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thunderbxltss · 9 days ago

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Pretty

Pairing: Joaquin Torres x Reader

Summary: You tell Joaquin that he’s pretty.

Warnings: literally nothing. Plain old cotton candy fluff. Lots of kisses.

AN: had to write this because I need to talk about how gorgeous Danny is omg. This is how Joaquin smiles when you tell him he’s pretty btw:

It was an off day for the both of you. Currently you were lounging on the sofa in that post-lunch drowsy mood. He was sitting with your feet in his lap, slouched with his head resting on the back of the couch. He was scrolling through his phone and massaging your feet at the same time. He must be reading something because he’s got that furrow between his eyebrows that he has everytime he’s thinking about something or is focused.

You were lying down with a book that you’ve been meaning to finish for a long time. The problem was that you just couldn’t help but get distracted every now and then because the light was hitting Joaquin’s face just perfectly, making his sharp features appear even more pronounced, his hair was curlier than usual as he had not used too many hair products today and he was wearing one of his goddamn muscle tees again, which made his toned arms stand out even more. This boy was out there to destroy your peace because how can someone be so breathtakingly gorgeous?

You didn’t even realise when you put your book down on your chest and just looked at him. It was making your heart burst and stomach erupt in butterflies because how did you get so lucky with this pretty boy? Yeah. That’s what he was. A pretty boy. Isaiah was so right. You were thinking so deeply about him that at one point you muttered, “You’re so pretty”, with a dazed expression on your face.

It must be too quiet in the room because he immediately snapped his neck to you. “Wha’ was that?”, he asked with his eyes wide. You snapped out of your daze and you swore you must’ve heard some romantic music play around you because suddenly it was too quiet. Had you said that out loud? You just blinked your eyes at him and gaped your mouth like a fish. “Uh…what?”, you asked nervously.

Joaquin looked at you and flashed you a dopey smile. “Baby…what did you say?”, he asked teasingly and rubbed your calves. You tried averting your gaze and picked up your book to hide your blush behind it. It was of no use as Joaquin took your book away (he made sure to put his thumb in the pages you read to mark it first) and held it in his lap. “Give me my book-” “Nope. You first tell me what did you just say”, he said cheekily. You covered your face with your hands and mumbled in them, “I said, you’re pretty.”

You didn’t see the way Joaquin’s face burst into one of his million dollar smiles. He let out a giggle, put your book on the coffee table and removed your hands from your face. “C’mere, angel”, he said while gently pulling you up to straddle his lap. You reluctantly let yourself get pulled into his lap. Once you were settled, he held both of your hands in his and gently caressed the backs of them with his thumbs. You looked at him from behind your lashes and saw how his shiny brown eyes were adoringly looking at you. He saw the way you were shyly averting your eyes so he gently held your chin in one of his hands and brought your eyes to his face.

“You think I’m pretty? Not just pretty, you think I’m so pretty?”, he said while smiling at you and caressing your cheek to soothe the redness appearing on it. You blushed once again, (which is your default mode around him) but now that you were closer to him, you looked at all the details on his face that you couldn’t see before. The way his eyes are so brown, like coffee or smooth chocolate, and how they seem to be always shining with love, affection and passion—for everything he holds near and dear to him. Especially for you. Then your focus shifted to the gorgeous, tiny moles scattered across his face. Your favourites were the ones in a triangle on his chin and the one above his upper lip.

You couldn’t resist the urge to lean down and press soft kisses to the moles on his chin and the one above his lip. He closed his eyes when your lips touched his skin and he let out a sigh. You leaned back and pulled your hands out of his to put them on his cheeks, while his went around your waist and below your shirt to caress your back. You caressed his cheeks with your thumbs and murmured lovingly, “Yeah, you’re the prettiest boy I’ve ever seen, ‘Quino.”

Now, it was his turn to blush as you saw how his cheeks turned redder than usual and he let out a little giggle. His eyes crinkled with joy and he kissed your palm while leaning his head on it. “Shut uuuup”, he murmured shyly, dragging out the ‘up’. Looking at him behave like a shy teenager made you giggle and you squished his cheeks between your hands. “Whaaat? It’s true. Even Isaiah agrees. You’re a pretty boy. So pretty. So beautiful. I’m so lucky you’re mine and I’m so jealous that others get to see you as well”, you said while pinching his cheeks, making him blush and giggle harder.

“Alright! alright! that’s enough”, he replied while pressing your hands to his cheeks and biting the inside of his cheek to suppress a smile. “Why? You wanted to hear what I said. I’m just repeating it for you!”, you said while smirking and staring deeply into his eyes, taking advantage of his sudden shyness. “Or are you not satisfied? I could go on and on…I love your little lunares so much that I could kiss and trace them all day long”, you whispered while taking your hands off his cheeks and using your fingers to trace his moles. “Or…how much I love when you don’t use much product in your hair…you’ve got the most beautiful curls, baby”, you ran your hands through his hair and saw him close his eyes in content. You know he was secretly enjoying this.

“Or…your arms- my god. They look so scrumptious right now-” you didn’t get to finish your sentence as he gently put his hand on the back of your neck and pulled you closer to kiss you passionately. You tangled your hands in his curls and brought him closer to deepen the kiss. You scratched his scalp with your hands and he put his hands up your shirt to caress your back. You pulled away to take a breath and touched your forehead to his. You leaned back and rubbed your nose against the slope of his and he flashed his breathtaking smile at you again, looking at you like you hung the moon and stars in the sky.

“You’re going to be the death of me, baby.”

You just smile at him and flutter kisses all over his face.

AN: i really, REALLY wanna kiss danny’s moles.

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thunderbxltss · 11 days ago

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Pressure Points | Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Bucky never misses a tell and hiding an unexpected injury during a mission debrief forces both of you to confront what the two of you are really doing.

MCU Timeline Placement: Thunderbolts*

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: blood, injury, untreated wounds, dissociation, implied PTSD, medical care, emotional vulnerability, canon-typical violence, tension with unspoken feelings

Word Count: 5k

Author’s Note: hi hiiii!! this one’s based on a request that got way too emotionally loaded way too fast, so naturally i blacked out and wrote this instead of doing literally anything else on my to-do list. still unsure how i feel about the ending here, idk i feel like i struggled a bit with this one 😢 but anyways... hope you enjoy the soft angst and emotional damage™

The door hissed closed behind you, sealing you into the dim of the debrief room.

You didn’t sit yet. Honestly, you weren't sure you could. Sitting would mean slowing down, and slowing down would let your body register exactly how much damage it had taken. There was no blood on the floor, but your boots felt like they were sticking to the tile with each step.

You stood facing the long table at the center, fingers pressed flat to its edge. Cold. Good. Cold helped.

It had been two hours since the ambush. Maybe more. You’d landed, walked straight through the hangar, flashed your ID to three different checkpoints. The adrenaline had carried you most of the way—through extraction, through the sting of antiseptic wipes and gauze stolen from your belt kit, through the awkward shrug of your jacket over stiffening muscle. It was wearing off now, and quickly.

Your side ached. But it was the kind of ache that came with a quiet weight behind it. A deep, thick hurt that didn’t burn anymore. It settled.

The kind you knew better than to poke.

You were supposed to be collecting surveillance. Mapping out structural weaknesses, taking silent photos. Minimal movement. No contact. The risk level had been marked green.

Yelena’s name had been on the initial rotation, but you owed her one—stupid bet, high stakes, something about who could down Alexei in the least amount of moves during game night—and when she grinned across the table and tossed the data chip at you, it hadn’t felt like a trade that would matter.

It should’ve been easy. In, out, report filed. Nothing worth blinking twice over.

But they’d been waiting anyway.

You weren’t sure if it had been a leak or just bad luck. Maybe both. A perimeter shift, a wrong turn, a wire you didn’t see until the light went red and the floor gave way beneath your boots.

There were two of them. Close combat. One with a blade.

It was clean, at least. A trained hand. Nothing jagged.

Your fingers curled slightly against the table. The distraction helped. Only a few more minutes, maybe five. Long enough for the after-action report upload to ping, long enough to get through debrief, long enough to get your hands on a copy before it hit anyone else’s radar. You could file the injury in a supplemental note. Frame it as a scratch. Make it clean.

The mission had succeeded. The data was retrieved. The kill order had been avoided.

And Bucky didn’t tolerate excuses in debrief.

You moved very slowly to sit, spine straight, jaw locked. The pain was manageable. As long as you didn’t shift too much. As long as you kept breathing shallow. As long as your body didn’t betray you first.

The door opened behind you.

You didn’t flinch, but your shoulders pulled just slightly tighter.

You didn’t look up until he sat down.

Bucky dropped into the chair with a kind of quiet authority that never tried to announce itself. He didn’t need to. You’d seen people straighten instinctively when he walked into a room. Not out of fear. Not even respect. Just gravity.

He keyed into the tablet with a flick of his thumb and said nothing for a long moment.

“Solo recon,” he said, eyes on the report. “Low contact. Data collection only. You were in and out six hours ahead of schedule.”

Your mouth felt dry. “The infrastructure was lighter than predicted. I got what we needed.”

“You didn’t log an early extraction.”

“I didn’t need one.”

His jaw shifted slightly. Not clenched, just a tick of muscle, subtle and practiced, like he was filing your answers away for later. Like he already knew he’d be circling back to every word you just said.

“You breached the secondary corridor. That wasn’t on your pathing.”

“There were inconsistencies in the thermal layout.”

“You followed them alone.”

“That’s the job.”

He didn’t argue. Just turned the tablet, tapped the video feed timestamp. A grainy loop of your helmet cam played: a shadow moving through darkness, light flickering across concrete. The corner where you turned too sharply. The sudden jolt in the image. A sharp gasp—short, quiet, then nothing.

He paused it. Tapped again. Rewound. His brow furrowed. Let it play back slower.

This time, he didn’t look at the footage. He looked at you.

“You dropped your shoulder,” he said quietly. “Right before the feed cut.”

“It was nothing.”

“Was that a hit?”

Your tongue pressed hard to the roof of your mouth. “It didn’t affect the objective.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t move. Just watched.

And you hated how that made it worse, how the stillness wrapped around the room like a noose. He was letting you lie to him. Letting you say whatever you needed to say, because he already knew.

He’d been there before, in that same position, pretending a cracked rib was bruising, pretending a torn tendon was stiffness, pretending a mission wasn’t carved into the meat of him long after it was over.

There was no lecture. No accusation. Just the weight of someone who could see through you and chose not to interrupt the performance.

“I’m fine,” you said flatly.

He didn’t answer.

The quiet stretched. You thought maybe that was it, maybe he was going to let it go.

Then his eyes flicked down to your right side. To the faint, spreading mark where the fabric of your shirt beneath your jacket was turning darker. Not fast. Not enough to pool. But enough to stain.

His chair scraped back.

You stiffened. “I'm fine, it's handled.”

He came around the table, slow and deliberate. Metal fingers flexing at his side.

“Lift your arm.”

“I said I'm fine,” you snapped.

“That’s not the same thing as handled.”

You didn’t move. You weren’t sure if you could. The adrenaline was starting to thin out in your veins, leaving behind that sinking, swampy exhaustion. Your stomach turned, not from pain, but from how seen you suddenly felt. You’d trained for exposure. For being watched. Not for this.

Bucky crouched beside you. Not in front, but beside. Like a pressure valve being slowly eased open.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, tone unreadable. “How long.”

You swallowed, head dropping slightly. “Since the drop site.”

“Why didn’t you flag it?”

“It's under control.”

“No, it's not.”

His voice was low. Not cruel. But final.

You’d heard him angry before. Heard the bite in his tone when someone made a call that put the team at risk. This wasn’t that. This was colder, quieter. A kind of disappointment that didn’t need volume.

You didn’t know which was worse—being yelled at, or being spoken to like someone who should have known better.

He reached for your side, and your hand caught his wrist before you could stop yourself.

You hadn’t meant to. It wasn’t a choice, not really, just instinct, like every muscle in your body recoiling from the threat of being touched before it was ready. Not because it was him. Because you knew what came next. Knew what it looked like when someone saw too much and tried to carry it for you. And you couldn’t afford that. Not from him.

He stilled.

You didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. If you saw the look in his eyes, you might flinch. And you were still trying to pretend you hadn’t already lost.

“It wasn’t supposed to go loud,” you said, voice thin. “There were two waiting. They knew where I’d enter. They knew the blind spots.”

You could hear the shift in him. That internal lock of gears grinding against something they’d already worn through before. You hadn’t meant to trigger that recognition in him, but you’d felt it land. Somewhere deep, in a place you both shared but never acknowledged.

You shifted your grip. Not letting go, just adjusting. Like you could buy yourself another few seconds by pretending it wasn’t about the wound at all.

“Just leave it,” you muttered. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It never is. Until it is.” His tone didn’t change, but his gaze lifted—finally meeting yours. Calm. Direct. A low, measured pressure behind it, like he was willing to wait you out.

You hated that about him. That patience. That quiet steadiness that didn’t waver, didn’t flinch. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t soft. It just was.

And it made it so much harder to pretend he didn’t see you. Really see you.

“I don’t need—” you started, jaw tight.

“You need someone to look at it,” he said. “Let it be me.”

It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t an order either. And that somehow made it worse. You weren’t sure which was more dangerous, someone barking commands or someone asking for permission.

His voice had dipped lower, just enough to make your chest pull tight. There wasn’t concern there, not in the usual sense. He wasn’t doting. He wasn’t trying to soothe. He was present. And there was something in that presence that made it hard to breathe.

You dropped your hand.

He pushed your shirt up, carefully, and you exhaled through gritted teeth as the gauze pulled away. The cut was clean. But deep. His brow furrowed slightly—not from shock, not quite. Just calculation.

He was already thinking of entry angles. Blade length. Positioning. Probably already seeing the hallway in his head. Watching it unfold in slow motion, over and over again, looking for what he missed. As if he had been the one to miss it.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

You let out a humorless breath. “That your professional opinion?”

He didn’t smile.

There was something cruel about how quiet he stayed. Not toward you, but toward himself. You could feel it, even now, in the way he shifted to reach for the med kit like he couldn’t let himself react to what he’d seen. Like the second he let emotion in, he’d lose grip on what was necessary.

“You patch this yourself?”

“Didn’t have time to find med support.”

He moved to pull the kit from the wall behind him with one hand, snapping it open. You heard the rustle of packaging, the gentle snap of gloves. His hands were steady. Too steady.

Too calm. Too clinical. Which meant he wasn’t.

When he pressed the antiseptic to your skin, your breath caught.

You didn’t mean to—didn’t want to—but the pain was sharp, cutting through whatever haze had been buffering you. Your body flinched before your mind could will it still. You hated how obvious it was. How involuntary. You hated even more how his hands didn’t pause.

“Just breathe.”

It wasn’t said like a warning. Wasn’t a comfort, either. It came quiet, low enough that it felt more like a thought spoken aloud than something meant for you to answer.

You hated how your lungs obeyed. How the next inhale came shallow but cleaner. How the sting faded just enough under the sound of his voice for you to remember where you were. Who was touching you.

Your gaze didn’t lift. Couldn’t. You stared at a smudge on the floor instead, jaw tight, eyes burning in a way that had nothing to do with pain. You weren’t fragile. You weren’t. But there was something about him seeing the flinch, about him not reacting to it, that made your throat go tight.

His eyes flicked up, barely a beat behind it. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t flinch or hesitate, didn’t scold you for not holding still. Just paused long enough for the air between you to thicken. The smell of alcohol and blood and something too human to name settled over the room like fog.

“Still with me?” he asked, but it was rhetorical. His eyes had already checked—your pupils, your hands, the tension in your legs. He read you like a goddamn topographic map.

“I’ve had worse,” you muttered.

“I know,” he said.

You wished he didn’t. Wished he hadn’t been there for half of them, hadn’t watched you limp out of drop zones or tape your shoulder back into place mid-mission with the kind of steadiness that wasn’t brave, just practiced. He knew what you looked like when you bled. You’d made peace with that years ago.

But this felt different.

He set the antiseptic soaked gauze aside and reached for the sutures. The gloves didn’t crinkle when he moved, he was too precise for that. Even the gentlest press of his fingers at your side felt deliberate. Controlled. No wasted motion. No softness, either. Just a kind of reverence that came from experience. You weren’t sure if it was for you, or for the wound itself.

“You said there were two,” he said suddenly, voice low. “Which one of them did this?”

There was no hesitation in the question, but it wasn’t casual. Nothing about it was. The way he asked, like he already knew the answer would sit wrong in his chest, told you more than it should’ve.

Bucky didn’t bristle often. Didn’t posture. But there was something under his voice now, tight and metallic. Cold. Like if you named the man responsible, he’d dig him up just to break him again.

You held his gaze. Didn’t flinch.

“Don’t worry, he didn’t walk out of there.”

The edge in your voice was quieter than his, but just as sharp. You didn’t offer more. You didn’t need to.

His eyes searched yours for a second too long, jaw flexing once like he wanted to say something and couldn’t find the shape of it. He looked back down, set the first suture, and when he spoke again, it was quieter.

“Good.”

You weren’t sure if he meant it the way it sounded. You weren’t sure if he was sure. But something settled in his shoulders after that, and he didn’t ask again.

It would’ve been easier if he had. If he’d pressed. If he’d let the protectiveness boil over into something sharp, something that gave you a reason to push him away and keep things clean between you. But he didn’t. He never did. He just stayed in that crouch beside you, jaw tight, hands steady, letting the silence stretch between you like a wire pulled too thin.

And maybe that was worse.

Because he didn’t look at you like a soldier waiting for confirmation, or a leader waiting for a report. He looked at you like he’d already imagined a hundred different versions of that fight—the ones where you didn’t walk out. The ones where someone else did. And you could feel it sitting behind his ribs like weight. Like something he wasn’t letting himself name.

It had always been like this with him. That quiet intensity. The kind that crept in slowly, uninvited. The kind that made it impossible to tell where professionalism ended and something more dangerous began. You never asked. You didn’t need to.

You’d felt it in the way he moved between you and crossfire before anyone could blink. In the way his voice dropped, barely audible, when you were hurt. In the way he never touched you unless he had to, but when he did, it was like he was memorizing the contact. Like he wasn’t sure he’d get another chance.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was worth the—”

“Don’t,” he said, too quiet. “Don’t downplay it.”

He reached for another suture strip, tore it open with one hand. “You think if you minimize it enough, it won’t matter? That if you wrap it tight and walk like your spine’s straight, it doesn’t count as damage?”

Your breath hitched, shallow.

“I’ve done that too,” he added, and there was something in his voice now, not pity, never that, but something hollow and brutal and familiar. “I used to think if I could stand through the pain, no one had to see it. That if no one saw it, it couldn’t touch anything else.”

He looked at you again.

“But I see it.”

You stared at him.

He went back to working your side, taping and sealing with brutal efficiency, like if he just moved fast enough, it wouldn’t settle in his chest the way it was clearly trying to. Like if he didn’t meet your eyes again, he wouldn’t say anything worse.

But you didn’t let it go.

“You’re not just pissed about the mission.”

He didn’t answer.

You shifted, just enough to wince, and he caught your elbow before you could flinch all the way.

“Careful,” he said, voice low.

“That wasn’t an answer.”

His jaw ticked. You watched his throat move as he swallowed something back.

“I’m not pissed,” he said eventually. “I’m—”

He stopped. Adjusted his grip on the bandage. Fingers tight.

“I don’t like watching people I care about bleed.”

It was the first time he’d said something like that, care about, out loud. Not just implied in the way he moved between you and danger, not just the steady presence outside your door after bad missions, not just in the way he always remembered what you wouldn’t ask for. But said.

Out loud.

You sat very still.

Bucky cleared his throat. “You didn’t think you could come in here like that and I wouldn’t notice?”

“I didn’t know what you’d do if you did.”

“I’d do this,” he said simply, finishing the last suture. “I’d sit you down and fix it.”

“And after?”

He looked at you again. Quiet. Careful. Like you were still bleeding, just somewhere else now.

“I don’t know,” he said. "The same as always."

That should’ve been the end of it. The final thread cut. No promises, no mistakes, no ground given. Just those few words, flat and true.

But you didn’t look away.

And he didn’t move.

The med kit sat open on the table beside him, wrappers scattered, tools laid out with military precision. His gloves were still on. Blood on the fingertips. Your blood. You watched him peel them off one at a time, like he needed something to do with his hands. Like the silence might drown him if he didn’t fill it with something.

You let your weight shift back into the chair. Your side pulled tight. Not enough to tear. Enough to remind you it was still there.

He reached forward again. Not to touch the bandage. Just to rest his hand near yours on the table. Close. Not touching. You could’ve bridged the gap with your pinky.

You didn’t.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked, voice quieter now. Tired in a way that didn’t show on his face but sat in the back of his throat like ash. “That I’m mad? That I don’t get it? You think I don’t know why you don't tell anyone?”

You didn’t answer.

“Because if you say it out loud, it becomes real. Because then someone else gets to decide how bad it is. Gets to take it from you. And maybe you’d rather bleed through your fucking ribs than let anyone carry the weight.”

Still, you didn’t answer.

He exhaled hard through his nose. Rubbed a hand over his jaw. His knuckles were scraped. Probably from training. Or from the chair he’d shattered in the sparring room last week when Torres made a joke about his shoulder during drills.

You knew Bucky didn’t lash out without a reason.

You just didn’t like thinking about whether you counted as one.

His hand didn’t move. Yours didn’t either.

The table felt like the only thing keeping your body upright, your fingers curled just enough to hide the tremble that had nothing to do with blood loss. He wasn’t looking at you now—his eyes were down, jaw tense, thumb tracing a slow arc near the edge of a wrapper. Like he was waiting for you to say something that would let him off the hook. Or maybe give him permission to stay on it.

You shifted slightly. Just enough to test your range of movement. Just enough to remind yourself where the pain was still sharpest. He caught it. Of course he did. His eyes flicked back up for half a second. Not to ask if you were okay. Just to watch. Just to know.

“I didn’t come in here looking for a scene,” you said finally, voice low. “I wasn’t trying to make this into—”

“Into what?”

You didn’t answer.

He sat back on his heels, knees cracking slightly. His hand was still on the table. Still close. And when he spoke again, the edge in his voice wasn’t anger. It was something colder. Resigned.

“You think I give a shit if this turns into something.”

That pulled your eyes up. Slowly.

He looked tired. Not physically. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixed. There were lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there last year. Not deep enough to age him, but enough to mark the hours he spent pretending things didn’t hit as hard as they did.

You stared at him. “You say that like you know where it’s going.”

“I don’t,” he said. “I just know I’m not the one walking in with blood in my teeth and acting like it’s business as usual.”

That got under your skin. You felt the flicker of it move through your chest like a match.

“I didn’t ask you to do this.”

“I know.”

The room went still again.

He exhaled through his nose, slower this time, like he was trying not to say the next thing before it forced itself out. Like he was weighing the silence in his mouth and deciding whether it was worth breaking.

“You don’t make things easy,” he said.

You tilted your head slightly. “You want easy, Barnes, you’re in the wrong line of work.”

“I’m not talking about the work.”

It landed harder than you expected. Or maybe exactly how you expected, and you’d just been hoping he wouldn’t say it out loud. You sat back a little. Let your hand fall away from the table. Your side throbbed in protest.

He watched it happen. Didn’t comment.

You looked down at your lap. Focused on the dried blood near your waistband. On the way your fingers had curled in again without your permission.

“I didn’t come here to talk about us,” you said, quieter now. Not defensive. Not backpedaling. Just honest.

“I know,” he said. “But you didn’t come here to bleed out alone in a chair, either.”

You didn’t have a response for that. Because part of you had. Not to bleed out, exactly, but to hide the worst of it. Just long enough for the report to clear. Just long enough for it to not become anyone else’s problem. But that had never worked with him. He didn’t wait for permission to see through the mask. Never had.

Bucky stood slowly. Not like he was leaving, like he needed to stretch his legs or he’d start pacing. His hand dragged down his face once, like he was trying to rub the expression off before it settled into something harder.

“You scare the shit out of me sometimes,” he said.

That pulled your head up. “What?”

“Not because you’re reckless,” he added, facing the wall now, hands planted on his hips. “Because you’re calculated. Because I know you made the call. Took the hit. Handled it. And still didn’t say a damn word.”

You watched his shoulders rise, slow and tight, like his breath caught halfway through.

“I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t going to help,” you said. “The mission was clean.”

“I’m not talking about the mission.”

That made something in your chest shift. He said it too fast. Like it had been waiting there the whole time, right under the surface.

He turned back toward you then. And this time, there was no detachment left. No cool professionalism. Just Bucky. Raw and present and exhausted by the weight of everything unspoken.

“I can’t read your mind,” he said. “You think I can, but I can’t. I can see when you’re hurt. I can see when you’re bleeding. But I don’t know when you stop letting anyone in.”

You stared at him. “I haven’t shut you out.”

“You think letting me stitch you up means I get to know where you are?”

That landed.

He crossed his arms. Not defensive—anchoring. Trying to hold something in that was already slipping. “You could’ve come to my room instead of here. You didn’t.”

“I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

“I’ve seen you worse.”

You stood. A little too fast. The pain surged. You gripped the edge of the table to steady yourself, jaw clamped tight until it passed.

He didn’t rush forward. He just stood there. Watching. Letting you decide what you needed to hold yourself together.

“You think I want to keep doing this?” you said finally, voice low. “You think I like walking in here looking like hell and pretending it’s fine? You think I don’t know how this looks?”

He didn’t say anything. Which was worse than if he had. You could feel him watching you, reading you, the way he always did. And somehow, that still made it harder to speak.

“I didn’t come to your room,” you said, “because if I did, I wouldn’t have left.”

There. Said. It landed between you like a weapon left on the table. Sharp. Unmoving.

And it silenced him completely.

You watched his face. The way his jaw ticked once. The way his eyes narrowed, not in suspicion, but like he was trying to fit the truth of it into the space between everything else. That it hadn’t been about pride. Or protocol. Or even pain.

It had been about him.

He moved first.

One step, then another, until he was standing close enough that you could feel the heat coming off him. Not touching. Not yet. Just close. Close enough that when he spoke, you didn’t miss a word.

“You wouldn’t have had to.”

That knocked the breath from your lungs more than the blade had.

He reached out slowly. Not toward your injury, not toward your face. His fingers brushed just barely over your wrist, featherlight. Like he didn’t want to startle you. Like he’d been waiting to make this exact move for weeks, maybe longer.

But you didn’t pull back.

You couldn’t.

Because this was exactly the part that scared you more than any mission, any ambush, any stitched-up wound. The knowing. The letting him see how much it cost you to be steady. To stay upright when you were tired of it. To walk into every fight like you didn’t already have enough bruises from the last.

His hand moved to yours, just enough to curl his fingers around your knuckles. The contact was warm, grounding. No pressure. Just weight. Intentional and steady and there.

“I hate this,” you whispered. “How easy it is for you to look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m not fooling you.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t say you’re not, because he didn’t need to.

“I don’t know how to do this,” you said, quieter now. The kind of quiet that cracked at the edges. “Not with everything else. Not when it’s already hard enough to breathe some days.”

His grip didn’t tighten. He didn’t pull you in. He just stayed.

“I’m not asking you to do it all at once,” he said. “I just want you to stop pretending you’re alone.”

You felt that one in your bones.

He let his hand slide up from yours, slow, up your forearm, to the bend of your elbow. Not possessive. Not comforting. Just anchoring. Just present. Like he was proving he was real. Like he knew what it meant to stand still while someone flinched under the weight of being seen.

“Can I help you back to your room?” he asked after a beat.

You hesitated.

Because yes would mean surrendering something. Control. Image. The illusion of strength that had gotten you this far.

But then you nodded.

Because no meant going back to that silence. To pretending he wasn’t right. To pretending that the tremble in your legs wasn’t going to give out the second you passed the threshold alone.

He didn’t say anything else. Just stepped back a little and reached for your jacket, careful of your side. He helped you into it like it wasn’t the first time he’d done this. Like he’d already memorized how to move around your injuries without needing the full inventory.

When you swayed, just slightly, his arm came around your waist. His touch was careful—more supportive than guiding. Like he wasn’t leading you anywhere you weren’t choosing to go.

Outside the room, the hallway was quiet. Late-shift lighting hummed overhead, casting the corridors in that dim, sterile blue you’d always hated. But it didn’t feel cold now. Not with his hand steady at your side.

You didn’t talk. Neither of you did.

It wasn’t avoidance. It was a truce.

When you reached your room, you paused in the doorway.

“Thanks,” you said, turning enough to look at him, “for not making it worse.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Which part?”

“All of it.”

He gave you the smallest nod. Like he understood there wasn’t a better way to say what you meant. Like he didn’t have one either.

You thought that might be it. That he’d step back. Let you walk inside and close the door and process this later, on your own, the way you always had.

But he didn’t move.

And you didn’t step inside.

Not yet.

There was one last thing sitting between you—one last thread you hadn’t pulled.

“Bucky.”

He looked up, and his eyes were softer than they should’ve been.

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Tried again.

“If I had came to your room,” you said, “and I didn’t leave—what would you have done?”

He held your gaze. Steady. No hesitation.

“I would’ve stayed too.”

That broke something open in your chest. Not sharp. Not painful. Just... full. Like the air had shifted. Like maybe you didn’t have to hold all of it alone anymore.

“Okay,” you said.

Then you stepped aside.

When he followed you in, he didn’t say anything else.

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