do this. it was her role. reverie had made it so clear to her this was all she was made for.

she was dissociating hard enough she didn't think very hard about it when the menu for the save file opened up in front of her. in a daze, curious, she saved over reverie's file. and immediately it began to glitch. it was small, but it was glitching, but reverie (who hadn't noticed) was calling her over to start the fight, and she figured they could figure out what was wrong later, if it even mattered since there was a great chance the game was about to end anyways

eden began dissociating even harder than she already had been, feeling like she missed out on half the fight immediately. reverie was yelling at her to do Anything while barely dodging engel's attacks. eden could barely feel the sword in her hand as she held it up. she didn't remember moving closer to engel, and engel.... didn't seem to notice her at all. it was so. painfully easy. to lift up the sword. and cut off their head.

eden had never seen reverie so happy. they hugged her, spun her around, laughed, she'd never seen them so Genuinely Happy. so maybe it was ok... she was truly honestly just happy they were happy. she was so happy it was over and she could finally rest.

but the game didn't end. not the way reverie expected.

the menu that popped up only offered reverie 2 choices. continue. or start over. there was no option to leave. there never was an option to leave. reverie is just as part of this game as any of the npcs, they had just refused to see that until now. this game is the only reality they have and it was never going to let them go.

so. reverie began laughing. collapsed onto their knees laughing hysterically with no emotion behind it. and before eden could even begin realizing what happened, reverie pulled up handfuls of files of the code and Destroyed It.

the game started fully collapsing from the inside out. the room they were in began losing textures, they were falling and then they weren't, eden felt sick in ways she couldn't begin to describe, it felt as if the world itself was screaming in her head as it shook and flashed trying to keep itself together. all while reverie kept laughing and destroying more of the code.

somebody had to stop them.

eden needed to stop them.

she shoved her sword fully through their chest. she didn't have a choice. they seemed so surprised and confused, just for a moment, staring at her with bewilderment. but painfully, the laughed again, pulling her hands closer to them, shoving the sword even further through. It Didn't Matter. They Both Knew This Didn't Matter. the game would just bring them back. just like every other time. she knew that right? this didn't change anything.

so they kept laughing, eden frozen in place with panic, and they both Waited. and waited.

reverie coughed up blood and couldn't hold themself up anymore. nothing happened. they fell to the floor, sword still in their chest, as eden stepped back in shock. nothing happened. they desperately opened up their save file trying to figure out what was wrong (nothing happened) and they discovered exactly what was wrong (nothing happened) as they read the name on the file and found it wasn't theirs anymore

right as both reverie and eden processed what had just happened, the game exploded behind their eyes. it was trying to load a save that didn't exist anymore. it couldn't bring reverie back because they didn't have a save anymore. but it had to bring them back. but it couldn't. it caught itself in a loop and everything Screeched like metal on metal, or like a dying animal, as it began to completely unravel itself. then everything went black.

[marvelstoriesepic]

A Thousand Times Before

Pairing: Avenger!Bucky x Avenger!Reader

Summary: Bucky travels to an alternate universe for the sake of a mission. But he doesn’t expect to come face to face with a version of you that loves him, completely and openly. Back in his own world, he is left with a truth he can’t keep to himself anymore.

Word Count: 16.5k

Warnings: alternate universe; multiverse; so much yearning; identity confusion; emotional distress; guilt; self-worth struggles; unintentional non-consensual kiss (non-violent, due to mistaken identity); angst; heartbreak themes; slight mentions of Bucky’s past; self-preservation; self-doubt; Bucky is a man in love

Author’s Note: This ended up being longer than I intended. Anyway, I’d love to hear what you think! Also, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an alternate version where the roles are flipped. This time the reader travels to another universe where Bucky and your counterpart are already a couple. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in reading too! I hope you enjoy ♡

Divider by @cafekitsune ♡

Masterlist

The air smells of memory.

As though someone took the world he knew, put it through a sieve, and rebuilt it with hands that were almost - but not quite - shaking.

Bucky walks slow, even though his boots echo down a corridor that used to be silent. Used to be. In his world, the east wing of the Avenger’s compound is always cold, sterile, mostly unused. Here, the lights are warmer. Someone’s installed those vintage bulbs. They buzz faintly and flicker around.

There is a plant in the hallway. A real one. He steps past it. Looks down. A ceramic pot painted with little sunflowers. A tiny sticker peeling off the side.

This version of the compound is lived-in.

It’s unnerving.

He hates how it makes him breathe more deeply as though he is listening for something it shouldn’t. How everything is just off. The couch in the lounge is turned at a different angle. The vending machine is missing. There is a lavender-scented candle burning on the coffee table.

He doesn’t trust this. He doesn’t trust any of it.

Not the way the ceiling seems too low or how the hallways echo the wrong sound the longer he walks. The floor beneath his boots is almost the same. But almost is what gets people killed. And he’s not in the business of dying again. Not even here. Not even in a world that’s supposed to be some mirror image of his own.

It smells of lemon disinfectant and something faintly floral as though someone sprayed a bottle of room freshener and hoped no one would notice the rot underneath.

He runs his metal fingers along the wall as he walks, lets the vibranium whir quietly against the plaster. Feels the microscopic grooves in the paint.

In his universe, there is a crack near the main stairwell. Sam swears he didn’t do it. Clint insists he did. Here, it’s perfectly smooth. That bothers him more than it should.

He takes in this slightly different world as though maybe this is all some trick of the multiverse, some clever illusion designed to fool the worn-down man with the metal arm and the hundred-year-old ghosts. But the walls are still painted in the same color - off-white, barely warmed by the overheads. The hallway lights flicker golden. As though someone decided the compound shouldn’t feel like a facility. As though someone decided it should feel like home. His breath still fogs faintly in the colder patches of the corridor.

This could still be his universe somehow.

Even though it isn’t.

And even though he doesn’t want it to be.

He never wanted to be part of the mission.

He said no. Loudly. Repeatedly. With many adjectives and lots of glares. It didn’t matter. Fury said he was the only one who could go. That this universe had some piece of tech - some half-mythical Howard Stark prototype that their Stark never got the chance to build.

Something with the potential to rewrite temporal coordinates with precision. To fix anomalies. Maybe even to bring back the ones they lost.

He sat through the debrief like a man sitting on a bomb. Not moving. Not breathing more than he needed to.

And Bucky noticed, the way he always did, that you never ask quite so many questions during debriefing - unless the mission involves him. And this time, it’s only him. So that meant more questions from you. More concern you didn’t even try to mask.

And it made his heart clench.

You asked how they knew this tech even existed in that timeline.

You asked why Tony couldn’t just build it himself to which the man gave you a look.

You asked what would happen if Bucky saw someone he knew. If he saw himself.

You asked what exactly Bucky was going to walk into and what was expected of him.

You asked how much they even knew about this universe.

Steve had exhaled, hands braced against the briefing room table, blue eyes clouded. “We don’t know much,” he admitted. “This universe is close to ours in structure, but details are limited. No major historical deviations. No sign of HYDRA still in power. No active wars. Just small shifts. Choices made differently.”

Bucky had watched your face tighten as if the lack of data itself was a warning.

“SHIELD had a file on it, but nothing concrete,” Steve went on. “Stark’s readings say it’s stable - no time fractures, no reality collapses. Just another version of what we know.”

Bucky had listened, fingers flexing against his metal wrist. Close to theirs, but not the same. And he wonders, not for the first or last time, what choices this other world made for him.

The mission is simple. Locate the prototype. Extract it. Avoid unnecessary contact with variants. And get the hell back before anything breaks - him, the people, the timeline.

Bucky stopped listening entirely after receiving all the information he needed.

He only registered you shifting beside him, and it was the tiniest movement, but he noticed. You always get fidgety when something bothers you. He wanted to say something, reassure you, but he didn’t truly know if he even got this.

He knew you were worried. Knew you were angry. The kind that made your eyes too quiet and your hands too still. The kind that made Bucky feel like he was walking through a house where all the lights had been turned off, but every door was open.

When Dr. Steven Strange opened that portal, you stood in the corner of the room, watching him and giving him that guarded look that said you better come back whole. He couldn’t meet your eyes for too long.

And when the world rippled and bent, and the air shimmered as though it might break, and he stepped forward like a man walking into the sun with his eyes closed, he thought of you.

The stairs groan beneath his boots, familiar but not.

Same wood. Same color. But smoother. As though someone took the time to sand down the scars.

In his universe, the fifth step has a chip where Steve dropped a dumbbell. Everyone tripped on it at least once. Here, it is whole. Perfect. No history at all.

That’s what gets him. The lack of damage. As though this place hasn’t lived the same kind of life.

He reaches the second floor and hesitates.

The hallway is dim. Only the lights overhead are on, flickering just slightly. He hates the buzzing. It’s like something alive and trapped.

He turns left.

Your room is down this hall.

Or - your room in his universe is down this hall. He shouldn’t assume anything. Things are wrong here. Tilted just a few degrees off center. The kind of wrong you don’t see until it’s already unmade you.

But his feet are already moving.

It’s not like he’s planning to go in.

He just wants to look. Maybe see how different this version of you really is. Maybe see how different he is, through your eyes.

He reaches your door at the end of the corridor. It’s cracked open. That’s weird. You usually always have it shut.

Your voice isn’t behind it. You’re not laughing, humming, ranting about something. There is only quiet.

He steps closer.

The doorframe is covered in tiny indentations. Not scratches - these are deliberate. Someone’s been marking height on the trim. Two sets of lines. One lower than the other. Two sets of initials scrawled in black ink. Yours. And his.

He knows it’s yours. Because he knows your height. Like a number carved into his bones.

He’s memorized the space you take up in a room. Not just how tall you are, but the way your presence fills the air.

He knows where your head would rest if you stood beside him. Knows it would reach just beneath his chin. Knows the sound your footsteps make when you enter a room, and how the air shifts when you’re near.

He has painted you in his mind a thousand times before.

Eyes open, eyes closed.

In dreams, in silence.

In the echo of a laugh you left behind on a Tuesday.

He’s mapped you in the kitchen. Measured, in his mind, which cabinets you can stand beneath without hitting your head. Which shelves you can’t reach so he can be there, quietly, to help. So he can hand you that mug you always squint up at, the one you pretend you don’t need.

He knows how your arm swings when you walk.

Knows the rhythm of your stride. Knows your pace.

And sometimes, not often enough to be suspicious, he lets his hand brush yours.

Lets his fingers catch a hint of your warmth.

It’s not an accident.

It never is.

He carries you like a story he hasn’t told yet.

And he is aching, aching, aching to write you down.

Bucky stares at the markings like they might reach out and touch him.

He brushes his fingers against one. The ink smudges slightly under the metal pad of his thumb. Fresh.

He doesn’t understand.

Why would he-?

No. It has to be a coincidence. Just a prank. A weird joke. Someone else with your handwriting, maybe. Another version of him. One who doesn’t carry his past like a loaded gun. Or it’s just some odd inside joke he never got to know about in his own universe.

Bucky moves to step back, but his eyes catch on something else.

To the right of the door, hanging crookedly, is a small, square canvas. Acrylic. Textured.

It’s a painting. He knows it immediately. Your style.

He’s seen you paint a thousand times in silence, your jaw clenched, music too loud in your headphones. You always say you paint when you can’t say something out loud. When the words get stuck in your chest and rot.

This painting is familiar. A half-sky. A steel arm. Fingers open, reaching toward a red string that trails off the edge of the frame.

He knows what it means. He knows you.

But the painting doesn’t belong here. Not like this. It’s intimate. Meant for someone who understands the weight in your throat when you speak through colors.

Someone like him.

His stomach twists.

Maybe it is him.

He doesn’t like that thought. Doesn’t like how it makes his heart trip over itself.

He takes a step into the room because his brain told him to and his body didn’t want to argue. And he stops breathing.

Because you're not there.

But the room is.

The room is here.

And that’s almost worse.

It’s too familiar.

Not identical, not exact, but similar enough to tear him wide open.

The walls are a different color. Now necessarily lights. But just not how he remembers it. The books on the shelf are in new places, different spines, rearranged lives.

But the couch is the same shape, the same worn-out comfort.

The window still drinks in the light the same way - slanted, soft, forgiving.

And there’s a sweater messily folded on your dresser.

A book, face-down on the cushion like someone meant to come back to it.

Like you were just here.

Like maybe, if he stays long enough, you’ll walk back into the frame of this almost-life.

He doesn’t touch anything.

He’s afraid to.

Because this version of the world remembers you.

The shape of your existence lives here - in shadows and coffee rings, in the faint scent of something sweet and floral and you.

He walks the room like an intruder in someone else’s dream, eyes cataloguing the differences, chasing the sameness.

He notices that the cabinet doors hang slightly crooked in the same way.

And for just a moment he swears he hears your voice in the next room.

But it’s only silence, mocking him.

He wants to sit.

He wants to stay.

Wants to believe that if he closes his eyes, you’ll be beside him again.

He knows it isn’t true.

This isn’t his world.

This isn’t his home.

And this isn’t his you.

But the ache doesn’t care about reality.

The ache believes in the melodic sound of your laughter and the empty seat beside him.

There’s a coat draped over the back of a chair.

His coat.

Not one like it.

His.

The leather’s too worn in the same places. The collar stretched where he grips it with his right hand. There’s even the tear near the cuff that you stitched together with dark red thread, muttering that you weren’t a tailor but you’d seen enough war movies to fake it.

He steps inside without meaning to.

The room smells like you.

It’s your scent - soft, unassuming, threaded through with something sweet. Like worn pages and old tea and maybe vanilla.

It’s the same smell that clings to your hoodie when you get closer to each other on cold stakeouts to warm the other. The same one that lingers on your gloves when you pass him something, and he holds them a moment too long just to feel the warmth you left behind.

There’s a mug on the nightstand with faded text that reads I make bad decisions and coffee.

He bought that for you. In his world. As a joke.

You still used it until the handle cracked, and then you glued it back together and kept using it anyway.

He reaches out for it.

Stops.

His hand is shaking.

Bucky turns slowly. And sees the photo.

It’s not framed. Just pinned to a corkboard on the far wall, beneath torn paper scraps and to-do lists written in your handwriting.

It’s the two of you.

He recognizes the background - Coney Island. A bench by the boardwalk. Sunlight in your hair. His arm around your shoulder. His face not looking at the camera, but at you.

You’re laughing. And he looks-

He looks in love.

Like he has everything he ever wanted.

His breath hitches.

He steps back.

Back again.

Like distance might undo the gravity of what he just saw.

His ears are ringing.

None of this makes sense. Not fully.

He is stepping into a space he should not recognize but does.

The walls are a little brighter than in his world. Pale blue. Like the sky on cold days. There’s a candle on the windowsill—burned low and forgotten. Its wax has dripped onto a saucer, hardened into a small, messy sculpture. The bed is half-made. A throw blanket in a tangled heap at the foot of it. He recognizes that blanket. You two fought over it last movie night and then ended up sharing it.

There’s another book lying face-down, this time on the mattress. A knife on the nightstand. A half-written grocery list in your handwriting with his name scrawled at the bottom next to coffee and razor blades and more apples.

He stares at the list too long. At his own name like it sits in the wrong place. Like it’s foreign and familiar all at once.

His heart makes a quiet, traitorous sound in his chest.

He shouldn’t be here.

This isn’t his room. It’s not his place. Not his world. He’s just a shadow slipping through someone else’s life.

The longer he stays, the more it feels like the walls are leaning in.

He has a job.

A mission.

A very, very clear objective and a limited window to complete it in. That’s the only reason he’s here. The only reason he agreed to this whole ridiculous plan.

He doesn’t belong to this life.

He doesn’t belong to you.

Not like this.

Especially not like this.

He steps back. Slow. Controlled. As if the room might lurch and pull him in again, keep him held tight inside the heat of it. The scent of lavender on your pillow. A half-drunk mug of something still faintly warm on the desk. A soft blanket, folded neatly over the back of the couch by the window. Woven wool, pale grey, fraying just at the corners. In his world, that blanket lives in the rec room. He draped it over your slumbering body a few times already after you fell asleep somewhere between the second and third act.

The room creaks as though it knows he’s not supposed to be here.

So he leaves.

Each footfall measured like a soldier retreating from a line of fire. Not because of danger.

Because of what it could mean.

He closes the door behind him. Doesn’t let it latch.

He is leaving your room because he has to.

Because he’s still Bucky Barnes, and he still has something to do with his hands that isn’t letting them hover uselessly over photographs he never shot, or standing in the middle of a space that smells like your skin and wondering how long it would take before he forgot this wasn’t real. Or wasn’t his.

The hallway is still and dim. It breathes around him, too familiar and too wrong all at once. Different lungs, but the same bone structure.

His boots scruff over the same tile. The grooves on the walls are the same, the small imperfections in the paint still visible where someone - Clint, maybe - banged a cart too hard against the corner and then tried to cover it up with exactly the wrong shade of touch-up.

There’s a duffle bag sitting outside the laundry chute with a name tag stitched in crooked red thread: WILSON. Of course. Even this Sam never takes his stuff all the way in.

And there is a vending machine. It stands in the wrong corner, but it too has a post-it note stuck to it - out of order, again, thanks Tony - with a penknife stabbed through it, just like Natasha used to do when the machine ate her protein bar credits.

These things shouldn’t exist here. But they do.

Everything feels so carefully replicated, as though this universe is a reflection cast on rippling water - almost right, except where it wavers.

The picture frames are all straight here. No one’s taped up drawings on the elevator doors. But the dent in the wall by the training room door is still there - Tony left it during a particularly aggressive dodgeball game. And the pillow on the corner of the couch is still upside down. Steve never fixes it.

Someone’s sweatshirt is slung over the railing. Sam’s. Same one he wore for three weeks straight after the Lagos op. It still smells like burned rubber and that weird detergent Sam insists is “eco-friendly but manly.”

The common room has a blanket folded over the arm of the couch.

It’s yours.

You always fold it the same way. Two halves, then thirds, then smoothed flat.

The corners of his mouth twitch. Not a smile. Just muscle memory of one.

He walks slower now. Like he’s afraid he’ll wake something up.

He turns down the south hall, toward the kitchen.

He tells himself it’s for the layout. That he’s retracing steps, building a map in his head, keeping sharp like they trained him to. But really it’s you. It’s always you. He knows you’re here, somewhere, and if he turns the wrong corner too fast he might see you in a way he isn’t ready for. Or worse - see you in a way he’ll never forget.

His hand curls into a fist. Flesh and metal both.

The light changes first.

The kitchen here is bigger. Airier. The windows seem to stretch wider than they should, the frame redone in something softer than steel. Someone left the lights low, warm glimmers buzzing faintly above, full of melancholy chords.

And then he freezes. Everything in him turns to stone.

He stops breathing.

Because there are you.

Standing with your back to him.

You are in fuzzy socks, standing at the counter, shoulders relaxed, a pot simmering on the stove, and a sway in your movements that hit him so hard his throat tightens. You shift your weight slightly, hip against the edge of the counter, your hand rising to tuck your hair behind your ear.

The way the light hits you from behind is exactly the same.

You are moving through a rhythm you don’t know he’s watching.

You’re cooking something - he doesn’t know what, can’t smell it through the barrier of this aching distance - but it all is so heartbreakingly familiar. The tilt of your head as you read the label. The absent little sway in your hips as you stir something in the pan.

It’s domestic.

Effortlessly soft.

The kind of moment he’s never had, but has imagined a thousand times before.

His body goes very still. Maybe if he moves, the moment might shatter.

But it cleaves him open.

Because you move the same.

You move the way you do in his world - as though every room bends slowly toward you. As though you don’t know how much of your soul you leave behind in your trail. As though the air makes space for you because it wants to. Because it has to.

He watches.

Rooted to the floor.

This is doing something brutal to him. Seeing you here like this, in this soft golden kitchen that smells like tomatoes and thyme and something slow-cooked with patience and love, tucked into his shirt as though it doesn’t tear his heart apart.

You’re not just wearing it to steal warmth or tease him, the way you’ve done before in his world - tugging on his hoodie after a long mission, smirking when he raises an eyebrow, pretending it was an accident. You always returned it too quickly. Always laughed too loudly when he was too nonchalant about it. Always looked away too fast.

But here. Here you wear it as though you truly mean to.

Here you stir sauce in his shirt and sway slightly to a song you don’t know you’re humming and taste the spoon as though this is just another Saturday. Here, the shirt is not a stolen thing.

The hem skims your thighs. The collar is stretched slightly. The cotton even moves in your rhythm. His name is ghosted into the shape of you, etched along your silhouette. It’s almost too much. It’s absolutely too much.

Your movements are familiar in the way only time can make a person. And God, you move the same way. The same way. Like the version of you he left behind an hour ago. Fluid. Quiet. Self-contained. You hum under your breath, just barely.

He feels it like a bruise forming under his ribs.

His hand curls at his side. Metal fingers flex.

You don’t see him.

He’s not ready for you to. He knows he shouldn’t let you see him.

Not here. Not like this. Not when you’re standing in a kitchen that looks like the one you always complained was too small, in a shirt that is his - or the other Bucky’s - cooking with your whole body curled in that same subtle tension like you’re thinking about something else entirely.

And for one breathless second, he forgets.

He forgets this isn’t his kitchen.

That this isn’t his world.

That the you standing there isn’t the one who left a hair tie on his wrist last Wednesday.

That you’re not the one who laughed at him for not knowing how to use your espresso machine but then proceeded to teach him with that sweet voice of yours he doesn’t mind drowning in.

But God, he wants to walk across the room. Wants to slide his arms around your waist. Rest his chin on your shoulder. Breathe in your scent and feel your heartbeat under his hands.

Because he’s seen you like this before.

In his own kitchen, in his own universe.

Not often. Just enough to be dangerous.

You, in fuzzy socks. You, humming softly. You, squinting into a pot like it might confess its secrets.
You, looking over your shoulder and catching him staring.

Smirking. Amused. But with a warmth in your eyes.

And now, he just watches.

This version of you doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t feel him standing there, made of want and memory and too much tenderness for a heart that was never meant to carry this much.

He grips the doorframe.

Tries to swallow the pain.

Because this is what he’s always wanted, but it isn’t his.

And it won’t be.

But he can’t stop looking.

He knows he should move. Now.

He’s not supposed to linger.

Not supposed to look.

Not supposed to feel.

He’s a shadow in this world, a breath not meant to be heard. A presence designed to pass unnoticed.

But you-

God.

You are gravity and he is weak against it.

You are the glitch in every rule, the exception in every universe.

And he can’t help it.

He looks.

He stays.

Because there is no version of reality where he walks past you untouched.

You are the only thing in this place that hasn’t changed.

The only thing that feels right.

And that’s the worst part.

Because you feel like home.

And you’re not his.

You might never be.

But he stands there, selfish and still, pretending the silence could make him invisible. Pretending this version of you isn’t real. That your shape, your voice, your hands wouldn’t undo him in ways the war never could.

You reach for the spice rack, standing on your toes just a little, the hem of the oversized shirt lifting slightly. His name is written in the way the fabric hangs off your frame. It’s branded into this whole place.

He watches you like a man watches fire from the other side of glass - warmed, lit, and ruined all at once. You move like morning through him - and he, all dusk and dust, knows he is never meant to touch such light.

You wear that shirt on your shoulders as though it is normal for you. As though you want it to be there.

Bucky watches it stretch across the curves of a body he’s only ever worshiped in dreams.

You still feel like you, he thinks and the thought is so sudden and so violent that he has to step back - just a fraction of an inch, just enough to pretend he didn’t feel it, just enough to pretend it doesn’t mean something.

He doesn’t understand how this version of you still reads like poetry he’s already memorized.

He backs away, so slowly, he wonders if time might forgive him for the moment. For his hesitation to leave.

For the way, he just stands there and watches you as though you are the last good thing in the world.

As though you are the world. His world.

You turn, slow, stirring spoon still in hand. You haven’t seen him yet. You’re focused, brow furrowed just slightly, lower lip caught between your teeth, and he knows he should get the hell away from here.

But he is frozen in place. His muscles aren’t working.

He sees the angle of your cheek, the line of your neck, the quick twitch of your nose as though you’ve caught a scent you know too well.

And then you look up.

You see him.

Bucky’s mind is running on empty cells.

Your whole face changes. Clouds lifting. Sun rising. Your smile is instant. As though seeing him is something your body wants to do.

Everything in you brightens. As though the sun cracked open inside your chest. Your whole body jolts. Just a fraction. In surprise, delight. As though seeing him is something that rearranges the air in your lungs and makes it easier to breathe.

He is not prepared for the way you breathe his name.

“Buck-” your voice is thick with shock and joy and something lighter than either. “You’re back.”

He doesn’t move. Can’t.

The word back rattles in his ears. Echoes. Feels like a lie made of gold. He is not back. He is not yours. Not in this life. Not in this room. Not in the way you somehow seem to think he is.

You don’t give him time to speak. You don’t give him space to even think.

Because you’re already closing the distance between you, fast and sure-footed, and he has just enough sense left in him to realize he should say something, before you launch yourself into his chest, arms flung wide, a soft gasp of excitement still spilling from your mouth.

You collide with him hard and certain and unapologetic, and your arms wind around his neck as though they’ve done this a thousand times. So easy with him. Knowing the shape of him.

He stiffens. Every muscle in his body locks up, heart ricocheting against his ribs. He chokes on his breath.

He’s too overwhelmed with this situation to hug you back. His arms stay frozen at his side. His fingers twitch, trying to reach for you but remembering they shouldn’t.

You’re warm. You’re so warm.

You smell like that candle on your windowsill. Like a version of comfort he hasn’t earned.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were back?” you murmur, voice muffled as you bury yourself into the crook of his neck, full of a joy so honest it makes his entire ribcage squeeze the life out of him. “I thought you were still stuck over there. I was starting to get worried. Were you trying to surprise me? Because you definitely surprised me.”

Bucky can’t speak. He can’t do a single thing and that’s absolutely pathetic. He wants to say something clever or distant or safe, but his mouth is a graveyard and the words are bones. He’s not sure he even remembers how to use them anymore.

Your breath fans across his collarbone, your nose brushing his jaw, and it’s too much.

The feeling of you against him is unbearable. You fit. Of course, you do. His body knows you, even if his brain is screaming that this is wrong, that this is not the life he is living, that this version of you is not his to touch.

But you don’t know that. You don’t hesitate. Your hands slide up his back. One of them tangles in the hair at the nape of his neck. The other rests against the curve of his shoulder. His flesh shoulder.

He feels like glass. Like a single breath could rip him to shreds.

You pull back just enough to look at him.

There is something tender in your eyes. Something known. Something that sees him without flinching. You’re beaming. And he is blinded.

You’re looking at him as though he’s something you loved for years and known down to the marrow.

And then, so quickly, so confidently - you kiss him.

Bucky freezes.

All the air leaves his lungs.

His heart stutters in his chest.

Your lips meet his as though the air between you has gravity, as though you have done this before, soft and sure, knowing how he likes it. You kiss him as though you’ve kissed him a thousand times and a thousand more.

Bucky is a rigid wall, thunderstruck.

But he doesn’t stop you.

He should. He knows he should. The second your hands touched his face, he should have stepped back. Should have told you the truth. Should have warned you that this isn’t him. Not the right one. That the man you think you’re kissing is a ghost wearing someone else’s memories.

But he doesn’t. He lets you. For a heartbreaking moment. Lets his mouth press to yours for the span of a beat and a half. Lets the warmth of you crack the ice he’s been carrying in his chest for too long.

Your lips are warm, soft, sweet, tasting of honey and cinnamon and nostalgia and the imaged version of a dream he’s buried too deep to name, one he’s never dared to reach for but still lingers in his bones. Bucky doesn’t know if he’s breathing or if that became something irrelevant.

He lets you press into him as though the whole world hasn’t changed, as though this you is not a stranger wearing your skin, your voice, your tenderness. And for a second, a small and selfish, shattering second, he melts.

His muscles go slack and his eyes fall closed and the universe falls into place. Your lips on his feel like relief, like the end of war, like something he didn’t earn. He lets himself sink into it, into you.

You kiss him as though you know him. As though you know the hollow places and where they go. As though your body is working off muscle memory forged from love he was never around long enough to deserve.

Your hands are on his face and you’re kissing him as though this means something and he wants to pull away, he does, but not for one split-second. He folds like wax in flames, pliant and helpless under your affection.

His heart stutters - skips, crashes, burns.

Your body is pressing forward as though it’s coming home.

His mouth moves with yours, slow and stunned and melted, like a man learning to breathe in a language he doesn’t speak.

This is what he has imagined. This is what has haunted the spaces behind his eyes when he lets his guard down. He has imagined this. Wondered what your breath would taste like when it caught between your mouths, how your fingers would feel fisted in his hair, how it might feel to be wanted by you - openly, without hesitation, without shame.

But then you whisper against his mouth, soft and breathless and full of joy.

“God, I missed you.”

And everything collapses.

The words strike like ice water down his spine. It’s like being shot. He grows tense again. His eyes snap open. His mind catches up to his heart. The sweetness goes sour in his mouth. The warmth becomes poison under his skin. Because it isn’t real. This isn’t real.

You’re not his.

Not his to kiss. Not his to miss him. Not his to touch him with that bright look in your eyes as though he is part of your story.

You think he’s your Bucky. The one who - as Bucky would imagine - kissed you on every hallway in this place, whenever he could. The one who knows which side of the bed you sleep on. The one who earned your trust, your touch, your history.

And so he breaks the sky.

He pulls away - rips himself out of paradise with shaking hands and a jaw clenched so tight it might snap. The breath that leaves him is ragged, torn.

Every muscle in his body is tight. This is not your kiss. Not yours to give or his to take. Not when you don’t know. Not when you think he’s someone else.

And even though it’s you - your warmth, your voice, your heartbeat fluttering against his chest - it’s not the version of you he’s imagined this with.

And it’s not right.

The guilt punches him all at once, shame and grief and confusion he’s never quite learned to survive. He recoils - not even fully on purpose - but instinct, instinct that tells him he has stolen something you didn’t offer him.

He’s just a stranger behind familiar eyes.

You freeze. Blink at him. Confused. Concerned.

Your smile falters. Disappears.

His chest heaves once, twice, too fast, not able to breathe properly with your taste still caught in his mouth. His hands curl into fists at his side, trying to remember what they are for.

And then he sees it - your worry folding into something smaller, something more ashamed.

And it murders him in slow motion, one heartbeat at a time.

Your hands drop away from his face and flutter against your lips for the smallest second as though maybe you’re the one who crossed a line.

And he watches, helpless, as the light behind your eyes dims.

You take a tiny step back, shoulders inching inwards as though you’re suddenly unsure of yourself.

And then your eyes widen, and the guilt spills out of you now, sharp and immediate.

“Buck, I-” you start, your voice soft and hesitant. “I’m sorry. That was… I shouldn’t have just- I didn’t mean to- God, you probably needed a second to just settle, and I-” you trail off and take another step back as though you think you hurt him.

Your face crumples, not dramatically, not completely. But enough to look a little wounded. Vulnerable in that way you only let him see when no one else is around. Even here. Even in this life that isn’t his.

It’s killing him.

That pain in your eyes. The sheen of doubt and confusion that he put there.

You wrap your arms around yourself, retreating inward, your expression far too close to shame.

His chest caves as though something vital just got torn out, and his body hasn’t caught up yet.

Because even if you are not his - you are you. And hurting you, even by accident, even like this, feels like peeling the skin of his ribs.

He feels it in the hollow beneath his ribs, a wound that won’t stop bleeding.

“No!” he forces out quickly, voice low and rough and all wrong. “Hey- no, no, you didn’t- You weren’t- I’m not-”

But he doesn’t know what to say.

He wants to tell you it’s okay, that you didn’t do anything wrong, that it’s him, it’s all him, it’s always him, it’s never you.

He wants to scream that his bones are made of want, that his blood sings only your name, that he is drowning in everything you don’t know you’ve given him.

But none of this is simple. None of it is clean.

And all he does is stand there.

Breath shaking.

Heart breaking.

Hands curled so tightly to keep from reaching.

Because you didn’t give this kiss to him, not knowing who he was. You gave it to the man you think he is. The man you trust.

And he accepted it anyway. Let it happen. For just a split second, but still, he let himself have it.

He feels sick.

And now you look like you’re folding in on yourself, and all he wants in the world is to pull you close and undo every second of pain.

“I just got excited,” you say timidly, even softer now, eyes dropping to the kitchen counter. “I missed you and I didn’t- I thought you’d- Never mind. I’m sorry.”

You’re already turning away, trying to tuck the moment back into yourself, trying to pretend it didn’t just break the air between you. As though you haven’t just handed him a piece of your heart and watched him flinch from it.

And Bucky feels like the worst kind of monster.

Because it’s not your fault. This version of you, who somehow but clearly loves him, who thought she was greeting the man who has kissed her a thousand times and more. Who thought this was welcome. Who probably counted down the days until he walked through that door.

He knows because he does the same thing although his you and him aren’t even a thing.

Because in his world, you’re his friend. Just that. A friend with soft eyes and sharper wit, someone who argues about popcorn toppings and sings loudly in the kitchen when you know he needs some cheering up. You’ve patched him up after missions. You’ve watched old movies with him in silence, both of you staring too long at the screen and not long enough at each other. You’ve fallen asleep on his shoulder. You’ve tucked his hair behind his ear when it stuck to his cheek after a nightmare. You’ve told him - more than once - that you’re here for him.

But you’ve never kissed him.

You’ve never touched him as though you owned the moment.

You’ve never stood in his clothes and cooked dinner for the version of him who let himself be yours.

And god, he wants to hate this version of himself. This man who found the courage to step forward when he only hovered on the edge. Who earned the right to be held by his dream girl like a homecoming.

And now you are ashamed. Now you are hurt.

Because he couldn’t be the right Bucky.

He steps forward, frantic, needing, desperate to fix it, to say something, anything that would wipe that hurt look off your face.

“No- no, hey,” he rasps, voice frayed. His hands are hovering. He wants to touch you. He wants to hold your face in his palms and make this better. “It’s not your fault. It’s not you. I just… I mean, I didn’t think-” He knows he’s not making this better at all right now.

He sighs, mouth open but language failing him, and he scrubs a hand over his jaw as though he can erase the hesitation you saw there.

You search his face, your eyes too deep.

A trembling nod.

“Okay,” you say. “I just thought- I don’t know what I thought. I was just really happy to see you. But I should’ve given you a moment.”

And there it is.

The softness.

The part of you he has always tried to guard. The one he’d go back to Hydra to protect. The one that makes his chest ache and his hands shake at his sides.

He wants to tell you everything. The truth. The mission. That he’s not the man you think he is.

He almost does.

But his throat is choked up.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and that only breaks him in a new way.

Because you think you did something wrong.

“No,” he starts again, firmer this time, softer too. “You don’t need to apologize, sweetheart. I-” he hesitates, and you see it. “I missed you, too.”

He screwed up. Completely.

You bite your lip, unsure. Your eyes flick down to your shirt. His shirt. Not really his shirt. But Bucky’s shirt. You tug at the hem as though it suddenly doesn’t belong to you anymore.

And Bucky knows that this moment will haunt him long after he leaves this world. Long after he goes back to the version of you who wears his hoodies just to tease, who touches him only in passing, who is his friend despite him wishing for you to greet him the same way this you greets her Bucky. For the rest of his life.

You look at him as though he’s a wound.

As though he’s something tender and broken and half-open, and not in the way that frightens you but in the way that makes you reach for the first aid kit. As though you’ve seen the blood already, and you are not afraid to get your hands dirty to make him whole again.

Your voice turns softer now. Maybe trying not to shake the walls around him. Like you’ve already seen him flinch once and you’re afraid of making it happen again. He can hear the thread of caution in your throat, stretched thin with concern.

“Buck,” you say, slow, quiet. “Are you okay?” you ask and it’s not just a question. It’s a doorway. A key turned in a lock he hasn’t let anyone touch. You’re peering through the walls he built up as though you have done it before. Maybe you know all his hiding places. Maybe you’ve kissed every scar on his soul and memorized the way his silences mean different things.

But not this version of him.

Not here. Not now.

And it does something sharp to him.

Because he’s not okay. He is a thousand feet below the surface, lungs full of water and salt and regret. He is standing in a version of his life that is too soft for the callouses on his hands, and you are looking at him as if he means something to you, as if he still matters even after he’s flinched from your kiss, after he’s stood there in a borrowed skin, giving nothing in return.

He wants to say yes. Wants to lie because it would be kinder. Because maybe it would make your forehead smooth out and your mouth curl back up and your shoulders drop from where they’ve crept up near your ears. But the words catch in his throat. He can’t swallow them. He can’t spit them out.

You step closer, slowly now, more careful than before, and the guilt rises more than ever.

“Do you need anything?” you ask, as though you’ve asked him this a thousand times before. “Water? Food? A shower? A-” you falter, “- a second to breathe?”

Your eyes are so gentle he could cry. You’re hurting and you’re still soft with him, still reaching across this invisible crack in the earth, still offering care with both hands like it won’t burn you if he doesn’t take it.

He doesn’t deserve this.

He doesn’t deserve you.

Not when he’s not the man who earned the right to walk through that door and be met with your affection like sunlight. Not when you looked at him like a miracle and he gave you nothing back but a statue.

His hands remain in fists. His chest is too tight. Too small. His own skin is too loud.

“I’m fine,” he answers. Too fast. Too clipped. He regrets it instantly.

Your face drops a little, enough for him to feel it all over again. Another weight, another reminder that he is ruining something delicate, something not meant for him.

“Oh,” you murmur, nodding too quickly, stepping back as though your warmth was a mistake. “Okay.”

And there it is.

That thing he can’t stand.

That thing you do - both of you, all versions of you - when you feel shut out. That pull inward, that retreat behind your own ribs, as though maybe you’d overstepped, and now you need to fold yourself small enough not to take up space.

It crushes him.

Because he made you feel that way.

He made you feel as though you’re making it worse by caring.

He swallows hard, sorrow burning down his throat.

He doesn’t deserve your tenderness. He doesn’t deserve your care. He doesn’t deserve the way you’re moving again, back to the counter, shoulders tense. You’re trying to give him space and comfort in the same breath and it hurts to watch.

You stir something in the pan. Wipe your hands off a towel that looks as though it’s been used too many times. Domestic. Familiar. This life is familiar, too much so, and he is standing in the middle of it like a trespasser.

“I’m almost done here,” you note sweetly, glancing back at him with that look - gentle and worried and wounded. “If you do want something.”

You say it as though you’ve fed him before. As though he likes your cooking. As though this is something you fall into easily, the kitchen your common ground, your voice echoing off the same cabinets.

Bucky can feel his heart cave in.

You’re still looking at him like that. As though he’s someone you’d give your last spoonful of soup to. As though he isn’t just standing there like a coward with your kiss still on his mouth and your concern sitting in the hollow of his chest.

Even when he pulled away, even when he didn’t say a damn word, you didn’t get angry. You didn’t accuse him of anything. You just worried. And you’re still here. Still cooking. Still offering pieces of yourself like they’re nothing when they mean everything.

It makes him feel like a thief.

Because he’s not your Bucky. And he doesn’t know what yours did to earn you, but he can’t possibly live up to it.

His guilt is a creature now - gnawing and breathing heavy in his chest, pacing in circles behind his ribs. He feels it crawling through him, scraping at the back of his throat, making it hard to speak, hard to swallow. You are being careful with him, and all he can think about is how he should have stopped the kiss the second you leaned in.

You wouldn’t have kissed him if you knew who he really was.

And still, he wants to say yes.

Wants to sit at the kitchen table as though he belongs. Wants to take the plate you’d hand him and eat every last bite and listen to your stories and pretend just for a moment that this is his.

But it’s not.

It’s yours.

And it’s his job to leave it untouched.

“I’m good,” he lies, voice a gravel-dragged croak.

You pause, spoon in hand, frowning softly.

He hates that look.

That little line between your brows. The tilt of your head. Maybe you know he’s not telling the truth but don’t want to press. Maybe you’d rather hold the silence in your hands than make him bleed more words than he has.

“Okay,” you say again, quiet but still open, still gentle. “Just let me know if that changes.”

And you turn back to your pan, shoulders remaining to stay curled in. Like a window closing just enough to keep the cold out.

And Bucky just stands there.

Mouth dry. Hands shaking. Jaw tight. Chest full of something that feels like grief and guilt and anguish all tangled up in barbed wire.

And you’re cooking for a man who doesn’t exist in your world.

And the worst part - the part that scrapes down the back of his throat - is that he wishes he could deserve you.

He wishes this was real.

He wishes it were him.

He wishes it more than he’s wished for anything in his life since he lost it.

Since he became something else, since he forgot his own name, since his hands were turned against the world, against himself. Since all he’s done is survive.

He watches you like a man starving for sunlight. Terrified it might disappear if he blinks too long.

The way your shoulders move as you stir. The curl of your fingers around the wooden spoon. The tuck of hair behind your ear. The shift of your weight from one foot to the other.

He watches you move like he’s memorizing. As though this is the last time he’ll see you in motion. Like your movements are things he can bottle and carry with him, tucked deep into some pocket where the world can’t steal it. Where time can’t take it. Where even regret has no reach.

Your fingers fuss over something inconsequential now. Adjusting the position of a mug that didn’t need to be moved, opening a drawer, and then closing it again. You’re pretending not to look at him but he sees the way your eyes keep falling over, the way you keep folding and unfolding yourself. You’re waiting. Giving him the space he didn’t ask for and that he doesn’t actually want but knows he should take. Giving him something kinder than he’s ever learned to give himself.

And you are so familiar. You’re the same here. Even in this place that’s slightly sideways and tinted in colors, he doesn’t recognize. You move the same. You speak the same. You care the same way.

Even if your kindness isn’t meant for him.

Even if your kiss was meant for a version of him he doesn’t even understand.

Because this Bucky - the one you seem to love here - he must have done something right. He must have looked at you one day and not looked away. He must have let himself have you. He must have been brave enough to reach for you with both hands and hold on.

Bucky doesn’t know how to be that man.

He wants to be.

But he doesn’t know how.

Not in his own world. Not where he loves you from afar and pretends that’s protection. Where he swallows the way you laugh like it’s medicine and doesn’t let it show on his face. Where he listens to your questions in briefings - always you, always asking the most, as though you know people better than they know themselves - and he lets the sound of your voice guide him through the fog in his head like a rope he can follow back home.

But he never says anything. Never answers unless he has to. Never tells you how often he thinks about you, about your hands and your hair and your smell and the way your eyes find his in a crowd like a lighthouse built just for him.

Because what would he even say?

Hey, I can’t sleep unless I replay the way you laughed when Sam dropped popcorn all over the floor last month. I still have the napkin you folded into a crane at that terrible diner. I know the shape of your handwriting better than my own.

And what would you say to that?

Would you smile?

Would you run?

He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. Because he never asked. Because he never tried.

But this Bucky did.

And now this is the price.

Standing in the compound’s kitchen that smells of roasted garlic and too many things he’s never had. Watching you move around as though this is all so very familiar to you.

He wonders if you’d greet him like this every day if he were yours. If you were his.

If you’d light up like that every time like he was coming come and not just showing up, arms open, voice warm, like there was no place he could be safer than here with you.

If you’d wear his shirts as though they are yours because of what he means to you, not because they are soft or convenient or too clean not to steal.

He aches with the idea of it.

He wants this.

He wants you.

And not just in the sharp pain that lives under his ribs. Not just in the sleepless nights and the imagined conversations. Not just in the way he stares too long when you’re laughing or how he makes excuses to sit beside you on the couch.

He wants this.

You, warm and open and lit up from the inside. You, the way you could be if you saw him like this. If you let yourself. If he ever earned the right for you to let yourself.

But he hasn’t. He knows that.

He’s just your friend. The one you trust with your coffee order and your spare key and the heavy things you don’t want to talk about until 2 am. The one you steal clothes from, but always give them back because they don’t actually belong to you. The one you fall asleep beside during late movies without worrying about what it means because it doesn’t mean anything. Not to you.

Not like it means to him.

And still, he always watches. From doorways. From shadowed corners of rooms that dim the moment you leave them. Not to possess you - but because to look away would be a small death he cannot bear.

You laugh, and he holds the sound like contraband. You glance past him, and he lets it wound him sweetly. He’ll love you like that forever - at a distance, in silence, in awe. A man carved hollow by devotion, wearing his yearning like a prayer no god will answer.

And this version of you belongs to someone.

Even if it’s just a different version of him, it’s not him. Not this one. Not the one still lost in the burden of everything he’s done. The one who still wonders if the blood on his hands will ever wash off. The one who doesn’t know how to be soft.

He doesn’t know what the other Bucky did to deserve this version of you. Doesn’t know how he got so lucky. Doesn’t know what he offered you, what words he spoke when you were doubting yourself, afraid of being too much.

He’s not sure if he even knows this Bucky. It sounds weird as fuck. But maybe he doesn’t. Because it seems impossible to Bucky that this guy actually managed to get his girl. To get you.

Though he sure as hell would start a fight if the other him ever took this for granted. If he ever walked through this kitchen distracted or tired or in a bad mood and missed the way you smile when you think he’s not looking. If he ever left you waiting too long.

Bucky thinks he’d kill to have what that punk has.

And he hates himself for that.

But he can’t help but watch you, and it feels like the axis of something turning. Like time folding in on itself to offer him one brief, borrowed breath of what could have been.

It feels like being kissed by a future he lost, and forgiven by a present he never dared to ask for.

Because he knows that if you knew his thoughts, if you knew what he is feeling right now, you’d feel betrayed. You’d feel wronged. Because this wasn’t yours to give and it wasn’t his to want and now you’re both tangled in something made of shadows and parallel paths that should never have crossed.

But you’re here. And he’s here. And the moment still smells of cinnamon and citrus and something sweet, like safety, like you.

And he can’t stop wanting.

He wants it so badly he feels like a child in his chest. Like a boy in Brooklyn again, heart too big, hands too empty. Wanting something too beautiful for his fingers. Afraid to touch it in case he ruins it.

He wants this kitchen, this quiet, this life. He wants to be the Bucky who you wrap your arms around without thinking. Without hesitation. The one you miss. The one you think about. The one you care about so deeply. The one you kiss without asking because of course he wants you to.

He wants to be the one you light up for.

He wants it so bad it hurts.

But you are too soft for the ruin of his hands. Too bright for the rooms he lives in. You drink from fountains he was never invited to approach, speak in tones that his rusted soul cannot mimic.

And this is gutting him. To know the shape of your intimate kindness, the tilt of your adoring smile, the poetry of your presence - yet remain nothing more than a silent apostle to your orbit.

And maybe that’s why he finally moves. Why he tears himself away, footfalls too loud in the silence, heart thudding wildly in his chest.

He can’t stay here, not with you standing in the soft yellow light looking like everything he’s ever tried not to need.

He clears his throat, tries to make his voice sound normal, even though nothing about him feels human right now.

Your eyes lift to his. Wary. Still warm. Still worried. Still too much.

“I should, uh,” he mutters, nodding toward the hallway. “I’ve gotta take a shower.”

He bites his lip in frustration at himself.

Your lip twitches. Tugs down ever so slightly. It splits him open.

“Okay,” you say, quiet. There is disappointment in your tone, you weren’t able to overshadow. “You’ll tell me if you need anything?”

He nods too fast. Too tight. “Yeah.”

And then he leaves.

Because if he doesn’t, he’s going to do something worse than kiss you back.

He’s going to beg.

And he knows he has already taken too much.

And he needs to turn away.

Because he has something to do.

Because this world isn’t his. And he wasn’t sent here to collect the storyline he’s too afraid to build on his own.

He’s here for a mission.

He wasn’t sent here to linger in your doorway and let his bones dissolve into longing.

He walks away with you still behind him. He feels your gaze on his skin and with every step, it’s like he’s leaving something behind he’ll never quite be able to touch again.

He almost turns around.

Almost says your name.

Almost asks what this Bucky did - how he said it first, how he reached for you, what it took.

But he doesn’t.

Because he doesn’t get to ask.

So he keeps walking, heart in his throat, your taste still on his lips, and the echo of your smile carved into his spine like something sacred he was never meant to keep.

****

“Did you run into anyone while you were there?”

Steve’s question comes as casually as a bomb dropped from the sky.

Voices rise and fall in the conference room - wooden chairs squeaking under shifting weight, pens clicking, someone’s fingers drumming absently on the table.

The room is too bright. The lights overhead white and clinical, burning a little too harshly through his eyes and down into the back of his skull.

The air smells like ozone and burnt coffee. The kind that’s been sitting in the pot too long, scorched at the edges.

Bucky sits at the far end. Back against the chair but not relaxed, never relaxed, spine too straight, jaw too tight, metal fingers tapping once against the glass of his water before he clenches his hand and stills it.

And he knew this was coming.

Knew from the moment Strange opened that cursed slit in the fabric of the universe and Bucky stepped through like he was boarding a train to nowhere. Knew the second he saw your face - your face, but not yours - that this would catch up with him. That this would unravel under fluorescent lights and scrutiny.

Every muscle in his body coiled tighter. A reflex. A learned thing. His mouth is already dry.

The table is crowded with Avengers, coffee cups clinking, files half-open and untouched because no one is really looking at the paper.

The prototype sits in the center of the table, carefully sealed inside one of Tony’s vacuum-shielded cases. A long-forgotten Howard Stark fever dream, something meant to bend energy fields into weaponized gravity. Or something. It doesn’t matter.

They have it. He got it.

But that’s not what anyone is talking about right now.

Not when Sam is already side-eyeing him. Not when Doctor Strange is seated in his dark robes like the warning label on a grenade, fingertips tented, waiting. Not when you’re sitting two chairs down - his version of you - and you’re watching him with that same knitted expression you always wear when something doesn’t sit right.

“Bucky,” Strange says, voice low and still too loud. “I need to know. Did you encounter anyone significant while you were there? Interacting with alternate selves is risky. Prolonged exposure can ripple. If you spoke to someone who knows you-”

“I know the damn rules,” Bucky mutters, sharper than he meant to, and instantly hates the way your brows lift at the sound of it.

He rubs a hand across the back of his neck. Tries to breathe. His body is still holding something that didn’t belong to him. Your smile. Your voice. The feel of your lips, pressed to his like they had every right to be there. Like you knew him.

He can’t stop thinking about you.

He doesn’t want to talk about it.

He dreads talking about it.

“There was someone,” he says, and the room quiets.

You sit a little straighter. Sam leans forward. Even Clint lowers his cup.

He can feel you watching him.

You, his version of you, sitting across the table with your arms crossed and your head tilted just enough to catch the shadows under his eyes. The real you. The only important you. And it’s so difficult to just look at you because he swears there’s a phantom echo still lingering in his chest. Of another you. Of another kitchen full of light.

“Who?” Strange asks.

Bucky exhales slowly, eyes fixed on the table. The grain of it. The scratch just under his knuckle. He imagines digging his fingers into it, splinters biting through skin, anything to ground himself.

“You,” He meets your eyes when he finally says it, and it feels like swallowing gravel. “I saw her.”

You blink.

“You ran into Y/n?” Sam asks, something like a smirk in his voice.

Bucky nods once. It feels like rust grinding his neck.

He can’t look up anymore. Can’t look at you.

He doesn’t need to look to know your breath has caught. He can feel it in the air. The absence of it. Like the moment before thunder.

He pushes through.

“She was there. She saw me.” His jaw clenches, his fists curl under the table.

Bruce exhales, pushing up his glasses. “That’s not ideal.”

Tony makes a sharp noise in his throat.

“Did you talk to her?” Strange inquiries, voice tighter now, more urgent. And Bucky has to refrain himself from wincing.

He sees you shifting in your seat in his peripheral vision.

“Yeah,” he sighs, quieter now. “We, uh- we talked.”

Silence.

Strange’s eyes are boring through him. “How close did you get?”

Sam leans forward. Bucky doesn’t look at him.

You’re staring at him now. Open. Quiet. You haven’t said a word. Your silence feels worse than anything else.

“I don’t think that matters-” Bucky starts, but Strange interrupts.

“It matters exactly. If she saw you, if you talked, if you touched, if anything that could destabilize your emotional tether occurred-”

Bucky laughs, but it’s hollow, breathless. Rotten. “What the hell is an emotional tether?”

“It’s you,” Strange answers simply. “And her. On a metaphysical level. The same person in different timelines can act as anchors. Or explosives.”

“Jesus,” Bucky mumbles, dragging a hand down his face.

His palms won’t stop sweating.

He hasn’t felt this kind of sick since HYDRA used to strap wires to his temples and ask him how many fingers they’d need to break before he forgot his own name.

The conference room is too still. Too sharp. His chair feels wrong under him, too stiff, too narrow. The soft, predictable sound of conversation from earlier has dropped into something tighter. Focused. Hunting.

He doesn’t want to lie. Not about you. Not when you touched him like that. Not when you said his name like that. Not when it almost felt like it could be true.

So he swallows hard and pushes words through his locked jaw.

“She hugged me.”

A pause.

He doesn’t look at anyone. Just the table. That one dent from Steve’s shield. The scratch Clint made with a fork because he talks with his hands. A small, folded paper crane tucked under your fingers. He doesn’t know where you’ve got that from but your fingers are bending the wings back and forth. He doesn’t think you even realize you’re doing it.

“She hugged you?” Sam repeats, brow raised. “Like… greeted you?”

Bucky nods slowly, heart thudding in his ears. “Something like that.” He can feel your gaze like heat pressed against the side of his face and it almost burns to meet it, so he doesn’t.

“What happened before that?” Steve wants to know, eyes narrowing.

“I-” Bucky starts, and then stops, scrubs a hand over his mouth. “I walked into the kitchen. She was cooking something. Then she saw me. She thought I- he- was back. From something. A mission. I don’t know the details.”

“And she hugged you,” Steve adds.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs.

He doesn’t mean to look at you, but he does. For a second.

And you’re watching him with something unreadable in your eyes. Something still. As though you are trying to understand.

“And you just let her?” Sam presses, not unkind, but relentless in the way only Sam can be. “You didn’t say anything?”

“What do you think I should have said?”

“Well, I don’t know, man-“

“Did I say anything? Or… she?”

It’s your voice.

And it makes his stomach flip.

His eyes snap to you. But you’re not looking at him directly. You look at the edge of his shoulder. The hinge of his jaw. The tension written across his face.

He shifts in his chair. “You- She asked why I hadn’t told her I was coming back. Thought I was surprising her.” His hands are pressed flat against his thighs as though he can keep himself from shaking if he stays grounded.

“And?” Steve asks, too gently.

“She kissed me,” Bucky manages finally, and the room stiffens around him like a held breath. His voice is almost flat now. Hollowed-out. Maybe he’s trying to bleed the memory dry so it stops spreading in his chest.

There is a momentary lapse of silence that feels like someone dropped something delicate and no one wants to be the first to point it out.

Clint exhales slowly, muttering something under it. Sam leans back in his chair, maybe trying to decide if this is funny or devastating. Steve just blinks.

And you go completely still. Not a twitch of movement. Not even your fingers on the paper crane.

“She kissed you?” Natasha says, brows high.

Bucky exhales. Nods.

“What kind of kiss?” Sam blurts, leaning forward again. “A welcome-home kiss? Or a- like a real kiss?”

Steve sighs exasperated.

“No, I mean- we gotta know. This matters.”

His hand is aching. Flesh thumb pressing hard against the knuckle. “It was- not friendly.”

And the room really freezes. Stunned.

Until Sam lets out this sharp, incredulous sort of whistle, and Clint groans, dragging a hand down his face.

You glance down at your lap, jaw clenched, breath held so still it barely moves your chest. And it twists something in Bucky’s stomach, the way you sit there trying to disappear. He’s not sure who it hurts more - you, hearing this, or him, saying it. There is shame curling behind his ears. Shame and something like grief. And it’s all turned inward.

Sam’s eyes narrow. “So she kissed you thinking you were the other Bucky.”

Bucky doesn’t answer. He’s trying to keep still. Trying not to flinch. Trying not to look left. Trying not to look right. Trying not to look at you.

Because he feels the air around you shift like the press of a coming storm. It’s not anger. He knows that heat, and this isn’t it. It’s just quiet and tight and uncomfortable. A subtle withdrawal as though you’ve stepped behind some invisible wall only he can see.

And he hates it.

Bruce clears his throat carefully. “That implies a romantic connection. At least in her mind. Probably in his, too.”

Tony makes a face. “So we’re saying that Barnes and our girl are a thing in that universe.”

“Looks like it,” Natasha muses, eyes sliding toward you.

“Holy shit,” Clint remarks unhelpfully.

They say it so easily. As though this is nothing. As though this doesn’t wreck something fundamental in Bucky’s ribcage.

And suddenly everyone is quiet. Even the noise of the lights seem muted. It’s hot and awkward and strangely intimate.

Bucky stares down at his hands. They look like someone else’s. He can still feel your touch on them. Still feel the heat of your mouth against his. The softness. The way your lips pressed with such intention.

He says nothing.

He feels terrible.

Because a part of him still wants it.

Still aches with it.

Not the kiss. Not the accident.

The life.

That version of himself who gets to love you out loud. Who gets to be yours in daylight, in kitchens, in the moments that don’t demand heroism but just presence. That version of him that doesn’t have to swallow the way your voice makes something flutter in his chest like a broken-winged butterfly. The one who can kiss you because you already know him. Trust him. Want him. Miss him.

He wants that version to exist so badly.

And it makes him feel like a monster.

You’re sitting just far enough to be untouchable, just close enough that he can feel the space between you aching like a wound.

You are you. You are right there. And you don’t even know that in another universe, you loved him so much you ran into his arms without hesitation.

The light from the high windows drips in thin streaks across the long table, catching on Bucky’s knuckles, the tightness of his body.

There’s a long pause.

Then Tony exhales. “Well, that confirms it. Barnes is getting some in another universe.”

“Tony,” Natasha warns lowly.

Tony holds his hands up in mock innocence, but Strange interrupts them, turning to Bucky with a roll of his eyes. His cloak rustles.

“Did you tell her anything?” His voice is edged. “Did she suspect something?”

Bucky doesn’t answer immediately. He shifts in his seat. His back is too straight, and still, and his hands are bracing for something.

“No,” he relents. His voice is raw and rough like gravel pulled from the bottom of a riverbed. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

Strange’s eyes narrow. “Nothing?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Nothing.”

Strange tilts his head slightly. His expression is unreadable. Calculating. “Her behavior. Did she seem disoriented? Odd? Suspicious? I assume you know Y/n well enough to tell if she’s acting off.”

The lump in his throat settles as though it lives there.

“She was hurt,” he admits, and the words punch out of him. “I froze up. She thought she’d done something wrong. But she didn’t suspect anything.”

Across from him, you shift. A small movement. But he feels it in his bones. He looks up. Meets your eyes.

You’re watching him as though you’re trying to learn something about yourself from inside of him.

He swallows hard.

“I didn’t tell her anything,” he says again, and it’s not for Strange this time. It’s for you. “I didn’t compromise anything. I was careful.”

“You were compromised,” Strange says, not unkindly, but without sympathy. “Emotionally. Whether you said something or not.”

Bucky doesn’t argue.

Because yes. He was. He is. He doesn’t even know how to be anything else anymore. His chest still echoes with the memory of your laugh - not your laugh, but close enough to trick him. His arms still remember the shape of your body, the way you buried yourself into him. As though you’d been there a thousand times before and would be a thousand times again.

He wonders what that other you is doing now. If you are still standing in the kitchen, perhaps waiting for him. Still hurt. Still confused. Still so worried.

He wonders what that Bucky is doing now. If he’s back. If he’s home. If you’re in his arms, asking what took him so long. If he knows what he has. If he’s grateful. If he deserves you.

And he wonders too, if you - the you here, right across from him now, quiet and tense and real - will ever look at him that way.

Your eyes are on his and it seems as though you want to say something, as though maybe you’ve been wanting to say something for a while now.

He doesn’t hear the others anymore.

They’re voices in a room, sounds in space, language and logic pressing against the outside of a window he’s no longer looking through.

Because your eyes are on him and they are too open, too careful.

And, unfortunately for him, this is where the hope begins.

Small. Thin. Stupid.

Because there is a version out there who loved him already. Who ran to him as though he was safety and home and joy all wrapped in one reckless heart and it had been so easy for her. Natural, even. Like a reflex. Like a need.

And he has to think that if she could, then maybe you could too.

Maybe - if he just keeps showing up, if he keeps giving you pieces of himself even when it’s terrifying, even when he thinks he has nothing worth offering - maybe you’ll see something in him that you’ll want to keep.

Maybe he’s not beyond that.

Maybe he’s not on the edge of the world after all.

His heart stumbles inside him, a sharp jolt under his ribs, and he realizes too late that his breathing has gone shallow. His palm is sweating. His chest is aching in a way that is not just pain, but hunger, longing, desperate weightless wonder.

Strange is talking. Something about dimensional instability and neural resonance and all that science talk - but Bucky is no longer a soldier at a briefing.

He’s a man staring across a room at the person who has made his worst days survivable, and he’s remembering how it felt to see you in his shirt in a different kitchen, how you stood there with your back to him waiting for him to wrap his arms around you, how your lips tasted like things he should never know but can’t ever forget.

You shift again. Your knee knocks lightly against the leg of the table as you tuck your foot beneath you. And your hair falls forward, soft and a little tangled from the wind that always sneaks through the compound’s side doors. Your lips part, as though maybe you’re going to say something in front of everyone, and he braces for it, all of him going still like a wolf spotting something too delicate to touch.

But you don’t.

You break eye contact and tuck your hair behind your ear as though you caught yourself doing something you shouldn’t.

But Bucky doesn’t stop hoping.

Because he watched you do exactly that in a very different universe. Such a small gesture but it means so much to him.

Because yes, maybe he is not the Bucky she thought she kissed.

He’s not the Bucky who wakes up with you tangled in his sheets.

He’s not the Bucky who lets himself believe he could be loved without earning it first.

But maybe he could become that man.

Maybe if he tries hard enough, he too can get the girl.

Maybe if he works at this more than anything else that matters, you’ll love him too. Not just in some alternate world, but here.

In this one.

In your voice, when you say his name.

In your laugh, when he says something without meaning too.

In your eyes, when you don’t look away.

And he knows he would do anything to earn that.

He would do anything to be enough for you in the only universe that matters.

His fingers twitch. His shoulders square slowly, almost unconsciously, as though some decision has clicked into place without needing permission.

The room is still full. Voices layered over voices like shadows that haven’t realized the sun moved. Chairs creak beneath shifting bodies, Sam’s laughter breaking loose and grating on Bucky’s nerves.

The idiot is grinning, leaning back in his chair as though this whole situation is the best thing to happen this week. “Alternate-universe you is in a relationship, Barnes. What do we think about that, huh?”

“Sounds like he’s living the dream,” Clint mutters, giving Bucky a jab to the arm. “You finally got the girl, Barnes. Took a whole damn reality shift but you got there.”

Someone chuckles. Tony, maybe. Or even Steve. He can’t tell anymore. He can’t hear much over the buzz in his ears, over the sound of his own heart pounding behind his ribs.

“Hell, maybe all our multiverse selves are having better luck,” Sam remarks, amused.

Clint chuckles. “Ah, Barnes just grew a pair.”

“Well, that’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it?” Natasha, calm as ever, lifts one elegant eyebrow.

“Alternate-universe Barnes has game,” Sam says delighted.

“Lucky bastard,” Clint mutters under his breath.

They mean well. They always mean well. This is how they show they care. With ribbing and teeth-bared grins, with shoulders nudged, and things they don’t say louder than the ones they do. It’s how they keep their own wounds in check. How they keep from bleeding all over the carpet.

But Bucky isn’t laughing. He isn’t smiling. His lip twitches but only with frustration at his teammates.

He notices your stillness. The lines around your mouth have gone soft and tight all at once. Your hands are folded too carefully in your lap and your gaze is pinned to the table.

With every mention - every offhand comment, every teasing jab - he can see it.

The way your shoulders stuck in closer to themselves. The way your breath grows quiet and shallow. The way you can’t seem to look at him anymore.

He swallows around it, the sharpness in his throat, but it doesn’t go down.

Everyone else seems to think this is a strange, mildly awkward, maybe slightly endearing detail in a weird mission story.

But Bucky feels sick.

Because he’s seen it on your face. The way the information about the kiss struck you like a misfired bullet. A shadow in your eyes, the small breath that caught in your throat, the way you shifted your legs like you needed to move, to run, to put distance between yourself and what you heard.

God.

He’s such a fool.

A lovesick idiot.

Because he let that brightness curl in his chest. The hope that even though you have every right to feel nothing at all, even though he’s spent so long training himself not to want this, not to wish for things he can’t have - he truly thought that if there was a version of you that looked at him that way, that reached for him without fear, then maybe this version, this you - maybe there was something possible here too.

But now he is watching it close again. Watching you feeling uncomfortable, retreating into yourself, folding inward like the paper crane you left behind. And he knows the fault lines are his. That even his silence can crack things apart.

When the meeting finally breaks - Strange dismissing everyone with a calm nod and a list of inter-dimensional protocols Bucky doesn’t hear - you stand before anyone else. Quiet. Not hurried. Just deliberate.

As though you’ve made a decision.

You don’t look at him. Not once. Just gather your notes and your coffee and the sweater you left draped over the back of the chair.

And you leave.

No goodbye. No glance back. Not even that half-smile you offer when the day has left you tired and the silence between you feels soft instead of loud.

Bucky is on his feet before he realizes it. He ignores Sam calling after him, something about needing to finish signing off the tech. Doesn’t respond to Steve’s “Buck?” Doesn’t glance at Strange, who’s looking at him as though he already knows where this is headed.

All Bucky sees is the hallway.

You, disappearing around the corner, just a whisper of your hair and the sound of your boots against the polished floor. And all he can think is no.

Not like this.

He walks fast, with his pulse in his mouth and panic blooming in his chest.

You’re so graceful even when you’re upset, even when your body is stiff with tension. You carry yourself with that strength that’s always pulled him in, and he hates that he knows it. Hates that he can read you this well, because it means he knows you’re hurting.

He walks fast enough to catch up, to not give himself time to think about it too much. His hands are cold again. The way they get when he’s unsure. When something matters more than he knows how to handle.

“Hey,” he calls out, and his voice comes out too soft. Almost hoarse. “Wait- can you- can we talk?”

You stop. Slow, reluctant. As if the last thing you want to do is this but some piece of you can’t help it.

You don’t turn around at first. You’re breathing hard. He can see your shoulders rise and fall too quickly, your jaw tight, your arms folded across your chest as though you are trying to keep yourself together.

You turn.

And it’s worse than he thought.

Because your eyes are shiny and your expression is made of glass and restraint and you’re biting the inside of your cheek in that way you do when you want to pretend something didn’t bother you.

He hates this. Hates that he did this to you, even accidentally.

But god, you still are beautiful in a way that feels like gravity. Like the ache in his chest could drag the stars down to meet you.

You watch him as though trying not to give too much away.

“Can we talk?” He repeats, breath catching somewhere between hope and despair.

You shrug, not cold, not angry. Just tired. “If you want.”

He steps closer. Not too close. Careful. Always careful with you.

“I know it probably sounded bad in there,” he says, voice rough. “I didn’t want it to come out like that. Like I was… caught up in something.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Bucky,” you say quickly, voice too neutral. “You didn’t know. I get it.”

But he wants to explain. Wants to lay it out, piece by bloody piece. Wants you to understand that for a minute there, he forgot how to breathe because of how you looked at him. That he hasn’t stopped thinking about it since.

“I didn’t tell you- I mean, tell her,” he blurts, breathless. “I didn’t tell her who I was. Or where I came from. I didn’t say anything.”

You blink at him. “Okay.”

“She thought I was him. I- I didn’t say anything because I- I wasn’t supposed to engage and I wasn’t planning to. I swear I wasn’t planning to.”

You say nothing. Just stare at him with that sweetly confused expression.

Bucky steps closer. He’s aching, head to toe, something brittle in his chest like cracked glass.

“You kissed me,” he continues, and you bite your lip, looking away, “but I didn’t- I froze. It felt wrong. And when you said you missed me, I panicked. It felt like I was stealing something. From you. From you both.”

He stops. Swallows.

And there it is again. That dangerous spark. That sharp, flickering thing that’s lived inside him ever since he saw that other version of you, ever since your arms wrapped around his neck and your mouth pressed to his and your voice filled his chest with something whole.

He wishes for a version of that hope here, too.

But not if it means breaking you to find it.

You’re watching him with something unreadable in your eyes. He can’t tell if it’s pain or disappointment or confusion or all of it. He just knows it’s tearing him apart.

“I know it wasn’t me she kissed,” he goes on, quiet, every word dragging out of him as if it doesn’t want to be spoken. “And I know it wasn’t you, either. But it made me think that maybe-” He breaks off, exhales. “I know it’s not fair to say it, but-”

“Then don’t.” Your voice is soft when it comes.

And he flinches as though you touched a nerve.

But your face isn’t cruel. It’s sad. Honest. Tired in the way people get when they’re holding too many emotions all at once.

“I’m not her,” you clarify, but there is something fractured in the way you say it, like the words are paper-thin and barely holding shape. “I’m not whatever version of me you saw, whoever she is to you, that’s not me.”

“I know,” he croaks out. Bucky steps closer, just once. Not touching. Not yet. He doesn’t dare.

“No, I don’t think you do.” Your arms unfold slowly, but not in surrender. You gesture at yourself, the smallest movement, but there is steel in it. “She looks like me,” you go on. Your voice is tight. Bitter. It’s not like you. Not how he knows you - the warmth, the patience, the fire and calm and kindness all mixed together. “She sounds like me. But she’s not. She’s not me, Buck.”

And then you turn as if you’re about to go. As though you can’t stand another second of standing still in front of him.

“No- don’t,” he pleads, and before he can stop himself, he reaches. His hand finds your wrist, not tight, not rough, just enough to stop you. “Please.”

You pause again, with an exhale that is sharp and hurt and too loud in the hallway.

He is closer now. Close enough to see how tight you press your mouth together to keep it from trembling. The twitch of pain in your brow, the soft crease between your eyes he knows only shows up when you’re trying really hard not to cry.

Guilt and desperation roll through him, thorough, like a tide pulling everything warm away. It unspools him from the inside.

“What?” There is no weight behind your words. Your voice is worn. Defeated.

Bucks swallows. His voice feels like rust trying to be rain.

“She hugged me. Said she missed me. She kissed me like she’d done it a thousand times before.” His voice is shaking, even if he’s trying not to let it.

“And I didn’t stop her. Not for a second,” he goes on, quiet. “I should’ve. I should’ve pulled away sooner, but I-”

You pull your arm back, but he doesn’t let go.

“Why are you telling me this?” you question him, voice breaking in the middle. “What am I supposed to do with that, Bucky? Be happy for some other version of me?”

There is so much pain in your eyes, so much confusion and hurt and jealousy and heartbreak and it cuts him right through the heart. He feels it bleeding into his organs.

He closes his eyes, forgets how to breathe for a moment.

“I didn’t stop her,” he says lowly, slowly, “because, for a second, it felt like you.”

The silence between you is thick enough to drown in.

Your lips part, but no sound comes out.

“For a second, it felt like something I’ll never have,” he confesses, barely audible now. “And I was selfish. I let it happen. Because it wasn’t just a kiss to me.”

You don’t speak. You don’t move. Your chin trembles.

You look at him as though you want to say something but can’t trust yourself to do it.

“I’ve been trying to bury it,” he admits, voice strained. “This thing in my chest. This want. It’s been there for a long time. And I kept thinking- if I just waited long enough, maybe it would go away. Maybe you’d never have to know. But I saw what it looked like when I had it. When I had you. Even if it wasn’t really you. And I- I didn’t want to come back here and pretend I didn’t feel it anymore.”

You don’t move. Just stand there. Staring at him as if you don’t know what to do with the version of the world he is handing you.

“I’m not asking for anything,” he adds quickly, voice thick and gravelly. “Not expecting anything. I just- I couldn’t let you walk away thinking it didn’t mean anything. Because it did. But not because of that other you.”

Bucky loosens his hold on your wrist the way someone lays a weapon down.

Slowly. Gently. Like an offering. Giving you a choice. A chance to run. A way out, if that’s what you need.

His fingers brush fabric as he lets go, every inch of skin unthreading from yours just another stitch in the fabric holding him together.

He steps back. Not far, but enough. Giving you the room to run if you want to. Because he would never cage you. Not you. Not the girl he’s tried so hard not to need and failed so spectacularly at not loving.

The cold creeps in like a punishment.

He swallows, breath shallow, heart trying to climb out of his chest. He doesn’t look away.

“It meant something,” he breathes, and the words are low but steady, dragged out of some buried part of him where he’s kept the truth folded up too long. “It meant something because I love you.”

The words hang there. Open. Unarmored. His voice doesn’t shake but he feels the quake underneath it. He is already bracing for the ruin of it, for the way your silence might cut him down. It’s too much. He’s too much. Too much and too late and he’s saying it anyway, because what else can he do now, what else is left to do but burn with it.

“I love you. You. Only you,” he repeats, and this time it’s quieter, as if speaking it softer might hurt less if you break him.

He is bracing for your silence. For the recoil. For the slow turning of your back and the slam of a door, he won’t ever be allowed to knock on again.

But you don’t run.

You just stare at him.

Wide glassy eyes, lips parted, your whole face carved out of disbelief. Your chest rises with shallow, trembling breaths, and for a second, it’s like the hallway has no oxygen at all. Just the two of you standing in a vacuum made of shattered timing and aching things laid bare.

You look like someone trying to decide if the ground beneath you is real. If you are dreaming.

And Bucky is not breathing.

Doesn’t know how he will ever take in a breath again.

Then you move.

Fast. Sharp. Certain.

You close the distance between you with a speed that knocks his soul out of him, and before he can even process the intention behind the storm in your eyes, your hands are in his collar and your mouth is on his.

It’s not gentle.

It’s not careful.

You crash into him as though gravity has finally won. As though your body has been held back for too long and now it’s surging forward with years of restraint snapped at the root.

It hits him like an impact. Like a whole damn earthquake disguised as your mouth on his.

He makes a noise - somewhere between shock and surrender - and for the barest second, he is frozen.

He’s still.

Because this is you.

You.

One breathless, startled second he forgets everything - his name, the room, the hallway, the mission, the multiverse - and then he’s moving.

He melts.

His arms are around you in a heartbeat, tight, desperate, finding your waist, your back, the edge of your jaw, greedy and trembling and too careful all at once. He pulls you in, tighter, tighter, one hand threading into your hair, the other locking around your waist.

And then he is kissing you back with everything he has, with everything he’s been holding back, with every version of himself that ever wanted to belong.

He is kissing you back as though he’ll never get the chance again.

His whole body folds into yours, heart slamming into his ribs, mouth pressing against yours, like a question he’s been dying to ask. He kisses you like an apology, like a promise, like he’s been holding his breath for a century and only just remembered how to exhale.

It’s not a careful kiss.

It’s years of aching packed into the space between your lips. It’s soft lips and a metal palm and your nails digging in his jacket and his thumb shaking against your jaw. It’s a kiss that tastes of every unsaid word, every sleepless night, every time he looked at you and wondered what it would feel like to have you.

The second your tongue touches his lower lip, a low and tortured sound rips from somewhere deep in his chest. He answers you with open-mouthed hunger, tilts his head just enough to draw you in deeper, slants his mouth over yours as though he’s living out every dream in which he’s imagined this before.

He feels the warmth of your lips and the way you lean into him, the way you give yourself over completely, and he pulls you even closer, as though he’s trying to kiss every version of you that exists in every universe just to get back to this one. You. Here. Now.

His tongue brushes yours and everything goes tight inside him - his stomach flips, his spine arches ever so slightly, his body not knowing whether to hold steady or fall apart entirely.

Your lips are sweet and urgent and you make a sound - quiet, somewhere between a sigh and a gasp - and it knocks the air in his lungs every which way.

His mouth moves faster when your fingers curl into him tighter and tug him closer, dragging him under. His metal fingers are splayed over the small of your back, and his flesh fingers are tangling at the nape of your neck, holding you still as his tongue licks into your mouth, gentle but full of everything he’s feeling.

He moans softly into you, doesn’t even realize it’s happening until he feels the sound buzz against your lips. His pulse is pounding in his ears. His knees feel untrustworthy. There is heat spreading through his chest, through his limbs, and he wants to live in this moment forever, suspended in the place where you chose him.

When you finally pull back, your lips are swollen, flushed. He presses his forehead to yours just enough to breathe, but not enough to let you go. Never that.

His hands are on your face. His thumbs brush under your eyes. His breath shudders out against your lips.

When he opens his eyes, slowly, he is met with yours. Glistening and wide and so full of feeling it almost floors him.

He stares at you as though he’s seeing the sun rise for the first time.

“I love you too,” you breathe against him.

Bucky shivers.

It lands like a heartbeat he forgot to hope for.

Pleasure surges through his veins, straight to his heart. His eyes fall shut, lost in it.

And something in him tells him he will hear this at least a thousand times, maybe even more, if he’s lucky.

“I loved her not for the way she danced with my angels, but for the way the sound of her name could silence my demons.”

- Christopher Poindexter

[lemonlover1110]

𝐎𝐱𝐲𝐭𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐧

Zayne

Pairing: Zayne x f!Reader

Summary: You decided to surprise Zayne with an old outfit you found in your closet, and it seems that Zayne is quite fond of the short nurse costume.

Warnings: MINORS DO NOT INTERACT! Smut, Roleplaying, Vaginal Fingering, Nipple Play, Spanking, Vaginal Sex

Discord +18 - Twitter - Ko-Fi - Bluesky

“Zayne~” Your voice interrupts his concentration, and for the first time that night, Zayne looks up from his computer. You don’t sound too far away, however, you’re nowhere in sight. 

“What is it, love?” He speaks up, eyes wandering around to find you. He knows that particular tone of voice, you’re up to no good. Then the door to his home office opens, and you poke your head through the door.

Zayne takes off his glasses, eyes narrowing to get a better look at you. Particularly at the white hat that’s on your head. It’s definitely an unusual sight. Not your usual wear. He’s about to ask what you’re up to, but before he can open his mouth you enter the office.

“What are you wearing?” His curiosity piques at the sight in front of him. You’re wearing the shortest white dress that his eyes have laid upon– The design identical to the one he sees everyday at Akso hospital, except this one is incredibly inappropriate. 

“I’m here to check your vitals.” You saunter to his side. Your lips quirk, trying your best to hide the smirk that threatens to form on your face. He raises his eyebrows as you take a seat on his lap.

“Hmm… What are you up to?” He questions as your hands go to the top of his heart. 

“I told you, I’m checking your vitals. It’s time I check up on my dear patient.” You respond, trying to remain as serious as possible. You’re trying to get into the role, trying your best to not laugh at yourself. He hums, guiding your hand lower, so you can feel his heartbeat.

“Do you need a stethoscope, nurse? It’ll make your job easier.” He offers, and you shake your head. It seems that you have something else in mind. “So you can feel it then?”

“It’s a little faint.” You answer, one hand moving to unbutton the top of your dress. His eyes nearly pop out of his head at the sight of your bulging cleavage. A chuckle leaves your lips before you comment, “There it is.”

“Nurse, this seems like a case of medical malpractice.” He teases, eyes unable to tear away from your breasts. You laugh before cupping his face.

“And it seems like this patient needs a little help.” You respond, watching his cheeks turn pink. He doesn’t have any sort of remark to respond with. You’re right. Your patient needs a little help. “Hmm… How should I help you? Should I get you some medicine?”

“Medicine isn’t going to help in this case, nurse.” Zayne’s hand goes to your lap, nail picking at the sheer white tights that you decided to wear. They look cute on you… What a shame that he has to rip them off. “It seems that I have an illness that only you can fix.”

“Then let me be of use.” You answer as you hear a rip from your tights. Zayne loses all self control easier than expected. You boop his nose before saying, “Oh, that’s incredibly inappropriate to do to your nurse.”

“You must forgive me then.” His lips land on yours, kissing you hungrily. His tongue enters your mouth, wandering around as his hand goes under your skirt. 

The poor man who swore he’d focus on work tonight. Oh, what a lie that was. Zayne should’ve known better. Living with you ends up with no fruitful results in his work life– An issue that he has no problem with.

“It seems that your patient could use a release of oxytocin.” Zayne pulls away, forehead pressing against yours as his mischievous fingers rub against your panties. You hum in agreement, hands unbuttoning the rest of the top. 

“I can help with that.” You end up saying, while his lips kiss your cleavage. His free hand moves down the bra that stops him from getting what he wants. His tongue glides down your breast before reaching your nipple. Tongue flicks your teat before his mouth wraps around your nipple. You click your tongue before teasing, “You’re a naughty patient, Zayne.”

His mouth is too busy to argue back, instead he proves your point. He pushes your panties to the side, two fingers running through your slick folds. If he wasn’t so busy he’d comment on how you’re the naughty one for being so wet. 

“I do like when my patients are so… Straightforward.” Your words are caught off with a gasp as he pushes two fingers into your pussy. He usually takes things slower, but tonight he can’t hold back. He bites down before unlatching, quickly moving on to give the same attention to your other tit.

You barely even notice. Once the slight twinge of pain subsides, you’re too consumed with how Zayne moves his fingers in and out of your cunt. He knows your body too well, and you certainly can’t complain. He curves his finger just right, hitting that sweet spot that makes your knees weak. 

Zayne finally unlatches, lips going to your own again. When he pulls away he whispers, “I thought I was the one that needed treatment.”

“You decided to take control.” You argue as his fingers pick up speed. You shut your eyes, breathlessly moaning as he treats your body with such care.

“Talking back to her patient too? Perhaps I should report you.” He replies as he takes his fingers out of your pussy. He stares at you with dark eyes, telling you, “You’re the most unprofessional nurse I’ve worked with.”

“I’m just trying my best to help.” You stick out your bottom lip as he lets out a low chuckle.

“You aren’t much help then. I have to report this.” He clicks his tongue, shaking his head disapprovingly. You purse your lips together, before you get up from his lap. 

Your job is far from over though, you won’t leave until your patient is healed and satisfied with your treatment. You toss aside everything on the desk, an action that will surely earn you some complaints later– But that’s a future issue. Right now you bend over on his desk, back arching as your skirt rides up, giving him a great view of everything he needs to see.

“Your treatment, sir.” Your tone sounds too professional, showing off you’re deep into the role. Zayne bites down his lip as he rises from his seat. Though he’ll admit, that feeling in his pants makes it harder to move. 

“Are you sure this is going to work?” He questions as he rips the tights beyond repair. He’ll make sure that the experience is comfortable. 

“There’s no better treatment for oxytocin.” You answer as you hear the sound of his belt.

“You know…” He begins, his sharp hand making contact with the flesh of your ass. It stings, yet it nearly makes you roll your eyes to the back of your head. “Maybe I’ll take back my report. Of course, that is if you let me…”

“Anything, sir.” You cut him off, and he spanks you again. He makes sure your panties are well out of his way, ensuring that they don’t become a hassle while in the midst of pleasure. You feel a trickle of saliva run down your ass before you feel him run the tip of his cock through your folds.

Zayne isn’t so easy though. He slaps the tip on your pussy, teasing you. He wants to hear your voice of despair, begging for him to have sex with you. And it seems that it doesn’t take much to break you. After giving you a taste, you can’t hold back from needing more.

“Please put it in, sir. I want to make sure you get better.” You beg, and it does just the trick. He slowly pushes himself inside of you, shutting his eyes as he feels you around him. 

His breath gets caught up in his chest as he bottoms out. He gives it a second, fingers making their way to the cloth of your dress before he gives slow gentle thrusts. It’s not the time, but he can’t help but make the joke, “Now I definitely have to sue for medical malpractice.”

You almost roll your eyes and playfully tell him to shut up. It’s the only thought that comes to his mind while he’s balls deep inside of you, but you bite your tongue. You’ll remain professional in your role, the same way he’s doing.

“Is it working?” You ask before a loud moan leaves your lips. Your hands grip the edge of the desk as Zayne’s thrusts slowly pick up speed. He stays quiet. It’s a question that doesn’t need a verbal answer. He’ll just show it to you because it’s definitely having some effect. 

He throws his head back as one hand goes to the back of your head, pushing it down onto the desk. You hear him lowly moan, unable to suppress the noises of pleasure as he feels your pussy around him. Unluckily for you, his moans are drowned out by the sound of your skin smacking against each other.

“Oh– Right there!” You nearly scream as he hits just the right spot. You feel the pressure of his hand stop, allowing you to lift your head once again. Only for his finger to hook under your cheek as he begins to scold you for something. The words don’t register in your mind, sex clouding your judgement.

“I thought this was for me, no? I thought I was the patient?” He asks, receiving no response. It’s not like you can say much with his finger in your mouth. He slaps your ass again before saying, “Why aren’t you answering? I fear I’ll have to complain about this too.”

The pressure builds up in your lower abdomen, orgasm fastly approaching. He feels as you squeeze around him, pleasure overtaking you. And he can’t help but scold you for that too, “Finishing before your patient? How selfish.”

You’re moaning his name as your orgasm washes over you but it’s not comprehensible. He knows what you’re trying to say though. What you’re always saying in this position: Zayne, Zayne, Zayne! It’s so predictable but he loves it.

His breathing gets heavier, both of his hands going to your hips as his steady thrusts become sloppy. He thought he’d last longer– He wanted to last longer to enjoy this a little more but his body is giving out. Maybe he should take an extra precaution and finish inside to not ruin your outfit. Who is he even kidding? He always finishes inside.

For the first time in the night, Zayne finally moans your name as he releases his cum inside of you. He gives gentle thrusts before coming to a stop and pulling out. 

He’s panting, catching his breath as he helps you sit down on the desk. You’re getting his desk ready with his own cum, but it’s fine. He can clean that up later, he just wants to make sure you’re okay.

He kisses you before saying, “Take care of it, okay? I want to see you wear it again.”

[hellishjoel]

positions

2.4k / pairing: tattoo artist daddy dom!joel miller x sub f!reader

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chapter summary: You and Joel mutually pleasure each other while “researching” porn. 

chapter warnings/information: MA 18+ (minors DNI), no outbreak/TLOU, Joel is a tattoo artist with tattoos and piercings, Joel and reader are in the pre-phase of creating porn together, watching porn together, unspecified age gap, established relationship, reader is described to have hair and is able-bodied (but otherwise, unspecified), swearing, dirty talk, smut, lots of pet names (angel, bunny, etc.), dacryphilia (kink = getting aroused by tears), dom/sub dynamics, innocence kink, praise kink, degradation kink, pain kink, daddy kink, oral (m!receiving), size kink, fingering (f!receiving), squirting, hair pulling, one (1) pussy smack, pussy and cock pronouns

A/N: this was written as a mini chapter within the cherry thrill series but can be read as a standalone. a hugehugehuge shoutout to @devineconjuring because without her support, I wouldn’t have even thought about sitting down to write this when the creative burst finally hit! everyone thank annie for beta’ing this mini-chapter! divider is by @firefly-graphics!

Eyes glazed over in lust, lips parted, skin warm with desire — both of you. 

You and Joel rest your backs against the headboard of his bed, gazes unbroken, staring at your laptop screen. 

Porn. 

Anal. Amateur. Bondage. Free Use. Hardcore. Softcore. You’re watching the A-Z catalog with your partner. Was this a kink? Because trying to sit next to Joel while watching porn, trying not to get worked up, felt like a twisted game. 

Joel knows you’re turned on. You haven’t stopped squirming beside him for at least twenty minutes. It was agonizing at this point to be so wet, so aching for touch, a deep breath of air nowhere in sight. And it was your stupid idea. 

If you were going to film porn, it was only logical that you see what’s out there and get a sense of what you’d be open to filming with Joel. What was your comfort level? Would you start out by appealing to the amateur audience with limited cuts and genuine passion? Or would you like it more if Joel had all the control, playing into his role of being your dom, and ordered you around like his little cock slut? 

All these videos had you questioning which category you fit in. Even worse, these videos, which were meant to be for research, had turned you on to the point of no return. 

You can feel him looking at you out of the corner of your eye. You’d have to be blind not to notice how hard he’s become in his sweatpants. It’s almost thrilling at this point to see who breaks first. 

Your body shudders as Joel moves to change the video to the next one. Christ, help me. He chooses something from the exhibition category, and you can feel your stomach twisting with desire. 

“You doin’ alright?” His gravelly voice rumbles from beside you, a weak mhmm leaving your lips in response. Your eyes trace over the dark swirls of ink that curve around his forearm and flourish into a larger design on his bicep. You remember the day you asked if it hurt—if the needle pressing into flesh left behind more than just beauty. He didn’t answer; he just shot you a sly smirk, the kind that left you wondering if the pain was part of the allure. 

Joel reaches over, his firm hand squeezing your trembling thigh. It feels like a force of nature, the way you gush harder at the physical contact. You swallow the lump in your throat as you feel his hand move to the waistband of your sweats. 

You don’t move, don’t breathe. Both of your gazes are fixed on the laptop screen, not shifting even when his fingers curl inside your wet panties. He parts your pussy lips, feeling her warmth and arousal soak his fingers. A shaky breath leaves you as one of his fingers slowly circles your swollen clit. 

“Joel,” you whisper breathlessly, your forehead resting against his tattooed bicep. 

“I know,” is all he has to say. 

His fingers dip lower, swirling the tips around your desperate hole before finally sinking in. 

You stare at the video, but it’s like white noise at this point. Neither of you pays attention to the screen, but the blood rushing to your ears forces you to catch every moan and grunt from the partners in the video. 

“Jesus,” you can’t help but pant out. “Please,” you weakly beg. 

All Joel does is tut darkly. “Jesus ain’t here to save this wet pussy, angel, I am. So you better start beggin’ me.” 

As Joel starts to slowly finger your pussy, you realize it’s less about needing to orgasm and more about the process of feeling satisfied together. 

With your head resting on Joel’s arm, you press soft kisses against his tan skin as your hand reaches past the waistband of his grey sweatpants. 

Your touch is electric. You watch as Joel sits up straight beside you once you start slowly stroking his already hard cock–he’s heavy in your hand, your gentle fingertips able to feel all the prominent veins of his shaft. 

Joel’s low groan fills the room, and you know he’s struggling to keep himself from ripping your panties down your legs and getting his fill of you. 

But that’s not the game you two are playing. 

Your hot breath fans across his skin as he crooks his fingers to just the right spot within your cunt, the feeling unexpected as he stretches your sweet pussy. The sensation forces your hand to squeeze Joel a little harder, a distinct growl of both pain and pleasure fueling his ministrations. Once again, you’re reminded that pleasure protects you like a shield, and pain is the only thing that can penetrate it. Pain doesn’t just hurt Joel. It transforms him.

“I wanna bend you over like that,” he admits, his tongue playing with his lip piercing out of habit. Your hazy eyes slowly flick from Joel to your laptop. The video has changed again. The man in the video currently has a housemaid bent over the kitchen counter, doing whatever he pleases to her, while his wife sits in the dining room simply flipping through her newspaper and drinking her coffee. 

You’re not as good at this as Joel is; you can barely speak as he pleasures you. “W-We’d get caught,” you breathe out, your hips grinding against his fingers as his thumb starts to work over your pearl. 

Joel hums darkly, shifting a third finger into your entrance. It’s a burning stretch, one that forces out a low whine from deep in your throat. Your touch all but abandons Joel, his jaw tightening as you remove your hand from his swollen cock. 

You stare deep into his dark eyes as you lick a slow stripe up your palm, excess saliva trailing down your hand before you return it to his aching member. 

“Fuck,” he pants, his head falling back to rest on the headboard with a hard thud. He doesn’t fucking care. The pleasure outweighs the pain. 

“Come here, baby,” Joel instructs as his fingers exit your warmth. 

You whine like a brat but follow his instructions. He pulls you onto your knees, moving your upper half over his lap and shoving his sweatpants down so his cock is finally free. 

“Use that pretty mouth of yours. Always so perfect for me,” he coos. “Now go slow.” 

His words have you mewling in pleasure, resting your head on his lap as you suckle his tip into your warm mouth. It’s teasing, but you want to go slow, to do what he told you to. You want him to last. 

He pulls your sweats and panties down, your warm pussy and the globes of your ass shocked by the cool air hitting your skin. You let out a needy whimper–he never fails to pleasure you, even while chasing his own release. Arching your back, you put yourself on display for him.

“Keep watchin’ the screen. Good girl,” Joel mutters as he slowly gathers your hair in one fist, lazily dragging your head up and down his cock. He fills your mouth, and for a moment, you forget to breathe. Your eyes grow teary, your body flinching as you choke down his length in a desperate attempt to taste his salty finish. Swallowing down as much of him as you can, you bury your nose against the coarse dark hair at the base of his shaft, gulping around his length. Desire ultimately outweighs Joel’s orders for you to go slow, and you begin to suck his cock at your own more eager pace. His grunts of pleasure fill your ears, the grip on your hair only tightening, whatever restraint he has left quickly deserting him. 

Joel is a man whose sexual pleasure derives from control—a fragile dominance that feeds his pleasure. But that control is unraveling, slipping through his gasp faster than he can regain himself. 

“Hey,” he grumbles, yanking you off his shaft by your hair. He slips out of your hungry mouth–you still try to get him back into the safety of your warmth as he reprimands you. A spank to your aching pussy with his heavy hand sends a shockwave of throbbing need across your body, jolting you to life as you let out a whine for him. “I said slow. It’ll feel better the longer you wait, I promise. For both of us.” 

You have to trust him. You know he knows best. 

Swallowing down thick spit, you nod against his grip. “Yes, daddy. I’m sorry, daddy.” 

That goddamn name. It pulls something from deep inside of Joel, a monster in hibernation that’s hungry for something to cross its path and wake it up. 

And you just did. 

“Good girl.” The grip he has on your hair tightens, and you’re back to stuffing his cock down your tight throat. 

You follow his instructions. The speed is slow, as promised, but every touch feels exhilarating. Your senses are on overdrive. The tingling in your scalp, the feeling of his two thick tattooed fingers plugging your cunt, his thumb circling your already charged clit–it was all so desperate to unfurl. 

You can feel Joel pulsing inside your mouth, ready to gush like a volcano on the verge of eruption. You trace the vein on the underside of his cock with your tongue, his precum adding a layer of tanginess to your tastebuds. 

You weakly moan against him, trying to force out as much excess saliva as you can. It drips down all his inches and coats the hair on his balls. Your arousal leaks down his fingers. The woman in the video lets out strangled moans from the kitchen counter, and finally, the man’s wife takes notice of the two fucking on the counter. She acts shocked, catching them both in the act. 

Joel wins. 

You cry out against his cock and tighten the suction you have on his shaft, slurping and letting out lewd sounds as you quicken the pace of your mouth. You ignore the pain in your jaw and neck, eager to taste his salty release. Joel must agree that the game is up because his hand no longer guides you–he simply pumps his fingers faster inside your desperate cunt. Your hips drive back against his hand, the heel of his palm adding extra friction to your clit. 

“Goddam, you wanna choke on it that bad? Fill your mouth up, wishing it was your pussy? Listen to this good little pussy purr,” Joel moans out as he massages the spongy walls within your cunt, and you can already feel your stomach begin to spasm. 

You gluck gluck gluck around his dick, mouth filled with so much of him that it makes you light-headed with lust. He rips you away from his cock, but only for a moment, a rush of air filling your lungs as he lays your head on top of his thigh. Your eyes are wild and lost, desperate for one thing and one thing only. 

“Tell me,” Joel demands, the veins in his neck pulsing as the crease between his eyebrows deepens. “Tell me what you are, what you want.” 

You whine something pathetic as Joel’s fingers only quicken inside your cunt. “Fuck!” you cry out, your entire body shuddering over his lap as you keep stroking his sticky cock with your hand. 

He makes you admit your thoughts, your sexual desires, and everything you're thinking out in the open. It forces you to be vulnerable with your sexuality–something that doesn’t come easy for you, but Joel willingly helps you navigate. 

If you want to finish, you need to spill your secrets and fantasies. 

It surges like a headrush, electric along your spine and needy for him as you find your words. 

“I-I’m such a fucking slut for your cum, Joel, please baby, I wanna taste you so bad,” you stutter and slur as Joel hums approvingly. His thumb wipes away a stray tear, something comforting and warm in the way he praises you for trying. You feel your orgasm working its way up through your bones, through the heat in your stomach, until it slips down your spine. “I-I wanna feel it down my throat, I want it to be my last meal, I- fuck, I feel so fucking dumb with your cock in my mouth. I worship him.”

Joel’s hanging onto every word, his chest pumping with the added fuel to his ego. His jaw clenches tighter and tighter, teeth gritting as he groans your name at the praise.

“Christ,” he mutters, enamored by your words and how pretty you look with his precum and your saliva glistening on your lips. “Such a good girl for me, so fuckin’ perfect.” 

Something different pools at the base of your stomach, something you don’t fully understand, but it’s familiar. You whimper in embarrassment because it almost feels like you need to pee, but you don’t, your thighs getting splashed by something more than an orgasm, and Joel really fucking likes it.

“Oh god, d-did I-”

“Yeah, bunny, you fuckin’ squirted for me,” Joel growls as he drags you back over him. 

You’re slurping at his cock, and it doesn’t take long for you to both reach the orgasm you’ve been holding out on while watching this damn porn. 

Glistening tears flow down your cheeks, your brain dumb with pleasure as the euphoria finally floods the tight clench in your stomach. Your release pools down Joel’s fingers, his own more desperate and needy as he shoots white-hot spurts down your throat. You moan against his shaft and roll your head from side to side, nose buried in the thick hair of his happy trail as you swallow around his cock like he taught you. 

Joel groans out in pleasure, your tongue still lazily lapping around his shaft. “So fuckin’ good, that was so hot, baby. Jesus Christ.” 

He strokes your hair, and you both slow to nothing, feeling like you’ve run a marathon. His fingers stay buried inside your wasted cunt, your wet mouth weakly panting against his warm thigh. Joel reaches forward and closes the laptop. 

“Did you… did you see any positions you liked?” 

You don’t respond right away. You know he’s talking to you, but it takes a few moments for it to register. 

“I think… I’ve got a few ideas for our debut.” 

Joel chuckles tiredly, laying his head back against the headboard once more.

“We’re really doin’ this? We’re gonna make porn?”

You sigh weakly and find the strength to sit up, facing the weathered look Joel is sporting. You give him an innocent smile as you wipe your chin with your forearm. “That’s right, daddy.” 

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[matcha3mochi]

GLASS BETWEEN US Pairing: Merman Rafayel x Scientist Reader

author note: ive been into love and deepspace recently, so here ya go hehe

wc: 4,870

───⋆⋅ ☾⋅�� ───

You took the job because you needed a way out.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t even particularly well-paid. But the offer came with minimal paperwork, restricted clearance, and one very clear instruction: ask no questions.

So you accepted.

The facility—remote, underground, heavily secured—was the kind of place not listed on maps. It didn’t exist according to the public record, and yet it buzzed with life: researchers, guards, engineers, medics. They all moved with the quiet, tense urgency of people doing work that couldn’t be acknowledged outside these walls.

Your first day was a blur of orientation. Non-disclosure clauses, retinal scans, and procedural briefings stacked with redacted pages. You caught glimpses of terms like “specimen,” “cognitive divergence,” “aquatic containment.”

No one told you what exactly was inside Lab C. Just that you’d be assisting with long-term observation. You assumed it would be another mutated marine species pulled up from some trench, something grotesque and territorial. Maybe even dangerous.

But the truth was stranger.

When they finally led you through the corridors and into the observation chamber, you expected cold steel and sharp smells.

Instead, the room was quiet. Dim. The tank was massive—more an aquarium than a cell—bathed in low light that shimmered across the walls like waves. The water inside was dark, cold, impossibly deep. You stepped forward, clutching your tablet, already preparing to log oxygen levels and salinity.

That was when you saw him.

Not a specimen.

Not a subject.

Something else.

Your breath caught before you even registered why.

And just like that, the job you took to escape your life became the one thing you couldn’t walk away from.

You didn’t know it then, but that first glance would mark the start of something irreversible. Something that would pull you under, inch by inch, breath by breath.

The moment you saw him, your surroundings blurred into static. The beeping monitors, murmuring technicians, even the weight of your data tablet—all of it fell away.

Inside the isolation tank, a living impossibility drifted in manufactured saltwater. Designed to emulate the hadal zone, the deepest part of the ocean, the containment system glowed softly under rows of harsh overhead lighting. The glass was nearly ten inches thick.

He floated at the bottom, not quite asleep but clearly subdued. His body was serpentine, a long and powerful tail coiled beneath him like an anchor. Its surface shimmered with deep cobalt and streaks of pearlescent silver, every movement creating subtle waves of reflected light. Even now, in apparent stillness, he seemed to shift with the current, his tail flicking faintly like a ribbon suspended in water.

The upper half of his body resembled a human form—broad shoulders, strong arms—but with a sleekness and symmetry that felt engineered rather than natural. It was hard not to stare. Harder still to assign him the term specimen, as though he were just another data point.

His face was unnerving in its beauty. Too elegant. Too calm. Dark purple hair floated around his head, surrounding him like a halo. Thin, branching scars ran near the gills along his neck—signs of struggle? Or surgery? You couldn’t tell. Around his wrists were red rings where restraints had dug in, proof that something here had gone very wrong before it got quiet.

You took one step closer to the glass.

His eyes opened.

Bright blue, slit-pupiled, and utterly alien, they fixed on yours with uncanny stillness. Not vague awareness—recognition. As if you were something known. Something expected.

You didn’t realize you were holding your breath until Dr. Havers spoke behind you.

“Sedated but semi-lucid,” he muttered. “You’ll get used to it.”

You doubted that.

You didn’t look away.

Neither did he.

Your formal role changed within forty-eight hours. A sudden shift, approved without ceremony. You were now responsible for the nocturnal observation cycle—Lab C, 2300 to 0400. Solo rotation. Minimal contact. Maximum discretion.

It wasn’t framed as special. If anything, it felt procedural. But there was an unspoken reason behind it. He responded to you—consistently, uniquely, and visibly. While other personnel were met with either silence or aggression, your presence generated stability. Lowered agitation. Reduced biomarker volatility.

“You’re not a risk variable,” Havers said, handing you a new clearance badge. “He recognizes that. Use it.”

That first night on shift, you sat alone behind the curved monitor console, tank lights dimmed to deep ocean blue. The lab echoed with the soft churn of water filters and the occasional mechanical click of the oxygen injectors. You opened a new file. Began a log.

SESSION 01 2303 HRS — Subject floats near lower quadrant. Motion minimal. Eyes open, tracking. 2317 HRS — Approaches glass at station-facing side. Remains within one meter. 0010 HRS — Mimics observer posture. Arms crossed. Head tilted. Intentional or coincidental?

The entries became more granular with each passing hour. You logged pupil dilation, fin twitching, shoulder alignment. The angle of his fingers against the glass. The way he followed the rhythm of your breathing when you leaned forward. Occasionally, he'd trace your silhouette on the other side of the glass, following your hand movements with uncanny precision.

He blinked less often when watching you, and more when others entered the lab—a strange, deliberate contrast. He began to tap his claws rhythmically against the tank wall when you wrote, a pattern that shifted in tempo depending on your pace. When you stood up, he rose. When you sat, he settled. A mirror, distorted by water and light, but growing clearer by the day.

By your third shift, the notes had started to blur.

SESSION 03 2248 HRS — Subject at station wall prior to entry. Appears to anticipate schedule. 2350 HRS — Subject mirrors tablet tapping. When observer writes, subject responds with claw motions against tank interior. 0104 HRS — Sustained eye contact. Three full minutes. Observer initiated break. Subject remained locked in gaze.

You began categorizing his behaviors under new terms. Not hostile. Not adaptive. Instead: intentional. Self-directed. Curious.

And eventually: fixated.

There was a pattern now, undeniable and precise. Every time you entered the room, he was already waiting. Every time you left, he followed your departure with slow, measured turns around the glass, as though mapping your absence.

Your notes became less technical. More observational. And then, more personal.

You started writing things you didn’t submit to the shared logs. Quiet questions scrawled in the margins of your private notebook.

Why only me? How much does he understand? Is this intelligence, or attention? Or is it something else?

You didn’t know the answers. Not yet.

But you couldn’t stop asking.

You hadn’t planned to speak to him. You weren’t even sure he could comprehend language.

But on the sixth night, everything was too quiet. The hum of the facility, the subdued flicker of the monitors—it all pressed in like static. You were tired. Frustrated. Your head rested on your folded arms, your mind drifting.

“I hate this place,” you muttered.

The water stirred.

Your eyes shot up. He was near the glass. Closer than before. His hands hovered just beneath the surface, claws relaxed. He tilted his head, as if listening.

Then he repeated it.

“I… hate… this… place.”

His voice was strange—raspy, resonant, shaped by a throat unused to speech. But he’d matched your cadence. Your tone. Even the way you’d slurred the words.

You stood.

“You understood that?”

He moved his mouth again. Slower. Testing the rhythm of speech.

“You… are… different.”

The room felt suddenly warmer. Or maybe colder.

Maybe both.

From that night on, your interactions became more complex.

Every time you entered, he was already waiting. You’d sit. He’d drift toward the glass, his body weaving gently behind him, as if pulled by invisible threads.

He began to mimic you in increasingly specific ways. When you tapped on your tablet, he tapped the tank wall. When you shifted in your seat, he mirrored the motion, down to the tilt of your head.

Researchers noticed. They logged it as proof of successful imprinting.

But you knew the difference between mimicry and obsession.

There was an intensity in his gaze that couldn't be dismissed. It was full of purpose. Of attention. He was learning you—not just your behaviors, but your moods. Your microexpressions. He watched your fingers when they trembled. He watched your lips when you breathed.

You tried to maintain boundaries.

But then the dreams started.

The dreams began as fragments.

At first, they were flashes—flashes of cold, of water creeping into your lungs, of sound that wasn’t quite voice but still carried meaning. Pressure without pain. Depth without fear.

Then they became immersive.

You were no longer watching from behind glass. You were inside the tank—or somewhere like it. A vast ocean with no surface and no floor. Everything shimmered in gradients of blue and black, lit by pulses of distant light. You were floating, suspended, and something was circling you.

You felt it before you saw him.

His presence. Electric. Intentional. Like gravity made flesh.

In the dream, Rafayel didn’t speak with words. He moved closer with the slowness of a creature that knew time was irrelevant. His fingers brushed your shoulder, your wrist, your waist—not with heat but with a chill so profound it burned.

You were never afraid.

Sometimes he held you. Other times, he watched you from below, his eyes glowing brighter than the deep. Always silent. Always there.

And always, just before waking, he would place his hand against your chest and say:

You belong here.

You’d wake gasping. Covered in sweat. The room dry, your lungs aching with the ghost of imagined water. And you’d feel it: a residual pulse. As if part of you hadn’t returned.

It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when the emergency alarms shattered the stillness.

You were off-shift. Sleeping. Or trying to. The facility-issued cot in your quarters was thin, the recycled air too dry. But exhaustion didn’t matter—because when the klaxon blared and the lights above your bed pulsed red, your heart dropped into your stomach.

Containment breach — Lab C.

You didn’t stop to think. You didn’t change. You threw on your coat over your sleep shirt and sprinted barefoot through the corridors, barely registering the startled faces of guards and technicians scrambling toward lockdown protocols.

When you reached the lab, the glass was already webbed with cracks.

Inside, the tank churned like a storm-tossed sea. Rafayel was in full fury—no longer the silent, observant being from your shifts. He was something else now. Magnificent and terrifying. His tail whipped with bone-cracking force, slamming the reinforced walls, again and again. The steel supports groaned. Water frothed with foam and light. Machinery sparked along the edges. A lab tech screamed as a panel exploded.

Two guards aimed stun-rods at the tank. “We have to subdue him—!”

“No—!” You pushed past them, breathless. “Let me try first!”

They hesitated—just long enough.

You stepped into the observation chamber, doors sealing behind you. A protective barrier of glass separated you from the tank, but it felt far too thin. Rafayel turned—spun mid-air like a coil of silk and muscle—and slammed his claws into the tank wall right in front of you.

You didn’t flinch.

You raised your hand. Slowly. Palms open.

“Rafayel,” you said softly, almost whispering, “Stop.”

His body stilled, suspended in violent motion.

The roar of the alarms, the hum of the oxygen pumps, even the buzz of the failed lighting—all of it faded into the background.

His breath came in sharp, rapid bursts. His eyes glowed like deep-sea lanterns. He hovered there, inches from the glass, claws still pressed hard enough to screech against it. But he wasn’t attacking now. He was… watching.

You stepped closer, until you were nearly touching the tank wall. Your hand hovered where his claws had struck just moments before.

“It’s me,” you said.

He blinked.

Then, without a sound, he floated backward. A slow, deliberate motion. One hand slid down the tank’s interior, leaving a trail of pale bioluminescence behind it. His tail coiled gently beneath him. The water settled. Foam dissipated. The light in his eyes dimmed—not dulled, just… quieter.

And then, unbelievably, he pressed his forehead to the glass.

Directly across from yours.

The room held its breath.

He closed his eyes.

You mirrored him.

The silence stretched.

Behind you, through the speaker system, you barely caught Dr. Havers’ voice: “Subject de-escalated. Immediate threat withdrawn.”

The guards didn’t speak. They didn’t move. No one did.

Because they saw what you saw.

He hadn’t calmed because of sedatives. Or fear.

He had calmed because of you.

And something in your chest cracked—splintered under the weight of a realization you weren’t ready for.

Whatever Rafayel was…

He wasn’t just watching you.

He needed you.

After the incident, you were called in for multiple evaluations. The staff expressed concern. His reactions were too focused. Too specific.

“Forming a fixation,” they said. “You’re a variable he’s centering around. It might become dangerous.”

But you didn’t feel afraid.

Each night, he was waiting. Sometimes he pressed his hand to the glass, palm to palm. Sometimes he mirrored your face until it felt like looking into a distorted reflection.

You broke protocol.

“Why me?” you asked him softly.

He moved close.

“You… are mine.”

Your heart thudded. You stood frozen.

“You don’t know me.”

He smiled, faint but assured.

“I remember you.”

You shook your head.

“That’s impossible.”

He only repeated, quietly: “You were always coming here.”

You stopped sleeping.

Each night, your dreams blended into your shifts. You began bringing small things into the lab. A book. A ring. A scarf. He noticed all of them. Watched each object with careful interest.

One night, you left a pen on the console.

When you returned the next night, it was inside the tank—placed delicately in a shrine of coral, shells, and scavenged materials. A gift.

You didn’t say anything.

But your chest ached with something unnamed.

And he knew.

The lab was quiet when you arrived, as it always was during your late shifts. But tonight, something felt heavier in the air. As you keyed into the monitoring station, you sensed him waiting.

He was already pressed to the glass, body still, eyes glowing faintly in the dim blue light. His gaze locked on you the instant you stepped into the room. You hadn’t even set your tablet down before he moved—slowly, fluidly—closer, so close that his breath fogged the glass.

Your heart pounded.

You didn’t need to say anything. He already knew you were listening.

“Free me,” he said.

The words were clear. Measured. Spoken not as a plea, but as a promise.

You stared at him, your throat tightening. “I can’t.”

He didn’t move away. He simply watched you, eyes scanning your face like he could read what you didn’t say.

“You don’t belong here either,” he murmured, voice soft and steady. “Not with them.”

He pressed a hand to the glass, and instinctively, without thinking, you lifted yours. His fingers aligned with yours, claws brushing the barrier.

“They see a cage,” he whispered. “You see me.”

The words didn’t sound rehearsed. They sounded like something he’d been waiting to say for a long time.

You swallowed hard. “If I open that tank, they’ll—”

He tilted his head, interrupting gently. “They fear what they cannot hold.”

You felt the heat of your own breath fog the glass. Your hand stayed pressed to his.

“Take it away,” Rafayel whispered. “Let me show you what you already know.”

The glass vibrated faintly under your palm. Not from his strength. From something else. Something deeper. A resonance that pulsed in your bones.

Outside the tank, you were still an employee, a researcher, a name on a schedule.

Inside the tank, he was waiting.

And in that moment, the glass no longer felt like protection.

It felt like a wall you weren’t sure you wanted to keep.

[brokenbarnes]

Haunted Eyes

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Based on the Episode "The Power Broker" from the Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Zemo is offering the Winter Soldier to Selby for payment, but the reader plays his handler. Hurt/comfort type shyt

Warnings: canon level violence, slight panic attack, mentions of ptsd

A/N: Holy shit guys I haven't written (and posted it) in over four years. I hope you enjoy it, hopefully my writing as improved since high school!

You were unhappy with the idea from the start.

Your best friend, closest confidant, one you’ve watched grow into a new version of himself; forced to play the part of the man he used to be. Could you even consider the Asset a part of Bucky? Would it be rude not to? There’s been many long conversations about who he is now, how he defines himself in this modern era.

Zemo’s plan was awful enough that it could just work. Bucky back under the invisible muzzle of his former self, playing a part to appease a buyer who just couldn’t resist.

If that wasn’t awful enough, Zemo had a role for you as well. His field Handler, his orderly, his master. Someone he would obey every and any command from.

The thought of it made you sick. Your stomach rolled as you zipped up your disguise, provided by Zemo conveniently on the flight to Madripoor. A tactical Kevlar jacket, form fitting dark slacks and heavy combat boots.

Looking in the mirror, you fixed your posture to reflect one with authority. Shoulders back, chin lifted, hands on your hips. You could possibly make this work, if you could see it through.

Bucky didn’t say a word to you at the club. Neon lights, hazy blue smoke, the odor of too many bodies rubbing close together. The Asset is not supposed to speak unless spoken to, therefore his coldness shouldn’t have been a surprise to you.

“Ready to comply, Soldat?” Zemo smirked at him in Russian as Bucky followed you and Sam through the crowd.

You didn’t flinch, but you felt you heart tear in two at the empty look in his eye. How did it come back so easily? The Bucky you woke up to everyday had a warm look in his deep blue eyes, crows feet crinkling when he smiled at you. This was not your Bucky.

As a shady looking man placed his hand on Zemo’s shoulder, you ordered Bucky to attack. He did so without a question, reminding you of the fraction of the man you saw on the DC bridge almost a decade ago. He put men down without blinking, clearing the room as people gasped.

Selby’s lounge was tinted with green neon and a faint smell of cigarette smoke. Your stomach turned at the atmosphere. Zemo lounged in a modern looking chair, Bucky positioned himself between the two, Sam opposite. You stood near Bucky, posture stiff, arms behind your back, face rigid as steel. Bucky was the same.

Selby reminded you of a snake, draped over her disgusting couch, wrapped in expensive materials and reeking of designer alcohol. She eyed your soldier with a hungry gaze, a different emotion burned in your chest.

She greeted Zemo not as a welcomed friend, but as an adversary she couldn’t wait to see what the next move was. You read her well enough to know she was skeptical of Zemo, the rumors of him locked away were supposed to be true. So how was he in Madripoor?

One look at Sam’s face showed you he did not trust Zemo, not one bit. Apparently Bucky did somewhat, or didn’t care about trusting him, just using him to get to the next step. Bucky’s past wasn’t based on trust, it was based on obedience.

And fear.

Zemo remained relaxed in his chair, glancing over at Bucky who stood so stiffly in the corner. His eyes were emotionless, muscles slack. You knew if you placed a muzzle over his mouth, it would be like nothing had changed at all since he came into your life. All the progress he was working towards with you and Dr. Raynor would be gone just like that.

“In exchange for information of the serum, I offer you the Winter Soldier,” he smiled in his sinister way. “Along with the code words to control him of course.”

Selby sat up straighter on her snake skin couch, like a cobra raising it’s head before it attacks. She was interested.

“He will do anything you want,” Zemo mused.

You met Sam’s eye across the room, worried, curious, concerned. Bucky slipped back into the role of someone he never wanted to be ever again. Maybe just a little bit too easily.

“Anything?” She leaned forward, puffing her chest out slightly, eyes locked on Bucky. Not his eyes, anywhere but his eyes in fact. His chest, his shoulders, new and improved arm, thighs, his feet. But she did not look in his eyes.

“Handler?” Zemo’s cold, calculating eyes turned to you. “Care to demonstrate?”

The words were bitter on your tongue, but Zemo’s warning replayed through your head. You cannot break character if you want to live, you have to sell it.

“Ready to comply, Soldat?” You tried to not stumble over the Russian, the language you learned so many years ago. The language that haunted his nightmares, waking up mumbling in a Slavic tongue engrained in his consciousness. Speaking the language for the both of you meant something had gone terribly wrong.

The awful blank stare in eyes remained, but his jaw clenched as he nodded. “Yes, Handler.”

“Kneel, Asset,” you hated the tone of your voice. One you hadn’t used in a long time, one that was never meant for Bucky.

He dropped to his knees at your feet, eyes still staring straight ahead. You tried not to wince as his knees slammed into the hardwood floor without even a moment of hesitation from him.

From the sheath on your thigh, you lifted a knife to his neck. He didn’t blink as the blade pressed into his skin.

“The Asset is completely compliant to your every need,” your voice was brittle, like glass. It appeared strong but one push was all it would take to bring it all down. “He will fight, kill, destroy anyone you ask him to.”

Selby’s hungry eyes asked for more.

“The asset does not think for itself,” you continued. “Anything you ask it to do will happen automatically. Completely submissive for its handler.”

You swallowed hard, turning your attention down to the man at your feet. “Asset, lean forward.”

You watched as Bucky leaned forward, digging the blade into the soft skin of his throat. You fought to keep your expression neutral as a tiny bead of blood trickled over his Adams apple.

“He will do anything without regards for himself.”

Selby smiled, clearly thrilled with her new deal, turned to Zemo and gave up the name of the doctor working on the serum.

“Stand, Asset,” you said, just loud enough to be heard by the one who mattered most.

Bucky returned to his standing position, posture military perfect, eyes staring straight head. A small stream of blood drying over the stubbly skin of his throat.

You were grateful for the tactical jacket when the shooting started. Selby’s lifeless body stared up at you like a snake skin, a hole blown through her sternum.

Although the cover was blown, Selby dead from a mysterious assassin and a whole nightclub full of dangerous people below; you were grateful you were no longer Bucky’s handler. The mask he had donned was gone, the awful, haunted look in his eyes had vanished but left a trace.

Later...

Finding Sharon Carter in Madripoor was not on your bingo card for this mission, but you were grateful for the temporary shelter of her apartment. Bucky lost his Asset attire, Sam no longer looked like a pimp, you were able to borrow some of Sharon’s sensible shoes.

Your adrenaline crashed at Sharon’s apartment, after running for your life from Selby’s night club and a bounty placed on your heads. All of the energy you felt when playing the Handler drained out of you, it was all you had to try and listen to Sharon discuss her situation.

You pulled your feet beneath you on her fancy leather couch, resting your head in your palm against the arm rest. Your mind replaying the image of Bucky leaning into the knife in your hand.

Bucky sat on the other end of the couch, avoiding your eye contact, hands laced together in his lap.

You wished he would catch your eye, lift the corner of his mouth in a subtle smile, reach over and nudge your foot with his. But when he thought nobody was watching, his head hung low, staring down into his lap, bouncing his knee in the way you know meant anxiety was making his skin crawl.

Sharon was hosting a party in the gallery below her luxury apartment, full of questionably authentic art pieces and shady customers.

Although the customers were having fun, the four of you observed, on edge. Despite the open bar, nobody from your party was drinking, silently observing the life Sharon had built for herself.

Bucky noticed as you slipped away, seemingly uncomfortable in your own skin. He silently followed you from a distance, watching you take the elevator up to Sharon’s apartment. He waited and took the next car up.

By the time you reached Sharon’s apartment, your chest was tight and it felt like you were breathing through a straw. No matter how deep of a breath you tried to take, it was never enough air.

You stumbled your way into her bathroom, turning on the sink and watching cold water flow over your wrists. Bracing your forearms against the porcelain, you dropped your head, pressing your eyes into the damp skin.

Tears burned in your eyes, squeezing your eyelids together you tried to contain the guilt building inside.

The scary thing about Bucky was that he could sneak up on you like nobodies business, avoiding squeaky floor boards and balancing his weight just perfectly. He was still like a ghost in many ways, as much as he tried to erase it.

So when he knocked gently on the bathroom door, it startled you, moving you to quickly wipe your eyes.

“Y/N?” His voice was gentle as he called through the door.

You froze, trying to steady your breathing although you knew his super soldier hearing picked up on it through the door.

“Y/N, Honey, let me in,” he murmured, leaning his temple against the door, hand on the doorknob.

“I’m okay,” but your voice was shaking.

“Y/N.”

You sighed, wiping your eyes once last time before opening the door. Your super soldier was leaning against the door frame, arms crossed over his black long-sleeve shirt. Usually you’d admire how the material stretched across his broad chest, but your eyes were flooded with tears.

You let him in without another word, he shut the door behind him. Sitting down on the lip of the modern-looking tub, you ran your hands through your hair, trying to calm down.

He didn’t speak, his favorite tactic, which drove you crazy. Forcing you to fill the silence like an interrogation technique.

“Bucky, I…” you swallowed hard, guilt stirring in your gut as you looked at him. You blinked quickly before trying again. “Bucky, I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“Do what, Doll?”

“Be your handler,” you spoke the world like it was a slur, a bad taste in your mouth. “Make you… Make you…”

He tilted his head at you, observant eyes watching your every move.

“Honey, you didn’t make me do anything.”

You stood up, standing in front of him as he leaned against the sink.

He had wiped the blood away and the serum had healed the thin skin over his throat, you swore you could still see where your knife had nicked him. You reached out and gently touched the spot under his chin where you had pressed the unyielding steel.

“I hurt you,” you shook your head, chin quivering.

“I’m okay,” he shook his head. Your touch was warm against his skin, he reminds himself that he enjoys this feeling.

“I don’t want to be another person in your life that’s hurt you,” tears spilled over your cheeks now, dripping under the neckline of your borrowed shirt.

He closed his flesh hand around yours, the one that was still tracing the healed line on his skin. His clear eyes met yours, blurry with tears and guilt.

“You are not my handler,” he spoke quietly, but firmly. “I know the difference. You were playing the part, not that it ended up mattering anyway. You didn’t hurt me, Y/N.”

You looked down at your shoes and tried to focus on your breathing. Why was he being so nice to you? You became another figure of those that had hurt him, had turned him into a shell of a human.

“C’mere,” he murmured, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and pulling you against him. You let your head fall against his shoulder, listening to the metal hum under your ear, a sound that has always brought you comfort.

“There is never a good time to be playing the Winter Soldier,” he spoke softly, just for your ears only. “But if I had to choose anyone to be my handler, I’d choose you any day.”

“Don’t,” you wiped your eyes on the soft cotton of his shirt.

“Nah, I’m serious,” he took a deep breath, which reminded you to copy him. Something you do all the time for him. “You’re the one that’s pulling me out of all this. You know all the dark secrets of my mind.”

“Dark secrets?” You wrinkled your nose, feeling your muscles relax a touch.

“Mhm,” his warm hand felt good on your skin, brushing the tender skin of the underside of your arm. “I trust you.”

Trust was a hard thing for Bucky, you could count on one metal hand the amount of people he trusts. But if Bucky could still trust you after playing the antagonist of his nightmares…

And you knew what those nightmares were like for him, leaving him shaking, sweating, reeling for a grasp on reality. Out of all the handlers he had in his lifetime, you hoped you were the one that showed him the most kindness.

“I don’t want you feeling all mixed up now,” he squeezed you quickly before letting go. “There’s only room for one crazy person in this relationship.”

You wiped your eyes, sneaking a glance in the mirror over his shoulder. He blocked your reflection with his strong back, leaning in to kiss you.

You’re forgiven, he told you, pressing his body into yours.

And that’s all you needed.

[hrrtshape]

the barbie doll theory of self-concept.

in other words, the doctrine of self-concept, an airtight business plan, a smoke-and-mirrors operation, a hostile takeover of the psyche. full control, leveraged buyout. you, ltd. you, inc. you, an entity so exquisitely tailored to its own mythos that it ceases to be a person and becomes a brand, a movement, a trick of the light. the body is a boardroom, the soul is a stock option. the self? an asset. undervalued. prime for acquisition.

you are customisable down to the last detail. skin-tone slider, eye-shape toggle, voice modulation settings set to low, warm, hypnotic. every version of you is a prototype, a limited edition, a one-of-one collector's item with a bespoke finish. beta tested, A/B split, finessed in post. no imperfections, only intentional design choices. you are plastic, you are fantastic, you are fully modular and infinitely iteratable. each trait a negotiable commodity, each flaw a brandable quirk. you don't just adapt to trends. you are the trend.

you are the blueprint, the architect, the first mover and the final word. your reality is not a negotiation; it is a decree. the world does not happen to you, you happen to the world. it shifts, bends, contorts under the sheer force of your self-concept. perception is reality, and perception is yours to command. this is not wishful thinking. this is physics. this is law. universal. immutable. undeniable.

you are not hoping. you are not wanting. you are deciding. and decision is creation. every thought a prototype, every belief an assembly line, every assumption a factory press stamping out the inevitable. you think it, therefore it is. nothing more, nothing less.

do you know what you are? you are the protagonist. this is not a delusion; this is a statement of fact. you are the name in the credits. you are the golden girl in the third act. everyone else is a plot device, a warm body in the wings, a well-placed reaction shot. it is so easy. so insultingly, absurdly easy. what you assume, you become. what you declare, materialises. these are the terms, this is the fine print. read it and weep. or don't. we don't do weeping here.

this is not self-improvement. self-improvement is a midrange racket, a scam for people who think they need fixing. you don't need fixing. you need better lighting. you need sharper dialogue. you need a rewrite on that third act monologue, the one where you say something so devastatingly final that even the audience forgets to breathe. you need to take the pen.

you are not waiting in the wings. you are not the understudy. you are not sending out résumés for the role of yourself. you are the icon, the main event, the limited-release collector's doll still in its original packaging, mint condition, impossible to replicate, already priceless.

the world will try to tell you otherwise. it will tell you that you are just another iteration, another mass-produced model rolling off the assembly line of existence. it will insist that you are interchangeable, dispensable, a supporting character in somebody else's three-act structure.

and that's where you can laugh.

because they don't get it. they've never gotten it.

you are not up for debate. you are not a hypothesis. you are the inevitable conclusion. you are the source code. you are malibu dream house with an ocean view, pink corvette with the custom interior, every accessory sold separately but still fully yours.

and if reality refuses to match your vision?

you don't shrink. you don't settle. you don't negotiate with a world that has the audacity to misunderstand you.

you simply restyle, reshoot, and rewrite until the universe falls in line.

because you are the protagonist.

and the protagonist always gets the final cut.

[soulprompts]

SITTING IN SOMEONE'S LAP PROMPTS.

listen. i want to tell ye that i have infinite reasons for making this. that i've been designing this for weeks, months even. but i can't. this happened because i saw one (1) meme and aligned that with two (2) cups of coffee. either way besties, you're all getting a strangely detailed list of reasons to drop your muse into another muse's lap. you wanna switch the roles? add a [ REVERSE ] if you want your muse to be the lap that's being sat in! don't add to this list, don't claim it as your own, i'll curse all your potatoes to be soapy and sad to consume.

[ SHAVE ]: sender sits in the receiver's lap so they can carefully shave the last of the receiver's stubble from their face.

[ MAKE-UP ]: sender sits in the receiver's lap in order to get a better vantage point to apply makeup to their face.

[ SNIP-SNIP ]: sender sits in the receiver's lap whilst giving them a haircut.

[ HAIR ]: sender sits in the receiver's lap so that the receiver can style or just play with their hair in peace.

[ CAR ]: sender ends up sitting in the receiver's lap whilst in a very crowded car together.

[ STUMBLE ]: sender loses their balance and trips backwards, falling into the receiver's lap in the process.

[ INTIMIDATION ]: sender, in an effort to frighten the receiver by invading their personal space, sits in their lap to try and inspire discomfort or fear in them.

[ LOOK ]: sender, wanting to see something that can only really be seen from where the receiver is sitting, sits in their lap in order to see it as well.

[ HEAL ]: sender ends up in the receiver's lap trying to tend to their wounds to the best of their abilities.

[ FEAR ]: a frightened sender sits in the receiver's lap in an effort to feel some measure of safety and protection.

[ COMFORT ]: sender, after a challenging and emotionally draining experience, settles into the receiver's lap in search of a feeling of comfort.

[ ADJUST ]: sender sits in the receiver's lap in order to fix their collar or tie or other item of clothing.

[ STRADDLE ]: sender sits in the receiver's lap with one leg on either side of their legs, straddling them effectively.

[ EMBRACE ]: sender settles in the receiver's lap to give them a long, well-deserved hug in comfort.

[ CARRY ]: sender, having been carried by the receiver for other reasons, winds up sitting in their lap once they sit down.

[ THROW ]: sender flings themselves at the receiver, so eager for a hug that they end up in their lap.

[ DROP ]: exasperated (or maybe just exhausted) the sender drops down into the receiver's lap to rest.

[ CUDDLE ]: eager for some well-earned cuddling, the sender finds it much easier for everyone involved to sit in the receiver's lap during the cuddle session.

[ MOVIE ]: while watching a movie together (and possibly being so distracted by the film that they don't realize what they're doing) the sender settles back into the receiver's lap.

[ CHAIR ]: the distinct lack of available chairs in a room results in the sender having no choice but to sit in the receiver's lap.

[ CLOSENESS ]: after having been apart for a considerable length of time, the sender sits into the receiver's lap just to be close to them.

[ PRETEND ]: in a bid to persuade others that they're in a relationship (even though they're probably not) the sender climbs into the receiver's lap to convince the on-lookers of their legitimacy.

[ LEARN ]: sender sits in the receiver's lap so they can teach them a particular practical skill (e.g. pottery, knot-tying etc.)

[ ACCIDENT ]: the sender, unaware that the seat they're trying to claim is occupied, drops into the receiver's lap without realizing it.

[ EXHAUSTION ]: the sender, surrounded by nothing but uncomfortable places to rest in, finds a solution by sitting in the receiver's lap in order to rest and possibly sleep.

[ CHILLED ]: the sender and receiver find themselves in a particularly cold room, leading the sender to sit in the receiver's lap in order to share body heat.

[ KISS ]: the sender lowers themselves into the receiver's lap in order to kiss them properly.

[ FLIRT ]: the sender, only just beginning to explore the romantic side of a relationship with the receiver, sits in their lap in order to express their feelings clearly.

[ ROMANCE ]: the sender, in a well-established romantic relationship with the receiver, sits in their lap just because they can.

[ THRONE ]: having found the receiver sitting in their throne, the sender sits in their lap in order to symbolically and physically share the seat.