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vickyminajj · 3 days ago

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all im gonna say is holy shit that was amazing

siren’s song [one-shot]

avengers!bucky x avengers!reader

summary: bucky hears music through the vents of his room every single night, but the team refuses to tell him for his own protection. after all, they know the music is coming from you- a secret member of the team, who happens to be able to control minds.

warnings: 18+, mdni, no use of y/n, language, alternating pov’s, the avengers don’t like you/are scared of you, bucky is your biggest and loudest defender, steve is a meanie but he’s bucky’s biggest and loudest defender,, reader is a lil insecure and depressed but eh she’s a tortured™️ artist so what did we expect, reader knows sign language and is expressed in bold text throughout the fic

word count: 10.9k

a/n: apologies in advance for any inaccurate to semi-accurate music descriptions T_T i am a washed singer/musician that hasn’t done music since i switched over to the healthcare industry </3

masterlist

Everyone treats him as if he is something breakable. Fragile. That one wrong move, one wrong word– one wrong breath is enough to shatter him.

In all honesty, Bucky can’t blame them completely. It took him a long time to get to where he is right now, and he still has to lie to himself to say that he’s doing okay. He still hopes that the lie will somehow manifest itself into truth if he tries hard enough.

Either way, it’s pissing him off.

The team acts as if they can’t hear the music that comes through the vents during random points of the day. Sometimes, it’s piano. Bucky can’t tell the difference between a violin or a viola, but he hears one of the two as well. There’s a low thrum of a cello every once in a while. He hears an acoustic guitar in the early mornings when the sun is barely breaking through the horizons.

Sometimes the melodies strike through his skin and grip his bones, never letting him go. Other times he’s soothed to sleep as if a gentle hand is caressing his head, lulling him to bed with each pluck of the string. He can’t deny that he’s enraptured by wherever this music is coming from.

At first, he thought Tony had F.R.I.D.A.Y playing music through the halls. He asked Tony about it– wondered why the music was played at such odd times without any rhyme or reason. Tony denied having any mood music and joked about him going crazy in the head. Bucky walked out of the lab without giving him another response.

Then, Bucky realized it was strongest in his own room, and got softer as he walked towards the common areas. He realized that the music was connected directly towards his vent. His next realization was that there was a person that had to be playing each one of those instruments.

Bucky dragged Steve into his room to show him the music next time it happened, demanding to know what was going on– to know where the music was filtering through from.

“What music, Buck?” Steve asked him, a polite look on his face. Bucky never wanted to punch him more– more than that day on those fucking hellicarriers when Steve was just a mission to him.

“Are you serious?” Bucky replied, eyebrows shooting towards the ceiling. “You don’t– you don’t hear that? The fucking– That’s Liebestraum No.3.”

Steve stared at Bucky, blinking at him like they didn’t speak the same language. Bucky let out a deep breath, frustration coursing through his veins as he did his best to not shout at the man that he considered his oldest, bestest friend.

“You don’t know who Franz Liszt is?” Bucky asked, trying to keep his voice even and calm. He was trying to practice the art of patience, but he was failing horribly with every passing second.

“How do you know who Franz Liszt is?” Steve retorted, almost looking worried.

“I had to do musical therapy as one of my– never mind. You seriously can’t hear the piano?” Bucky quickly said.

“Buck… Have you been sleeping well? Should we move your room somewhere else? Stark did mention that you asked him about music the other day, too.”

Bucky hated that tone of voice. Condescending. Borderline patronizing. As if Steve was talking to a child. Like he was fragile.

“Steve, no!” Bucky exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. “You know what– fuck. Never mind. Forget I mentioned anything.”

“Bucky,” Steve sighed, placing a hand on his shoulder. They lock eyes, Bucky frowning at him.

“What, Steve?” he grunted.

“Trust me– you’re better off not knowing.”

The music stopped coming through the vents for some time after Steve lied blatantly to Bucky’s face– Bucky knew they were all lying to him.

It was the same way they lied to him about the extra set of plates and cups that he noticed in the cupboards of the kitchen that no one claimed– but showed obvious wear of use. When Bucky asked who used those, they all just shrugged at him and changed the topic.

Bucky noticed mangoes in the fridge once. No one on the team ate mangoes, but there was always a fresh stock of mangoes that got brought in with each produce delivery. He noticed that the supply in the fridge dwindled down every few days until there was nothing left. He saw the peels in the trash. Nobody on the team smelled of mangoes.

When it was Wanda’s turn to cook, she would put a serving of food to the side before calling for everyone else to eat. No one would touch it. Bucky noticed that it would be eaten and gone the next day. He asked Sam one time who ate it, and got brushed off like he was insane for asking the question.

They were doing the same shit they were doing when they first brought him onto the team and he hated it.

Bucky knew that they were doing it to protect him. That this was supposed to be for him, and they only meant well, but fuck– he was getting tired of it. He would’ve thought that they trusted him by now. If anything, they were doing more damage to him than good by handling him with gloves. He didn’t even know what they were protecting him from. Someone else? Another person? He couldn’t voice this to any of them, not when he was already struggling to express himself.

Soon enough, the music returned through the vents again. Softer this time. As if whoever was playing was afraid to take up space.

Bucky laid in bed, eyes falling shut as he let out a breath. The notes blanketed over him like a warm hug, wrapping around him and soothing his aches and pains.

He was grateful that the lullabies were back.

Bucky could return to his dreamless sleeps.

“Nice work today,” Fury complimented as you washed your hands.

You watched as the sink turned from crimson to pink to clear. You used the brush from the sterile packet to scrub under your nails, removing any traces of dirt, blood, and other bodily fluids that you could have picked up from your interrogation. You shake your hands off in the sink, glancing through the mirror to look behind you. Fury's standing there, with a towel in hand for you.

“Thanks,” you muttered quietly in return, shutting the faucet off before turning around to take the cloth. He pulls it away from you for a second, and your eyes go to his face.

“That would have gone a lot faster if you had just used your ability on him first,” he told you, then lowered the towel into your wet hands. “Wouldn’t have to resort to all the mess.”

“It's a mess either way, Nick,” you replied with a sigh, drying your hands off. You throw the towel into the hamper of the locker room when you’re done.

“Have you made any progress with the team?” he asked, hands clasping behind his back as you followed him out into the hall.

“You’re funny,” you said, scoffing.

“I would like to deploy you on missions with them, you know,” he clicked his tongue on you.

“And yet, when you have me do interrogations, you have me in a soundproof room and have all other agents clear the floor,” you pointed out, shaking your head. “You also have me several feet underground. Don’t even get me started on the fact that my comms channels are cleared on my field missions.”

“It’s a safety precaution, agent.”

“You’re scared, Nick. That’s okay. They are, too,” you said, your voice soft. “I don’t blame you or them. I wouldn't trust me either."

Fury stopped walking, leaving you a few more steps ahead of him. You let out a deep sigh as you stop in your place, turning around to look at him. You’re so tired. You want nothing more than to return back to the main compound. You want to shower off the interrogation, cry, and maybe listen to Erik Satie to pretend like you’re not a weapon.

“You don’t make it easy for us to not be scared of you,” Fury said, looking you in the eyes.

“I’m just thankful that you talk to me,” you said, giving him a small smile.

Fury lets out a sigh, shaking his head. “You said that you have control over it. You have given me no reason to not trust that you won’t mess with my head the same way that you do with our enemies. Does it scare the hell out of me when I see what you can do? Sure it does. And I thank my lucky stars that I recruited you for our side. Trust is a two way street, agent. You need to start building your side of the bridge, too.”

He started walking once more, leaving you in the hall by yourself. You watched as his figure turned the hall, listened to his footsteps retreat and disappear into the air before you decided to do the same.

You took the same route that you always do– the same back hallway and stairs that you knew the other members of the team didn’t take.

It makes you laugh when you address them like that in your head. The team. As if you’re part of them. You were introduced to them a long time ago. Said maybe one, two– three full sentences to them before you saw the full distrust and distress on the faces of the original six members.

You really looked up to them. You heard stories of them during your time in captivity as a weapon. You daydreamed of them saving you from your lab, bringing you in, making you one of them. You thought about doing good for the world and rectifying the wrongs that you were forced to do under the hands of the captors that held you by the throat.

It wasn’t them that saved you. There was no fanfare. There was nothing special about the way you were saved.

Your lab was hijacked by a smaller, less elite group of agents. Fury was the one that came to you. Read your file, saw that you were enhanced, and asked if you would like to be part of something better.

That ‘something better’ stared at you with disgust.

It shattered your world.

You kept to yourself after that. They didn’t mistreat you by any means. Tony gave you your own floor in the compound once you all moved from the tower, and they left you alone. They ordered you mangoes and whatever else you asked for as long as you put the order in with F.R.I.D.A.Y..

You couldn’t blame them.

This was a team of people that held secrets. People that had been pulled apart from years of pain, mistrust, and horrors that you hadn’t been around to experience yourself. It was only natural that they wouldn’t trust you once they found out what you could do.

So, you worked alone. Your skillset was better for interrogations, and for solo missions. You were off field most of the time, but Fury still sent you out every once in a while. If there were some more time sensitive matters that needed to be fulfilled that were overlapping with the main team’s missions that couldn’t be handled by regular agents, he would deploy you.

If nothing else, Fury trusted you to do the job.

You shut the water to the shower off, running a hand down your face as you shook the thoughts away. Fury’s words got to you today. You normally didn’t think about this anymore. It had been too long. New members of the Avengers had joined. Nothing has changed. Well– Wanda gives you food when she cooks.

You once asked her why.

She told you- “Even monsters need to eat.”

It was the only time you spoke to her.

You pad through the open concept of your floor. You press a key of your piano, listening to the note bounce off the walls as you continue to walk. Your guitar is resting on the carpet beneath your unmade bed. Your cello and violin are neatly put to the side against the wall on their stands– and you vaguely think about the fact you need to clean your brass instruments soon. Your drum set remains neglected– you once received a noise complaint through F.R.I.D.A.Y and haven’t found the courage to pick up the sticks since.

You go towards the mini fridge, pulling it open, and pause.

“Shit,” you muttered, pulling in a lip between your teeth. It was empty.

It slipped your mind to have F.R.I.D.A.Y. bring a new delivery of snacks directly to your floor. You know you don’t have anything in the cupboards either. You’re a few days off from the end of the month. You check the time.

It’s barely one in the morning.

With the location of the compound, you won’t get any luck by going into the city to get food and come back. You have another interrogation scheduled first thing in the morning. You have training sessions with a few agents that aren’t aware of your abilities all afternoon, and then another interrogation in the evening if the Avengers complete their early morning mission and bring back their target as per scheduled. If you leave the compound right now, you won’t get enough time to sleep and be okay enough for the amount of shit you’ll have to deal with tomorrow.

Plus, your hands are itching to touch some strings tonight or you might go crazy.

You could forgo the meal. You really could.

The thought is immediately thrown out the window by a sharp pain in your stomach followed by a deep grumbling that you’re sure could wake up everyone in the compound.

You groan to yourself, reaching for a hoodie. You’ll have to head towards the common floors.

As you board the elevator, you really hope all of the team members are sleeping. You’re not in the mood to run into any of them today. Usually, you only come up here when you know that they’re on a mission or away from the compound celebrating or just out having a good time together– without you. They should be sleeping.

And yet– there he was.

The main person that you were warned to steer clear of.

Stormy eyes landed on you– you, who stood there with damp hair, a zip up hoodie and a tank top with cotton shorts and slippers. Shit.

You watched as the man bristled. He held a half eaten plum in his vibranium hand, all muscles tensed under the black shirt that he wore. The dog tags around his neck glistened under the kitchen lights as his body turned, his back straightening as he moved to square his shoulders to size you up. He was taller than you thought, but you had only seen him from afar. He had also cut his hair short– it was nice. His beard was also reduced to stubble now. You wondered if he did it himself or had someone else do it for him.

You swallowed, and took a few steps.

This was your place of work, too. You lived here, too.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, his voice almost in a low growl.

You didn’t dare answer him. You were almost afraid to. Not that you would use your power on him by accident– but that Steve or someone else would throw you out of the one place that you could call home, even if this place made you feel like you were walking on glass.

You opened the fridge like you did a hundred times before, eyes scanning the shelves until your eyes landed on the fruit. There were two left.

You could feel his eyes burning holes into the back of your head. One wrong move, and you were certain that he would act on command. This was his home, too. For all he knew, you were a stranger. And from what you knew– he knew nothing of you.

You were slow in your movements as you went for the cutting board and the drawer, grabbing a dull knife to cut open the mangoes. You saw him flinch out of the corner of your eye when you brandished the knife, and slowed your movements down even more. You really weren’t trying to die tonight.

You just wanted some fucking mangoes.

Once you were finished, you reached into the cupboards to grab your bowl and placed your fruit inside, dropping your used utensils into the sink. You turned around, locking eyes with the soldier. His breath hitched as you did, and you stared at him for a few moments.

“I asked you a question,” he whispered.

He sounded scared.

You held your breath for a few moments before releasing it. Then, you gave him a sad smile. You shook your head at him. No. He was better off not knowing.

You tried to ignore the look on Bucky’s face before you turned away.

You were warned. Steve warned you twice.

Before Bucky was brought to the compound, Steve visited your floor. Told you to never show yourself before Bucky. Said that he didn’t need you to mess with his head– that Bucky had already gone through hell enough and didn’t need it to happen again.

He came again, a couple weeks back. He told you that your music was loud. And it broke your heart. He told you to quiet down– that Bucky was asking questions. You felt as if your voice had been ripped from you all over again. You felt like you had been back in that lab.

That night, you played Prelude in E minor until your fingers cramped, and your tear ducts dried up.

Bucky had gone through several wars. His body had been modified without his consent over and over again. He was frozen, defrosted, then frozen again countless times. Lies had been shoved down his throat that he was forced to digest. He watched as his body and mind was broken and beaten, and he used to hold no regard for the state that he found himself in because he was trained not to care.

Bucky cared now. He cared a lot.

And he was losing his fucking mind.

“Where do the targets go after we bring them back?” Bucky asked, removing his vest. He was dropping it off at Tony’s lab for inspection— something about Stark wanting to make some upgrades to everyone’s uniforms.

“They go to interrogation,” Steve responded, putting his shield down on an empty table.

“Who interrogates them?” Bucky pressed.

“Fury, I guess,” Sam shrugged, but didn’t meet Bucky’s eyes. He frowned.

“Since when the hell does Fury get his own hands dirty when he has an entire army of agents at his disposal?” he demanded.

“Exactly. Fury just delegates the task to someone, Buck,” Sam sighed, taking redwing off his back to inspect the damn thing. “What’s it matter to you anyway? We just handle the mission— do you want to do extra work or something?”

No. It was simply driving him crazy to be left in the dark.

Bucky didn’t respond, not when he knew that all answers would just lead him back into a circle. He left the lab, aware of how his teammates' shoulders sagged in relief at his departure. It was subtle, but he noticed. He always did.

All of them were hiding something from him. None of them would say a single word. They were great at skirting the issue, deflecting, or simply just changing the topic.

There was one person he hadn’t tried though. One more person that he was certain wouldn’t give him any bullshit, but would definitely never let him live it down. He knew that she would definitely tell the others if word got out, too.

He sucked in a breath and changed courses for the armory. She always spent time down there after a mission to look over her guns, make sure nothing was damaged or jammed. Bucky stood at the threshold of the door for a long time, staring at her back. He didn’t know what to say, or how to say it.

Thankfully, she broke the uncomfortable silence first.

“I deleted the footage from this morning,” Natasha said, putting the safety back on her gun.

“The footage?” Bucky echoed.

“Of you seeing our siren come out of her little cove to get her mangoes,” she clarified.

His eyes narrowed. Siren? Cove?

“Explain.”

Natasha let out a breath. She put away the last of her gadgets and weapons in the case, locking them safely away before turning around. She leaned against the counter, arms crossed over her chest.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Are you going to lie to my face like everyone else in this damn building?” he shot back.

“It’s for your own good, Barnes,” she sighed.

“Isn’t up to me to decide that?”

They stared at each other for what seemed like hours before she finally shook her head, relenting. She gestured towards the bench, moving to take a seat. Bucky sat down as well. Natasha said a name he’d never heard before– your name.

“We all collectively decided that we would keep her away from you,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Her abilities… let’s just say she wouldn’t need any fancy H.Y.D.R.A. machines to put your brain through a blender, Barnes.”

His spine straightened as his pulse quickened. He let out a slow breath, eyebrows furrowing.

“She’s enhanced– you called her a siren,” he said, the pieces coming together in his head.

“Whatever words come from her mouth– you can’t help but listen,” Natasha nodded slowly. “If she tells you to run, you run until your body gives out. If she tells you to scream, you’ll scream until your vocal chords are fried. If she tells your brain to explode in your head… well. She’ll be the last thing you ever see again.”

Bucky’s heart was pounding in his chest.

“Does she– she has control over it, right?” he managed to force out.

“Fury says that she does,” Natasha breathed out slowly. “Do I trust it? No. None of us do. She’s… part of the team, which is why she has clearance to the common areas. Fury wants her to be able to be deployed on missions with us, but none of us are comfortable with the idea of her using the ability with us on the field. She does solo work and interrogations, but otherwise I’m not really sure what she does here. I know Stark gave her an entire floor to herself. I think she blasts really fucking loud music. I think your vents are connected.”

Loud wasn’t the right word for it. Calming was a better word.

Even when the music you played was sad or melancholic, he felt peace that he hadn’t been able to know in so long. Even if you were doing a simple scale to warm up your cold fingertips, you were able to pull him out of the depths of his own mind. You brought him ease that he had forgotten he knew how to feel.

“Where’s her floor?”

You didn’t hear the elevator doors open, not with your headphones secured over your head. You had a day off today, and you decided to take yourself down to the city to pick out your first electric guitar. You spent a lot of time with the clerk at the shop, going back and forth between different brands of guitar, amps, and other things.

You even learned how to be able to connect the electric guitar to headphones so you wouldn’t get another noise complaint from your resident fossil, Captain America.

You sat on the floor, back against your bed, guitar on your lap with your laptop in front of you. You had your notebook beside it, ready to jot down anything that you felt was worthy of remembering for a later time.

Your fingers danced away at the strings, a smile fitting along your face as you closed your eyes. You were chasing the ghost of your past– the sound of your father’s amp crackling to life in the garage on a Saturday morning to wake you up. You, racing down the steps of the stairs as each note reverberated through your skeleton, screaming for you as you got closer and closer, distorting your reality as you–

You felt a weight in the room, breaking your immersion. You ripped the headphones off your skull, turning quickly, one hand reaching under your bed to where you knew you had a weapon.

Bucky’s hands went up in immediate surrender.

“I just want to talk,” he said, swallowing thickly.

Your breaths were still erratic, your eyebrows furrowed. Talk? What the hell would this man want to talk to you about?

He was truthful though. Nothing about his body language screamed that he was on guard. His eyes were on you– more on the fact that your hand was still under your bed. You forced your breathing to even out and slowly dragged your hand back to where he could see it, and watched as his hands lowered back to his sides as well.

You watched as his eyes went from you to your room. His eyes rested on your bed– the sheets still not tucked in properly because you never cared to fix them after waking up. The carpet under your bed so your feet didn’t have to touch the cold tile of the floor first thing in the morning.

Across from your bed were two couches facing each other with throw blankets strewn about, with a coffee table in the middle, and a TV mounted on the wall. On the table were music sheets that you had forgotten to organize and put away.

Right beside your 'living room' was your music area. You had several different instruments here, along with a full set up of production material for you to even record if you wanted to– because you did, sometimes. Only if you were in the mood for it. Not that you released anything. You were just bored by yourself, and you had the ability to do it.

And Bucky was standing in the middle of your makeshift dining-room-slash-kitchen. It was just a round table with a small fridge, half counter with a partial induction stove, and half sink area. You had a microwave to use, and some cupboards that you filled with snacks, plates, and utensils.

Suddenly, you felt self conscious over the fact of how lived in everything looked. You never had your area so closely examined the way he was looking at everything. Then again, you weren’t expecting any guests.

“Do you talk?” he suddenly asked.

You blinked. Your lips parted– and closed. You nodded in response after a few moments. Bucky’s eyes narrowed at you.

“Will you talk to me?” he asked, changing his question.

You shook your head immediately. Bucky let out a sigh, placing his hands on his hips. You could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to figure out what else to say to you.

“Is it because of your ability?”

You didn’t hide the shock on your face. You don’t know who’s more stupid– the person who told him, or him himself. Why would he come here if he knew what you are? What you could do to him?

Either way, you nodded to him.

“This is gonna get really annoying very fast– Can you do sign language?” he asked, surprising you again. He must've read the surprise on your face and quickly added, “I can read sign language.”

“How do you know sign language?” you asked him, tilting your head.

“I'm 110 years old. A spy. Assassin. I think I need to know a lot of things,” he dismissed. “Are you the one that plays that music every night?”

“I am,” you replied.

“You always play like you have something to say.”

“I believe music transcends all forms of language. We don’t need to be from the same country to be able to understand each other,” you quickly signed at him.

Bucky stares at you, eyebrows furrowed. Almost as if he’s trying to process your words. You frowned, letting out a deep sigh.

“Are you here to tell me that it’s too loud? I’ll stop if it is. I’m sorry.”

“What? No! I’m just asking,” he spoke so fast it surprised you. The next words that came out were so soft that it almost didn’t reach your ears. “I– It helps me sleep. Don’t stop. I find comfort in your songs.”

Bucky wasn’t looking at you anymore. His eyes were trained on the floor, staring at the plush of your carpet. Your lips were parted, but your heart was beating fast. You almost felt like crying. You wanted to cry.

A shuddering breath fell from his lips, disrupting the air in the room.

“I’ll sit here quietly. Can you play something?” he whispered, lifting his eyes to look at you again. “Anything. I don’t care what.”

Slowly, you rose from your place on the ground, pushing the guitar off your lap. You pulled a chair from the dining table for Bucky to sit at as you went for your piano, opening the cover. You could hear him take a seat, feel his eyes on you as you straighten your back. Your fingers ghosted over the ivory keys for just a moment as you contemplated what piece to play for him, your mind shuffling through everything you learned as a child– none of them fit this moment.

You played Bucky original pieces from that point forward. Whatever came to mind, you played for him.

You lost count of the amount of times that Bucky came down to your floor. Sometimes he would bring you your mangoes, along with some of his plums. Sometimes there would be new fruits for you to try before you would go and start your performance for him.

“Have you ever tried calamansi?” he asked one day as he walked through the door. You had barely had a chance to look up from your music score. You were sitting on the floor, pen in hand, crouched over the coffee table.

"A what?" you asked, eyes narrowing at him.

“Calamansi,” he repeated, putting down the orangey-yellow drink down in front of you on the coffee table, but not before putting a coaster under the glass. “It’s a fruit from the Philippines- we had a mission there, and I just got back. This is good. Drink it.”

You looked up at him as he took a seat on your couch. He crossed an ankle over his knee, a hand draping over the back of the cushion as he took a sip of his own calamansi drink, eyes still on you. Expectant. Waiting.

You reached for the drink yourself, a bit weary.

He must’ve sensed your hesitation, or at least seen it.

Bucky took the glass in your hand, swapping it with the one that he had already drank from. He drank that one, as well. You let out a small breath, giving him a smile. He returned it– he had no judgement on his face.

His smile only widened as surprise took your features with the first sip of the juice.

“See?” he said, pointing at the glass. “It’s good, right?

You could only nod in agreement before you both continued to finish off your drinks.

Bucky would often come at random points of the day. It was never at any set time. There had been times where he was already in your room, waiting for you to come back from an interrogation or a mission. Other times when you had been off from the day, and you had run into him in your backway hall, already heading down to your door. He would give you a nod at these times, and walk with you the rest of the way.

You had even grown used to waking up and finding him sitting at the dining table, scrolling through his phone or looking through files while waiting for you to wake up– sometimes you didn’t even play for him on these mornings.

“Did you even sleep last night?” you asked him, exiting the bathroom after washing up.

“Late, but I slept well after listening to you play. It wasn’t classical last night. Guitar, right?”

“I heard it on the radio the other day,” you sign with a shrug.

“I liked it. Can you add it to the playlist?” he asked, handing you his phone.

Another private, personal moment shared between you two. You don’t remember who started it. You two had several playlists shared.

You taught him how to make playlists. He sent you a playlist of songs that he liked, and you listened to each song religiously. You made him a playlist of music that you listened to and would continue to add songs that you played for him. There was a third playlist that you both would add songs to whenever you both felt like it.

“Any plans today?” you asked after handing his phone back to him.

“I’m hiding here, if that’s okay with you. Steve wants to run to the city and back. I don’t want to. He managed to get Sam to agree, but I think that’s fucking crazy,” he muttered.

You don’t hide the smile on your face as you nod at him, going through your cupboards to pull out instant oatmeal for the two of you to eat. He gratefully accepts, and you two start your morning off slow. He talks at you, and he will patiently wait for you to put down your spoon so you can sign at him.

You notice the way he pays attention to both your face and your hands to make sure he captures the entirety of the emotion behind the words you’re trying to convey to him.

You notice that he does the same exact thing when you play your music.

You could feel his eyes on your face when you’re playing, and you know it’s not just his ears that are listening to you. You can feel his heart opening with each note that you hit with your fingers, with each string that is strung. You can see the weight of the world being lifted off his shoulders in a way that you never thought was possible.

At some point, he abandoned the chair at the dining table and would sit beside you at the piano bench, his body keeping you warm. You didn’t mind it. In fact– you were the one that closed the distance, no longer satisfied with only your knees brushing against each other’s. Your thighs were fully pressed together now, and he could feel your muscles move as you pressed the pedal of the piano when you needed to.

“Your fingers don’t get tired after playing for so long?” Bucky asked you one night, his voice soft, afraid he would talk over the notes.

You smiled, glancing over to him. You met his eyes, shaking your head.

“You don’t even need to look at the keys to play either?” he asked, just as astounded. He sounded a bit breathless, in awe of you.

You let out a small laugh. This time, you shook your head in disbelief. You thought he was cute, but you couldn’t say that even if you wanted to tell him.

The piano’s final note faded on your fingertips, light and airy– you don’t remember the last time you played something in a more sorrow sounding tone. Though, Bucky does seem to enjoy your minor chorded music. He once told you that it evoked something deeper inside of him.

“What was that one called?” he asked you as you pulled on the piano cover.

“Another random piece from my mind,” you signed to him.

“Were you a prodigy before all this happened to you?”

You paused, your hands freezing. Bucky caught it, his eyes widening. His hands quickly clasped over yours, warming yours up– comforting you.

“You don’t have to answer that. I’m sorry,” he quickly apologized, awkward. “I fuckin’- shit. I was just talking without thinking. It was the music still in my head, doll.”

Your lips parted for a brief moment. You could see the panic in his eyes– the true regret he felt. He was scared you would pull away from him, maybe shut him out after all the time you had spent together.

You swallowed, giving him a smile as you gently took your hands from his.

“I was accepted by Julliard as an opera singer,” you signed. “My mother was a pianist. My father was a cellist. Music ran in my family. My brother was a scientist. He was the only one that didn’t do music… and he got involved with some bad people. People that–”

Your hands clenched into fists mid-air. You sucked in a trembling breath, looking everywhere but him.

And Bucky waited. Patiently. Like he always did. His attention never diverted from you.

You knew he knew. You were still scared. You knew what was done to his mind, but saying it to his face… You were afraid he would run from you.

You take a deep breath, preparing yourself. You know you're about to sign like a madwoman, maybe too fast for him to even understand you. That's okay. You just need to get it all out, even if it's sloppy or messy. It's how you feel, and you hope it's enough for him to understand.

“They took my voice from me and weaponized it. It took me years to learn how to talk without hurting someone. I could hurt you, Bucky. I could do worse things to you than H.Y.D.R.A. ever did. I don’t know why you keep coming to see me. I’m not saying that I would ever do anything to hurt you. That is the last thing that I would ever do! I really like you, Bucky. I wouldn’t play all these songs for you if I didn’t like you so much, but you need to know that I am the last person on Earth that you should be spending all this time with when I am the one that could hurt you the most–”

Your hands are being forced down, and you feel the cool touch of his vibranium hand cradling your face with so much care you could almost cry. You didn’t have the time to– not when the soft, plush of his lips were against yours. Not when his fingers were intertwining with yours, squeezing your hand as if he were trying to tell you that it was okay. That he understood you.

Your body reacted to him, allowing him to lead you in a dance to music that only the two of you could hear. Your heart was beating in time with his, feeling the trembling of his fingers against your face as if he was afraid of breaking you. This felt less of a kiss and more like a confession. You kissed him back all the same, feeling the fear that he felt too.

When your lips finally parted from each other, your eyes opened, and the song ended, you watched each other for a few moments.

“I don’t think you could do anything to ever hurt me, sweetheart,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against yours.

You tried to pull your hand away from his, to reply, but he didn’t let you. He held on firmer, but not hard enough to hurt. Your eyes widened as your lips parted. You were helpless.

Bucky pulled his forehead away from you, to be able to look at your face completely. His eyes scanned your face, every single part of you was bare under his eyes. He was waiting, and your heart was pounding. He wanted you to speak to him.

You pulled your bottom lip into your teeth for a moment as you steeled your resolve.

“I don’t trust myself to not hurt you,” you whispered, meeting his eyes.

You watched as his face shifted– pure adoration. You felt warm under his gaze, unable to tear yourself away from his watchful eyes. The look on his face is unguarded. Soft. Reverent and absolutely beautiful. You didn’t know it was possible for him to look at you like this– for anyone to look at you like this. You were glad it was Bucky. You never want Bucky to ever lay his eyes on anyone else the way he’s looking at you at this moment.

Your heart only seemed to clamber even louder in your chest, ringing even louder in your ears. You don’t even remember hearing applause this loud at your most successful concert.

Bucky collects your face in both hands, and his lips peppered all over your skin. Your eyes, your cheeks, your nose. The stubble of his beard brushed against your skin, and you could only let out a soft laugh, hooking your hands around his wrists as he continued to kiss your face all over before he finally stopped at your lips.

“You sound like heaven, doll,” he whispered against your mouth.

“I was made to sound this way,” you murmured back.

Bucky chuckled, shaking his head. He pressed another kiss to your lips before wrapping his arms around you, tucking your head under his chin.

“I trust you.”

The words are etched into your bones, digging into your soul and burying themselves into the depths of your heart as tears begin to spring to your eyes. Bucky holds you tighter, swaying side to side slowly as his hands rub your back gently, soothing you.

You melt into his chest, into the comfort he gives you, ear pressed above his beating heart. This is your favorite song, you think. Right next to the sound of his laughter.

Music is played between kisses now.

Your hands will be resting above his hands on the ivory keys, slowly guiding his to glide over the notes, only to hit the wrong ones as he turns to distract you with his lips.

Other times, you'll be sitting in bed together. His back will rest against the headboard, your back against his chest. Bucky's head will lean against yours as you strum along to your guitar, filling the space around you with romance, when his hand will come up and cup your face to demand your attention, guiding you to turn to him for a kiss.

Sometimes, your songs are completely disrupted with Bucky pulling you away from your instrument. He’ll replace your live talent with a song playing from the phone in his back pocket as he pulls you into his arms, taking one hand in his, while his other hand goes around your back.

“Dance with me, doll?” he grinned at you.

“Are you trying to relive your glory days, Sergeant?” you teased, hand hooking around his shoulder to press your body closer to his.

“What do you mean?” he asked, feigning innocence. “Music’s playing, there’s a pretty dame in front of me– it would be criminal not to dance right now.”

You could only laugh as he spins you around before returning you back into the security of his arms, pressing a sweet kiss to your forehead. You only pretend to give him a hard time, and he knows it. You love these soft moments of intimacy, where he reaches for you first.

“You would think after a month or two of dancing with me, you’d be less stiff, sweetheart,” he hummed in your ear.

“I’m sorry, not everyone was born in a time period where dance halls were the main source of entertainment,” you scoffed in response.

Bucky laughed, squeezing you tighter to him. “I had a seventy year break. You have no excuses.”

“Fuckin’ old man,” you grumbled, only to let out a shriek as he pinched your side in retaliation.

“You should respect your elders,” he clicked his tongue at you.

“I’m going to put you in a nursing home,” you threatened, but there’s no real heat to your voice, obviously.

He rolled his eyes in response. “I’ll be what? Almost 200 by the time that comes around? We’ll be in the nursing home together, baby.”

“You think we’ll still be together by then? Alive?” you asked.

“As long as I have a say in it, yes,” he nodded.

“You sound so sure,” you frowned at him.

“And you’re pessimistic. That’s my thing. Get a new hobby.”

You scoffed, shaking your head. You can’t hide the smile on your face. “I bet you liked it better when I didn’t talk.”

“No,” he quickly denied, taking your face in his hands. The swaying stops, and you’re forced to look at him. “Keep talking. I like hearing your voice, even if you say stupid shit.”

“Me being scared for the future is stupid shit?” you raise an eyebrow at him.

“… Maybe not that, but I’ll still disprove you,” he dismissed. “You make me look forward to the future, sweetheart. So I need you here. I’m kinda planning my future around you. Can’t have you gone.”

“That sounds like a lot of pressure, Buck,” you whispered.

“Good. Feel pressured,” he chuckled. “I need you to know you’re wanted. The songs you played before I came to you were so sad.”

You cringe a little. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he hummed, thumbs brushing over your cheeks gently. “Because I get it. I understand.”

“… I know,” you nodded. Because you do.

You’ve spent many nights away from the music since the confession, since your hearts started beating in unison, just laying in your bed and whispering to each other.

He told you how he laid awake and listened to the music through the vents. How your songs managed to get him to sleep and calmed him down when nightmares plagued him. How you managed to comfort him in his darkest moments, when he felt worthless.

And he thanked you for it all.

Bucky only chuckled at you when you burst into tears. You apologized to him— saying it was so stupid to cry when he was the one that was hurting, but he was grateful you were crying for him.

During your quiet moments together, he would tell you how your music made him feel whole. That you would piece him together slowly, as if you were performing a reprise to his soul like he was a song that had butchered by the wrong conductor.

You told him he was getting cheesy with his analogies, but he would ask you if you thought he was charming. You would grin and tell him that if he kept it up, you might dedicate a whole concerto to him.

Just like that night, Bucky had a smile on his face as he leaned closer to you, as he angled your head upwards to meet his lips in a kiss. Your eyes are fluttering shut in anticipation, waiting to feel the soft pressure of his lips—

“Did you do something to him?”

You pulled away at the booming voice that echoed off the walls of your floor, your breath catching in your throat. You look past Bucky at the same time he turns around, and he pushes you behind him, to shield you from the people that just walked into your sanctuary.

“I asked you a question, agent. You better answer,” Steve demanded, his voice low.

“She didn’t do anything,” Bucky said, reaching for your hand behind him. He squeezed it.

“That’s what you would say if she did something,” Steve dismissed.

“Steve,” Bucky said, exasperated. “She didn’t do anything!”

“How are we supposed to trust that? To trust her?!” Sam demanded, pointing at you.

Dread filled your gut as you looked down.

“I trust her!” Bucky shouted back. “She didn’t do anything fucking wrong! Why are you treating her like some sort of criminal?!”

“Bucky, are you even aware of what she can do? Do to your brain?” Steve asked. Then, he continued, voice accusatory, “She’s worse than H.Y.D.R.A. combined if she wanted to be!”

“But she’s not, Steve! She’s never been!” Bucky said, his voice pleading and desperate.

Your heart was breaking. You couldn’t take this. You couldn’t listen to this anymore. Not just for your own sake, but for his, too.

These were Bucky’s friends. People that he trusted, people that he cared about. He told you that he cared about them— even though he was frustrated with the way they were handling him. You didn’t want him to argue with them. Not over you. Especially not over you.

“Bucky,” you whispered, watching his shoulders tense. His head whipped towards you. “It’s fine.”

“What? No, it’s not.”

“They’re not gonna listen either way. Just go,” you murmured, squeezing his hand. “I’m not worth the fight.”

His eyebrows furrowed, and he almost looked offended over your words. You watched as his lips parted, about to say something to refute your words, but you slipped your hand out of his.

The second you did, Steve was crossing the room, a hand on his shoulder to guide him out. You can see Steve muttering something to Bucky that you can’t hear, but you tear your eyes away. Sam is staring at you, gaze hardened.

“We’ll have someone come and take your toys away by the end of the day,” he said, jaw clenched. “We’ve been getting noise complaints.”

You don’t bother responding, and he doesn’t bother waiting for a response. You’re left alone in the silence of your floor, feeling colder than before.

Bucky’s head is getting scanned, even though he doesn’t fucking want to put his head in this machine. Everyone was pressing him to at least run through with it once, to at least be able to compare his scan with the brain scan results from your other victims.

He hates the way they phrased it.

“I’m not a fucking victim. I was there on purpose,” Bucky grunted, clenching his hands into fists.

“Terminator, why would you go visit the siren on purpose? Are you trying to die?” Tony asked, clicking away on the holographic keyboard.

On the other side of the glass, Steve and Sam are grilling Natasha. Bucky has no doubt they’re yelling at her for telling him about the truth. Natasha’s face is steeled, and she’s not saying a single word in response. She's just letting the two men yell at her.

Finally, the cap on his head ascends and Bucky gets the hell out of the chair. He exits the examination room, and goes into the fray.

“— irresponsible it is to expose him to that?” Steve demanded. “Answer me, Natasha!”

“Barnes is a grown adult who can make his own decisions,” Natasha said, her voice even. “And I told him the truth eight months ago. So clearly, he’s been seeing her of his own volition.”

“Or he’s been having his brain fucking scrambled for eight months, Nat!” Sam said, dragging a hand down his face.

“She used sign language with me for half of those months,” Bucky cut in, everyone turning to look at him. “She didn’t speak a fucking word to me.”

“What?” Steve asked, eyebrows furrowing.

“I made her talk to me,” Bucky said, voice rising. “I forced her.”

“This is for your own good,” Steve said, clenching his jaw. “She can—“

“She’s done nothing wrong! She can what, Steve? Hurt me? Guess what? I can hurt you. I have hurt you!”

Tension began to settle right over the room like a thick blanket. They could hear the slow breaths of everyone in the room.

“Scans in,” Tony said, opening the door behind Bucky and cutting the silence in half. “Surprisingly— uh… His brain is completely clear. No sign of siren song or anything.”

Bucky’s jaw clenched as he released a deep sigh from his nostrils. He turned on his heel, heading towards the exit.

“Where are you going, Buck?” Sam called out to him.

“To go comfort my girlfriend,” he grunted, fists clenched at his side.

The lab doors slid open before he reached them, Fury and Clint walking in a second later.

“No can do Barnes. Go buy her some flowers and chocolates later,” Fury said, dropping a file on the nearest table. “I need all of you on the field ASAP."

His eyebrow furrowed. “What?”

“Satellite feed shows movement in the abandoned mine shaft that Stark took care of a handful of years back in Arizona,” Clint said, sighing deeply. “We’re not sure if someone’s back in the lab down there or if it’s just a fluke, but we gotta go check it out either way. Can’t send a regular team since the tech down there’s pretty dangerous if it’s what we think it is.”

Bucky wants nothing more than to crawl into your bed and hold you in his arms, but that will have to wait. He, along with the others, moves to get suited up. Issues aside, there’s problems that need to be dealt with— problems that are definitely not a fluke.

This underground site was a hotspot for seismic activity and every two fucking seconds their eardrums would start exploding in their skulls. Steve and Bucky were especially affected, with their heightened sound due to the serum pumping in their veins.

Comms were especially ineffective, with the fact the frequency kept jamming the channel they were using.

It was jarring. It fucking hurt. Bucky found himself on his knees, hands pulled over his ears with teeth gritted in pain before a fist would connect with his jaw that he didn’t expect while he was down.

Bucky could faintly hear for Steve to shout at Tony over broken comms to find out where the machine was that created the sound waves and to break it, but Bucky was certain that Stark’s suit was having issues against the sonic cannon.

Bucky couldn't tell how much time had passed as he was getting thrown around, beaten up by hands that he couldn't even open his eyes to see. He couldn't even rip his own hands away from his ears to try and guard his head. There was no room to think.

Silence suddenly splashed over him like a bucket of water.

He can hear his own breaths.

Bucky lowers his hands, confusion rushing through his body as he locks eyes with Steve. Both soldiers have pure adrenaline rushing through their bodies. Then, they notice a new presence. You.

Their eyes turned towards you, finding that you’re squatting down in front of an enemy, the poor man’s face held in your hand in a crushing grip. He was holding a gun weakly in his hands, trying to raise it to use against you, but it was really no use.

You’re in your tactical gear— and it’s the first time Bucky’s ever seen you in it. A hood is pulled over your head, and a mask is pulled over your nose and mouth. All he can see is your eyes. You wear fingerless gloves, and there are holsters on your thighs with guns and daggers ready to use.

“𝒮𝓉𝑜𝓅 𝒷𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔,” you whispered, your voice like a charm. The air shifted, vibrated with your words- not like the sonic cannon that was used to disarm them moments ago. It made you irresistible. They cannot help but fall into your trap, unable to fight against your command.

But you’re not speaking to Bucky or Steve.

Your eyes are glowing, swirling blue like the ocean— pulling in your victims into your song. You watched as his lips went from pink to blue, then you let him go. His body fell limp to the floor with a hard thud.

Both Bucky and Steve look around— all their assailants have stopped breathing. It’s only the two of them that are alive in this room.

You stand up tall, staring at the body for a few moments before turning towards Bucky, pulling both your hood and your mask off of your face. Concern is all over your features.

“You look like shit,” you breathed, holding his face in your hands.

“Well. That’s what happens when you can’t fight back,” he whispered, his voice hoarse as he leaned into your touch. “Why are you here?”

“Fury said he lost contact with you guys hours ago,” you quickly said, helping him to his feet. “I already extracted the others— they’re outside already. It’s just you two left.”

“Are you hurt?” he asked. He’s looking you over as if he can see through your gear.

“Do I look like I’m hurt?” you asked, frowning at him.

Bucky’s about to reply, to say something smart to make you smile. He doesn’t get the chance.

“You can control it,” Steve suddenly spoke, both of you turning to look at him. He looks conflicted. Angry. Not with you. With himself. “You— You weren’t just speaking to that one agent.”

“… I wasn’t,” you nodded, then turned away from him. “Come on. With the amount of vibrations that just happened, there’s no telling when this mine shaft will collapse.”

Bucky and Steve support each other’s weight as you lead them out. Stray agents try to come at the three of you, but crumble to their feet with a single word from your lips.

𝒦𝓃𝑒𝑒𝓁.

𝒮𝓉𝑜𝓅.

𝐸𝓃𝑜𝓊𝑔𝒽.

𝒟𝒾𝑒.

It’s silent in the quinjet when you’re all secured. The mine shaft fully collapsed with just enough time to spare, destroying everything and the remaining agents left inside.

The entire team is staring at you both. No one has said a word since the jet took to the sky, and you definitely aren’t going to be the one to speak first.

So, you decide to keep yourself busy. You’re sitting beside Bucky, a med kit opened up on your lap. Bucky has his head leaned back against the jet wall, eyes closed as he lets you do whatever you want— which is taking care of him.

“You would make a great dog trainer,” Tony suddenly said.

“Stark,” Bucky warned, eyes opening to glare at the man.

“I’m just saying. Does your ability work on just humans? Or all beings with a soul?”

“Um. I haven’t tried… animals,” you said softly, cautiously. You put down the bloodied gauze to switch out for a new one.

“You do talk normally! I thought you could only talk with sparkles and vibrations like sirens from folktales!” Tony exclaimed. You made a small face, frowning slightly as you cleaned the cut above Bucky’s eyebrow.

“Is he always this annoying?” you whispered to Bucky.

“I would say you get used to it, but I just ignore him, sweetheart. He doesn’t get any better,” Bucky whispered back.

You let out a soft snort, a smile fixing over your face. Bucky couldn’t help but mirror it as you placed the bandage on his face before moving over to his next wound.

“She smiled. Did you see that?” Clint murmured.

“I’m more floored by the fact Barnes smiled,” Natasha replied.

“Jesus,” Bucky grunted, the grin on his face disappearing.

“What happened to ignoring them?” you chuckled.

“I have a headache,” he replied to you. “A pounding one. None of these fucking idiots are making it any better.”

“Does tylenol work on super soldiers?” you murmured, rifling through the med kit. “Ibuprofen, maybe?”

“Probably not,” he sighed, looking at you. “I’ll try it though. Maybe a placebo effect will happen because I like you.”

You smacked his arm in his response, and he watched as a warmth crept up from your neck to your cheeks.

Bucky ignored the bug-eyed looks from everyone else in the jet as he took the gel capsules pill from your hand, and swallowed it down without complaint. He settled back into his seat to allow you to finish poking and prodding at his face until you were satisfied— even though he knew he would be fully healed by the time the jet landed.

Bucky would still kiss you later, and tell you he healed fast because you took care of him. You would believe him just because he said so.

“Debrief right away,” Steve ordered as the jet landed. Everyone grumbled as they got up, but they knew this was coming. The mission was a shitshow. You were fully prepared to go slink back into your corner of the compound when Steve’s eyes fell on you. “You, too.”

You paused, head whipping to Bucky a second later. He gave you a single nod.

You didn’t say a word during the debrief. You were stressed, even though all they were doing was arguing with each other over who took down the most agents before you came onto the field.

You didn’t realize debriefs were so laid back. The team laughed with each other. They were all still in their gear, still battered and bruised, but they were happy they were together. Happy to come back home, to be able to sit around at this table and be able to banter like this.

A bitter feeling was creeping up in your chest that you didn’t know how to stop.

You kept your gaze on the table, unable to make eye contact with anyone. You hoped they would all forget that you existed. You hoped to blend into the wall.

You felt Bucky’s pinky brush against yours under the table. In the corner of your eye, you saw him. He wasn’t looking at you, but his body was leaning towards you. Slowly, his pinky hooked into yours, comfort rushing through your body in waves.

“Well, I don’t know about you guys— but I am starved. Meeting over yet?” Sam asked, clapping his hands together.

“Sounds good,” Steve nodded.

That was all you needed to sprint out of your chair, the furniture clattering behind you abruptly as you raced for the exit. You could feel the weight of their eyes on you as you ripped the door open, running out.

You heard Bucky call out your name, heard him stand, heard his footsteps rush behind you.

You kept rushing down the hall, away from the conference room. You needed to put as much space between yourself and the rest of the team before you broke down.

Bucky finally caught you by the arm, turning you to face him.

“Doll,” he whispered, hands on your shoulders. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” you echoed his words in a breathless whisper, trembling in his hands. You were so close to breaking, to falling apart. “What’s going on is that I hate your fucking friends. And I hate myself for admitting it out loud to you because I love you so much and I know you love them.”

Bucky’s lips parted, eyes searching your face as his hands slid down your arms slowly. You watch as he a slow breath escapes his lips as he nods.

“That’s okay. You can hate them,” he whispered back to you.

“What?” you demanded, shocked. “They’re your friends, Bucky! How can you say—”

“I hate the way they treat you,” he cut you off, shaking his head. “You don’t think I’m pissed off? They find out that you’re useful, so they invite you to a debrief and expect you to just be okay with the neglect and silent bullshit they’ve been putting you through this entire time? I’m livid, too.”

“I don’t want you to fight with them because of me,” you murmured, swallowing thickly. “They only hid things from you to protect you.”

“And I’m choosing to argue with them to protect you.” Bucky replied, cupping your face in his hands. “Not because you need a white knight or because you’re weak, but because I love you. And I love you for you— not due to the fact that you made me or that you charmed me into it.”

“I would never charm you into loving me,” you quickly said, horrified as you grabbed onto his waist, desperate for him to know you were being truthful.

“I know,” he said, chuckling. His eyes were soft as his thumbs grazed the tops of your cheeks. “I told you. I trust you, sweetheart. I’ve always trusted you, even if others don’t.”

You let out a shaking breath, biting the inside of your cheek.

“Now what?” you whispered to him. “What do we do from here?”

“I’ll join you on your solo missions,” he shrugged. “Not that you need my help. I watched you take down an entire room by yourself, but I don’t really feel like going on any missions with those asshoeles any time soon.”

“I don’t go on missions often, baby,” you said, frowning at him. “I usually do interrogations. I rarely use my ability.”

“Oh, so you do dirty work? I can do that, too. Is that why your hands are always scrubbed raw? You’re washing them too much? Let me do it for you,” he said, a grin finding its way on his face.

“Buck,” you said, a soft giggle escaping your lips.

“I’m serious, doll,” he said, humming. “Let me just move my shit to your room, too. I already spend most of my day with you, anyway.”

“Not like I can stop you.” You shook your head even though you were smiling.

Bucky’s lips quirked up just a bit more before he leaned in, finishing the kiss that he wasn’t able to give you earlier. You sighed into him, relaxing into his touch. Bucky held you closer to him, tenderly. Gently. Just as he always did.

“I’ll harass Sam to give back your instruments,” he whispered against your lips, making you laugh again. “Heard he took them away— fucking bitch. Doesn’t he know I need that shit to sleep?”

“I don’t think he does, baby,” you hummed, wrapping your arms around his neck to kiss him again.

“I’m telling you,” he muttered, between kisses, “they’re all stupid. I’ll just keep you to myself at this point. They don’t know what they’re missing.”

“You’re going to share me, Sergeant?” you asked, raising an eyebrow at him as you pulled away from his touch briefly.

Bucky paused for a moment, thinking over his words. Then, he tugs you back into him, lips meeting yours once more as your feet are lifted off the ground. He’s carrying you towards the back halls to your floor.

“No. I’m not. Keep hating them, sweetheart. You’re mine,” he murmured against your lips, a smile on his face.

masterlist

a/n: there was no smut in this fic bc it didn’t feel right given the characterizations i gave bucky and reader. if i write a second part to this, the smut would end up being super super soft and vulnerable bc the two of them are very very gentle with each other

taglist: @duacruel @natsomens @decthaxhrcv @shortandb1tchy @iyskgd @ifuckwithyouanyday @miss-chuchu @bighappypiels @snnoopyy @messrkarmaismygf13 @thebuckybarnesvault @aekzla @simp4f1 @its-in-the-woods @lvrrinx let me know if you would like to be added/removed to my general bucky taglist :)

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vickyminajj · 8 days ago

Text

literally so good wtf!!!

yall gotta read this.

when the sun hits (it matters where you are)

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

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

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

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

You learned to stop reading it a long time ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was when your chest started to ache.

He wasn’t a boy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You didn’t touch your mark.

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

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

That summer, you grieved a stranger.

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

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

If he’d regret it.

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

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

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

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

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

Because you hardly believed it yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most days, you just ignore it.

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

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

This is what makes you good at your job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just enough to remember that it’s still there.

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

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

BREAKING NEWS: GLOBAL MANHUNT UNDERWAY FOR FORMER SOVIET ASSASSIN.

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

There he was. James Buchanan Barnes.

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

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

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

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

And then, all at once, the world tilted.

He was real.

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

You memorized the cadence of how people said his name.

At some point, you realized you were shaking.

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

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

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

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

Mind control, they said. Brainwashed. Hydra.

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

You hated that you understood it.

Then came the Blip.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You tried to tell yourself he wasn’t yours.

That you didn’t know him.

That the mark didn’t mean anything.

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

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

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

“Have you tried meditating?” someone asked once.

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

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

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

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

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

Just… a person.

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

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

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

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

And he was gone.

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

Time passed. You got used to the silence.

Then, five years later, he came back.

Just like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You clicked play.

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

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

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

But he didn’t need to.

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

And you didn’t vote for him.

You didn’t vote against him either.

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

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

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

And somehow, that meant something to you, too.

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

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

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

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

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

It starts with a nosebleed.

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

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

That’s pain.

You cross the street. Instinct before thought.

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

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

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

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

Finally, he blinks. “I’m—yeah. Fine.”

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

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

“Drink anything?”

“Two coffees and a Red Bull.”

You stare at him. “Jesus Christ.”

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

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

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

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

You consider lying. “Yeah.”

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

“And you still came over,” he says.

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

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

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

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

“Thanks,” he says. Eventually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not usually.”

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

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

“Yeah.”

“Doctor?”

“Nurse.”

He gives a little hum. “Makes sense.”

You frown. “Why?”

“Because you didn’t flinch.”

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

“Not that,” he says. “Me.”

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

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

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

You open your mouth. Then close it.

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

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

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

You say, quietly, “Don’t do that.”

He nods once. Doesn’t ask again.

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

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

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

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

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

Your heart skips.

You try to sound normal. “Who?”

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

“My soulmate.”

You freeze.

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

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

“Moved on,” he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then, softer: “See you around.”

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

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

It isn’t.

It’s just there. Quiet. Permanent.

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

Not in person.

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

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

For New York, it was basically another Tuesday.

It starts mid-shift.

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

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

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

And then your phone buzzes.

Not a call. A national alert.

EMERGENCY ALERT: ANOMALOUS EVENT IN PROGRESS. SEEK SHELTER.

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

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

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

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

The void collapses into itself like it was never there.

And just like that, you keep working.

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

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

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

Bucky stands at the edge of the stage.

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

You watch the broadcast until it ends.

You don’t say a word.

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

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

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

You squint. “You okay?”

“I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

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

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

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

You don’t talk about the void.

You talk about everything but.

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

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

“Still at the hospital?” he asks.

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

“That’s a shame.”

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

“I know the feeling.”

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

There’s a pause. Then—

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

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

You set your cup down.

“I didn’t think you wanted it.”

He blinks. “Why wouldn’t I?”

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

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

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

Then he smiles. Soft. A little tired.

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

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

You say your name.

It fills the air between you like a quiet truth.

He breathes it in like it means something.

“Can I see you again?” he asks.

Your throat tightens. But your voice stays steady.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think you can.”

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

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

But you do.

Twice that week, by accident.

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

You nod. "Every Tuesday at 7 AM."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You eye him. “Is this kidnapping?”

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

You get in.

It becomes a habit after that.

That’s the first ride.

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

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

But you talk about other things.

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

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

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

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

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

Bucky never texts.

Not once.

He calls.

Always.

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

One day, you ask him why.

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

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

You nod. “Makes sense.”

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

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

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

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

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

It looks like something alive. Something that remembers things.

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

You don’t ask.

Not yet.

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

“Did I miss the plot twist?”

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

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

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

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

You don’t rewind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He takes a sip. Shrugs. “Used to.”

“And now?”

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

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

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

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

“It didn’t,” you add.

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

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

You stop walking. “Why?”

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

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

And it is.

Somehow, it is.

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

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

“There’s gonna be a next time?”

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

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

He watches you take a bite. Raises an eyebrow.

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

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

You’re learning all of it.

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

One night, he’s quiet.

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

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

He inhales like it hurts. And then—

“Can I tell you something?”

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

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

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

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

You don’t move.

You don’t breathe.

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

Your heart twists.

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

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

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

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

He swallows. Hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You feel like you’ve stopped breathing entirely.

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

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

He sits back again. Slower this time. Exhausted.

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

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

His voice falters.

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

You blink fast, because the alternative is crying.

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

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

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

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

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

He doesn’t let go of your hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He breathes out your name. Just once.

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

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

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

You nod. Because you know.

He exhales. Then moves.

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

He doesn’t rush.

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

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

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

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

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

Not fate. Choice.

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

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

You’re already there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You nod, moaning out his name in reply.

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

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

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

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

It doesn't end there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All at once, it all comes back to you.

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

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

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

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

“Pass me the soap,” you murmur.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just love.

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

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

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

He traces a letter. Then another.

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

Your throat tightens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But right now, it’s this.

It’s weightlessness.

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

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