Slightly Mean Eddie If You Feel So Inclined 🥹🫶 Like Stern Kinda Like How You Do “mean Sirius”.

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Just One Kiss Masterlist

(photos not mine, storyboard very much mine)

Series Summary: Bucky Barnes has been chasing after you since he was ten years old, but you’re determined not to give in. How long can you hold out when all he’s asking for is just one kiss? (40′s happy ending AU)

Series Warnings: Language, excessive amount of fluff, slow burn, mutual pining

Part One - The Beginning

Part Two - A Walk Home

Part Three - Moving Day

Part Four - A Dance

Part Five - Girls’ Night

Part Six - The Fight

Part Seven - Christmas

Part Eight - The Question

Part Nine - First Date

Part Ten - Afternoon in the Park

Part Eleven - Last Date

Part Twelve - The Goodbye

Part Thirteen - The First Letters

Part Fourteen - Broken Silence

Part Fifteen - Finale

Epilogue Pieces

Bonus Material Masterlist

Colloquial Italian for Papa or Cardi-centered Ghost fics, Smut Edition: by popular request!

If there’s something you need that you don’t see, message me for specific phrases. ☺️ NOTE: this is NOT an exhaustive list.

NSFW language under the cut.

Cazzo: most of you writers already know that this means “cock,” but it can also be used as the exclamation “fuck!” As in,

“Succhiami il cazzo, cara” (Suck my cock, darling)

-OR-

“Cazzo! Non così forte!” (Fuck! Not so hard!)

Figa: pussy. There are a billion regional names for pussy, but another favorite of mine is cocchia.

Porco: pig, but as in calling a guy a pig in vile terms, not just sloppy ones. Saying Porco Dio (swine God) will make most Catholics bristle, so I think the Emeritii would use it all the time as an expletive)

Puttana: whore. NOTE! “Puttanella” is a diminutive, and I kind of find it a cute form of the word “slut.” Almost an endearment.

Figlio di puttana: son of a bitch

Stronzo: shithead, asshole, literally “piece of shit.”

Ti voglio fottere: I want to fuck you

Scopiamo: Let’s fuck.

Chiavami/scopami/fottimi: fuck me. Follow any of those with forte, and it means ‘fuck me hard.’

Ti voglio/ti desidero: I want you/desire you. ‘I want you so much’ is “ti voglio così tanto”

Sei così bagnata/fradicia per me: you’re so wet for me

Senti che duro che sono per te: Feel how hard I am for you

Coglione: ballsack (calling a guy a ballsack, usually means he’s an idiot)

Mi rompi i coglioni: you’re breaking my balls

Fottuto/fottuta (m/f) fucking (as an adjective, as in “la mia fortuna fottuta” (my fucking luck). NOTE: I’ve heard this used as a noun, especially in the masculine “Sei un fottuto!” (“You’re a fucking fuck!”)

Vaffanculo: this is the MOST common way to say “fuck you.” It literally means ‘go fuck someone’s ass.’

Tette: tits (vulgar). Seno means ‘breasts,’ but it’s more modest a term.

Spogliati: take your clothes off

Actor Sebastian Stan has come on board to produce “Blue Banks,” the feature debut of Romanian director Andreea Cristina Borțun, whose 2021 short film “When Night Meets Dawn” premiered in Directors’ Fortnight.

Stan, who was born in Romania, will produce the film alongside Romanian producer Gabi Suciu, French co-producers Jean-Laurent Csinidis and Jerome Nunes and Slovenian co-producer Ales Pavlin. Shooting will take place in Romania throughout the year and is set to wrap in October.

Best known for playing Bucky Barnes in Marvel Cinematic Universe films and also starring in A24’s horror comedy “Fresh,” Stan — who first met Borțun in Cannes in 2021 — said the film’s script hit close to home.

“Being that I was raised by a single mother, moved and lived in three different countries at an early age, with my mother determined to find me security and a better life out of communist Romania and my inability to grasp the sacrifice and the profound impact of all this at the time, this story really spoke to me on a deeply personal level,” said the actor.

“I’ve been an admirer of Romanian films for a long time, in awe of their rawness, authenticity and unfiltered, fearless lens on life. When Andreea talked to me about the story, I was immediately drawn in,” he continued. “I understood the characters, their journey, the inner struggle against the primal instinct we are born with, and especially the torn mother-son relationship at the core.”

awwwwwww

You’re still my winner

can someone let me know what happens at the ritual today i can't handle obsessively checking tumblr every four minutes

You’re losing me

Summary: Azriel has always put his duties as spymaster above his own needs and wants. How long can you let him keep putting work over you before boiling over?

Author’s note: I am so sorry about this babes, this is pure heartbreak. Anyway angst is a new genre for me so please lmk how this goes for you (good, bad, awful - lmk)

(1k celebration masterlist 🍾)

You sit in the library of your shared home, the soft cushion of your favorite armchair not providing the comfort it used to. The library was your favorite room in the house - you and Azriel spent thousands of hours in here reading independently, reading to each other, or just enjoying the silence with each other for company.

The room was beautiful- you both adored the entirety of the house, but this room drew both of you in immediately. It’s beautiful stain-glass windows creating brilliant hues of color to move about the room during the day, bringing life to the dark wood that adorns the walls of the room.

Vivid colors from the scenes in the stain glass window would dance across the floor, as if reenacting the depictions just for you two.

It’s dark now, the sun having set hours ago, and you can’t remember the last time you enjoyed the light of the room. The last time you and Azriel had enjoyed the light of the room.

The last time you and Azriel just enjoyed each other’s company without knowing he was going to leave in a matter of hours.

It was a song and dance you were familiar with by now - he’d return home from doing some work requested by Rhys, you’d make him some food, you two would snuggle or have sex, and he’d be gone by the time you woke up.

It wasn’t always like this, but the two years since the war have caused Azriel to dive headfirst into his work, accepting every scrap of work Rhysand would push his way, darting out the door like it was calling to him.

You hear the front door open, knowing who it is despite their silent entrance. Sighing, you stand up and walk out of the library, closing the door behind you.

You walked through the halls of your home, feet softly padding on the hardwood floor until you see him across the living room, still in his leathers.

It used to amuse you, when he’d return in his leathers, compared to you in your frilly nightgowns. It was quite a sight, the dark leather surrounded by the satins and cottons of your nightgowns.

Now it just furthered to prove the divide between you.

“Az, we were supposed to go to the bakery today to taste cakes.”

You hardly let him walk through the door before picking a fight, but his absence at the bakery hours ago left you ample time to stew in your negative emotions.

He runs his hand down his face, the purple and blue bruising under his eyes having grown more and more prominent over the weeks. Truthfully, you don’t want to start a fight, but you’ve let too many of these things slide in the past two years and you’re at your tipping point.

Missed dates, rescheduled dinners, missed anniversaries, cancelled trips. You had tried talking several times about it, but you need your fiancé around more than he has been. No amount of begging can make him do anything about it, though.

The most egregious of all was the continually delayed status of your wedding ceremony. You’ve had to rescind the invitations two times now, and you’re have tempted to send out fresh ones that just say “date: TBD”.

He just sighs in response, telling you, “I had to work, I had a mission.”

You sigh, knowing it was the truth. Your fiancé would never cheat on you, but he would put everyone else’s needs above his.

And above your own.

“Azriel, I really needed you today. It was important to me for you to be there.”

“It’s just a cake - pick any flavor you want. You know what I like,” he says, sitting onto the couch and taking off his boots.

“It’s not just a cake! This is your wedding too - I cannot make every decision for this. It’s supposed to be about us, not about me.”

You shake your head, exasperation bubbling to the surface, “I feel insane going to these appointments because I have a fiancé who never shows up! I swear I heard the florist say she pitied me because I pretended to be engaged!”

Azriel drags a hand down his face, “can we not do this now? I’m exhausted and want to bathe before bed.”

You huff out a laugh, as Azriel tries to move past you but you continue to follow him. “When would be a better time? You’re hardly home lately, and you leave at a moment’s notice for Rhysand.”

He whips his head at you, “it’s my job, my duty.”

You roll your eyes, “I’m pretty sure you could delegate a decent proportion of your work to the people under you that you both hand selected and trained yourself!

He sighs, exasperated, “it’s my job.”

A line you’ve heard a thousand times. You knew who he was when you began dating him, you’ve always known who he was and what he did.

But you thought his need to feel worthy would wane with time, not get worse.

“You put Rhys’s needs over mine!” You’re shouting now, something you never do, and Azriel bites back, “he’s my high lord - and yours.”

“That doesn’t mean he gets to keep you at his beck and call!” Your hands were running through your hair, unable to have the same argument again and again.

“That’s exactly what it means.”

“Oh so was it Rhys’s beck and call to push our wedding back three separate times?”

He whirls around at you, pointing, “That’s not fair and you know it.”

“Three times is not fair! It’s like you don’t even want it!”

His silence to your accusation rings through your ears. A damning, deafening silence.

You count to ten in your head, and he hasn’t made a sound, only looking at the ground.

His lack of words echo through your mind, even as his hands reach out to you, his desperate pleadings of “I-” and “baby” falling on deaf ears.

“I’m glad to see where we stand.”

You begin to turn, but stop yourself.

“When I told Nesta our wedding was delayed again, she told me if you really wanted it, really wanted me, you’d suggest we just run off and get married like Rhys and Feyre did.”

You take a shaky breath, “but you never did.”

You step back from him, unable to look him in the eye, unable to do much of anything, except retreat from your shared bedroom, softly shutting the door behind you.

Azriel stands in the now empty room, your footsteps ceasing down the hall but continuing in his mind. Every second he stands there, the further you become. He starts to move, starts to pick up his feet, his shadows urging him to go, go, go.

You can fix this, they tell him. Go, now.

His thoughts are broken up by Rhys’s voice, a smooth sound at such odds with the chaotic edges of his thoughts.

Az, I need you.

Azriel doesn’t even ask if it can wait. You’ll understand. He’s sure of it. He can fix things when he comes home. Rhys just needs him right now, he can help him out, then he can talk to you.

He scrawls a quick note on the table for you to find before retreating into his shadows.

He returns home a few hours later, his assistance speeding up Rhys’s needs. He stops to grab you your favorite flowers, a book you’ve been eyeing, and a necklace he’s had his eye on in the shop for ages.

The necklace gives him pause, as he realizes he first saw it eight months ago, its shine reminding him of your eyes.

Had it really been eight months?

He kept telling himself he was going to buy you the necklace for a special occasion, but so many have slipped by without his acknowledgment this past year.

Gods, he thinks, did he even celebrate your birthday?

Surely he hadn’t gotten that caught up in his work.

Had he?

The streets are quiet as he makes his way back to your shared home. He thinks over the past year and how he hardly saw you, and when he did, he often left not soon after seeing you.

He opens the door, the house eerily silent following your fight earlier. He deserved your silence. He couldn’t tell you how scared he was to marry you, tethering your soul to his for the rest of your lives.

You, who was so kind and so loving, shackled to him for eternity. He knew the insecurities were ridiculous, that you loved him with every part of yourself.

But that didn’t stop the self-hatred from oozing out of him every moment.

He hadn’t been there for you this past year. He had let his own need for approval overshadow your needs.

He groans, needing to find you so he can fix things. He walks through the house, not even realizing the book he’s carrying is a duplicate to the one sitting on the coffee table.

He starts really thinking, trying to remember the last time he had touched you, kissed you, held you.

Too long, he realizes, as he’s made his way through the whole house without a sign of you. A shadow wraps around his wrist, pulling him into the kitchen. He finds the note he had left earlier still on the table, but you had scrawled a second message underneath. Five words that break his resolve, forcing him to his knees. Your handwriting so clear, save for the splotched ink, wet from tears.

I wouldn’t marry me either.

Part two

this is exACTLY what I was looking for

A Kiss For Loyalty

masterlist

young!silco x gn!reader [1.2k][AO3]

summary: You find him after the attack on the bridge, and you're left to figure out how to tread the fragile state of him.

tags: young silco, a few hours after vander tries to drown him, angst, established relationship, hurt silco, not betad

a/n: mid-lecture we were looking at photos of gash wounds and i couldn't help but think of young silco's face fresh after the drowning, so ofc i had to write a comfort fic for him. kinda comfort. it's mostly angst.

Vander couldn’t look you in the eye, couldn’t form a single word. And at first, worry was what overtook you—Silco hadn’t survived, lost in the fight. But the more you looked at the larger man who had returned, the more you recognised something else: the aftereffect when he’d had too much to drink, had raised his voice, had felt guilty. Regret.

You find Silco in your bedroom, curled up on the worn mattress that had held you both some countless nights. It had overheard the visions for your new nation, the sloppy passion of drunken evenings, the quiet rise and fall of breaths during winter. Now it’s witnessing something new.

You’ve never heard Silco cry. Your bedroom shrinks at the sound of it, as if the corners darken and round themselves to hold and hush him. It’s a sharp sting, an undeniably pained cry bleeding into his palm, cupped around his mouth.

When you approach, you’re silent—assessing, investigating, worrying if this isn’t something you can fix. He’s never been so evidently broken. You’re not sure whether it’s about Vander or at the failure of their uprising, both of which had taken a large portion of his heart.

“Silco?” you whisper, taking another step forward.

“Don’t,” he manages, his sobs becoming quieter, but affecting his breath, bubbling out of him in squeaks and chokes. “Please,”

You shake your head, keeping your ground but keeping your eyes on him. He’s refusing to remove his reddened hands from his face, his hair curtaining over his left side, black, wet strings.

“You’re hurt,” you furrow, focusing on the blood down his hand. You rush forward, chest attempting to wrangle in a frenzied heart. “Show me, hey, S—”

“Stop!” he inches away from you, a childlike recoil that makes you freeze.

It’s a foreign behaviour, a desperation he’s never worn, never come close to mimicking. As far as you’ve known him he’s been the opposite. Even in pain, he stitched together a composure so convincing it made others doubt he could ever truly feel the hurt he was raised around.

You suppose that it’s something he’s worked on, refined throughout the years after taking on the responsibility of becoming Zaun’s face, alongside Vander. His ideologies had spilled straight from his heart into your ear. You understood why he worked so hard to maintain a strong face.

That man was gone; he hadn't entered the room this time.

He’s hiding, you see, shielding his face from you. This, you understand, is something he thinks may spare you from even a fraction of the pain he must be feeling. He’s always been so. To hoard the suffering and smile.

“You don’t want me to see you?” you ask, kneeling by the bed and retracting your hands.

Silco doesn’t answer, the chokes of suppressed sobs the only sound from him.

“It’s alright,” with a shake of your head, you turn around, facing the other way and leaning against the bed. “I don’t have to see you. Just… just talk to me,”

You wait a beat, then another, waiting for his voice, willing his voice to regard you again. Anything with a meaning that you could warp into a sign of hope.

“Please,” you add. It’s unintentionally desperate, pleading, giving him the power of controlling where the conversation goes. Something he needs, you suppose, something he’s certain is still predictable.

You hear a sharp breath behind you, then the shuffle of your bedsheets. Your eyes slide the farthest they can without turning your head, attempting to see any glimpse of him.

Then his hand enters your periphery, pale skin against scarlet, fingers twitching and shaking as his forearm rests on your shoulder.

You take gentle hold of his hand, turning it this way and that in search for wounds. But nothing. “Who…” your breath escapes, “Is this your blood?”

“Yes,” he responds, a word that pricks at your lungs sharply.

You see the moment clearer now. A wound so deep that to reveal it is its own pain.

You recall Vander’s face. The shame that distorted his features, how ugly it becomes as you try to piece together the fragmented pieces. 

“Vander did something,” you surmise. Your breath quickens, a sneer creating brackets around your flared nostrils. “Did Vander do something?”

You feel Silco’s breath near the top of your head, but before you’re able to turn, a weight settles over you. Momentarily, you hold, letting the firmness of his muscles process on your body, around your shoulders, his other arm snaking over your bones and holding you backwards to him.

You hear his soft sniffs over your head and slightly to one side, the bone of his cheek pressing against your crown.

There it is again. It’s a spear through your body, the sound of him. It strikes a fissure along your lungs, each sudden inhale a crack veining in your airways, each tremoring breath he takes an earthquake on your skull. Vander, what have you done?

You take his hand and hold it to your cheek, the cool back of his hand against the warm apple of your face. You interlace your fingers, a familiar practice, just as fluid as the locking of legs in the night, or the pressing of palms for a prayer.

Next was the chaste kiss on his index knuckle, for loyalty. Then on the middle knuckle, for liberty. Another on the ring knuckle, for luck. And lastly, a kiss on the pinky knuckle, for love.

It was a silent conversation he and you had made, meeting mouth to bone always easier than devoting a voice to each word.

His other hand wrapped around your wrist, bringing your arm upwards and over your head, your own knuckles meeting his familiar lips. But they tremble.

He breathes a kiss, gentle, on your index knuckle, starting, then failing. His breath falls jagged on your skin.

For a moment he restarts, the warmth of his air hovering over your knuckle. But again he fails.

Your frown deepens. Even more so when he moves your hand and skips to your pinky knuckle, the only promise fulfilled.

“How bad is it?” your voice slightly muffles against his hand near your mouth.

He swallows, clearing his throat. “At the… we were at the river, he—” he grips your hand slightly tighter.

“It’s still hurting?”

His clothes shuffle. “Yeah,”

“Let me look?”

Silence.

You start to think he’ll reject you again, not yet prepared to face you in whatever shape Vander had left him. But he loosens his arm around your shoulders and moves away, his presence at your back fading.

Your other hand remains in his, the anchor, as you shift on the floor and turn.

You look up and your eyes meet. No. One eye meets yours.

You sense his panic by how the one remaining blue jumps between your eyes, tips of his mouth downwards. He brushes aside his wet hair.

The left side of his face had been marred, a trench of exposed muscle, skin, and blood bared at you. The blackened sclera is haunting, a flame moving in tandem with the watery blue of his other eye.

You’re more than certain there’s nothing but indignation gushing through your veins. Yet, Silco remains beautiful. You realised a long time ago it was difficult for him to not be, no matter the state of him. And still now, left eye diseased with the molten of betrayal, mouth frowned by grief, fear in his good eye.

“It’s not over,” he whispers, leaning forward as you reach up and cup the unmarred side of him. “We’ll take back Zaun,”

There he is. No man, no river, could ever kill him. “You’ll show them,” you press a kiss to his index knuckle.

this opened up a great big hole beneath me and devoured me, everything about it was perfect

Like he means it

Pairing: Roommate!Bucky x Reader

Summary: You can’t take another night of hearing Bucky fuck a girl who isn’t you.

Word Count: 13.6k

Warnings: Bucky is a fuckboy (but he’s still a sweetheart); lots of talk about unrequited love (but is it?); mentions of sex; crying; lots of desperation; longing; heavy confessions; feels; happy ending

Author’s Note: This is written for the lovely cinema themed writing challenge of @elixirfromthestars ♡ I had this kind of idea for a while but when I read those lyrics it somehow immediately came back to my mind and I needed to make something out of it. This is kind of inspired by your Boulevard Confessions because I loved it so much! And damn, I've already written so much about roommate!Bucky but I can’t help myself lol, I love him. Also, this got a little long, I'm sorry. Still, I hope you enjoy! ♡

Hold My Hand "Pull me close, wrap me in your aching arms. I see that you're hurtin', why'd you take so long to tell me you need me? I see that you're bleeding, you don't need to show me again. But if you decide to, I'll ride in this life with you. I won't let go 'til the end." — Lady Gaga

Masterlist

You hear the giggling before anything else.

It’s always the giggling.

And, as always, it grates on your nerves.

It carves through the air, seeps into the walls, into the floorboards, into you. It tears its way inside and scrapes its manicured nails along the rawest and most sensitive parts of you, only to bury itself deep, where you can’t simply dig it out.

Then comes the keys.

The light, metallic jingle, so careless in its melody, but so troubling in its meaning.

Then the lock turning, the click soft and yet so irrefutable.

Then the door opening.

More giggles.

His breathy chuckles.

Then the door closing.

Shoes being kicked off, one hitting the wall.

You press the pillow harder against your ears, as if you could suffocate the sound before it reaches you, as if you could bury yourself deep enough under the covers to escape what you already know is coming. But you can’t. You never can.

Your brain usually does you the favors of drowning out the parts in the hallway, knowing it will probably make your heart stop in an instant. Today, it doesn’t do you any favors and you close your eyes, accepting the sting behind them.

And then, his bedroom door.

And if all that wasn’t torture enough, it was only the easy part.

Because now is when it really starts. It’s when your throat closes up, the breath in your lungs turns heavy, thick, impossible. Because no matter how many times this has happened, no matter how many times you laid here in your bed, still, so still, waiting for the agony to stop, pretending it doesn’t happen - it never stops hurting. It never stops breaking your heart - or whatever’s left of it.

At first, there is silence. The small period where you almost dare to believe, to hope.

But then comes the moaning.

High-pitched and breathy, hinting at a pleasure that strikes you with a hammer.

Someone else. Always someone else. Someone who is not you, someone who never had to try, someone who will never know what it means to ache for him like you do.

Then, quieter, but just as devastating, Bucky’s voice. The low sound of him unraveling. The sound of something slipping from him that you will never be able to take.

And that’s what breaks you most. That’s what turns the ache into utter misery. Madness even. It’s the inescapable proof that he has something to give - something deep, something intimate - and he is giving it away. Over and over again, but never to you.

You close your eyes, as always. It doesn’t help, as always. The sounds don’t stop anyway. The images come anyway - the touches you have imagined, the way his hands would feel against your skin, the way his mouth would shape your name if you were the one beneath him. The way he might look at you, if only he could see.

But right now, you are just the ghost in the next room, curled in on yourself, ears filled with the sound of someone else living the life you always wanted.

And in the morning, or right after, when the door will open again, when the giggling will turn to goodbyes, you will still be here, where you always are. Where you always will be. Waiting. Wanting. Breaking. Wishing you could turn it off, this feeling. This unendurable and never-ending heartbreak.

And that finally makes the tears flow.

They well up before they spill over, down the slope of your cheek, gathering in the hollow beneath your nose before falling onto the pillow and wetting it like a pool.

You squeeze your eyes shut, so tightly it should hurt, so tightly it should make them stop. But they come anyway. They come despite the barricade of your willpower, despite the way your body coils tighter in on itself. They come despite the desperate war you wage against them.

They come because you have lost. Because it’s too much.

The moaning doesn’t stop, and it’s too much. It’s the middle of the night, and it’s too much. It’s the third night in a row, and it’s too much.

Bucky’s hushed voice shatters something inside of you, you didn’t know was left intact a few seconds ago.

Your breath turns sticky, only half of it making its way up your throat. The other half stays attached to the walls of your throat like honey gone rancid. It refuses to leave completely, snagging and trapping you in the awful space between breathing and choking.

Maybe if it stopped altogether, it would be easier. Maybe suffocating would be gentler than this slow and unsparing death of heartbreak.

Your hands are shaking. You bury your face into the pillow, willing it to just take you as a whole and never let you leave again. The fabric muffles the shuddering sobs, but it cannot do anything for the way your body trembles. But you know that the sounds of pleasure in the other room will tune out the sounds of your cries. The pillow is being clutched so tightly, you might tear the fabric. But it’s your heart that’s being torn into so many pieces. So what is a pillow compared to the ruin of your heart? It’s nothing.

You are alone in your grief.

The moans stop for a second - abrupt, cut off mid-breath.

Bucky’s voice comes. He says something but you don’t catch his words.

However, you do catch the displeased groan of his girl for the night. Drawn-out and petulant. Annoyed.

Bucky speaks again. Firmer, this time. Again, it’s too quiet to catch it.

And then you hear your name. It’s muffled still, but you would hear your name coming from his lips always and forever. You know the exact cadence of it shaping his mouth.

Everything in you halts. Your breaths are suspended somewhere in your throat, caught between shock and devastation.

The girl scoffs. It’s a snappy sound. Almost whiny. You would have rolled your eyes if you weren’t so troubled.

The moaning resumes. But it is quieter this time. Controlled almost. A courtesy. A mercy. But not for you. Not in the way you wish.

And it makes you know.

He asked her to keep it down. For you. He must have told her he has a roommate - you - and that they need to be mindful, that you might be trying to sleep.

Somehow, in all the infinite ways he could have cared for you, this is the one he chose. Not to love you, not to want you, but to make sure his flings don’t disrupt your sleep. As if that’s the worst of it. As if the noise is what truly keeps you up at night, and not the agonizing truth of it all.

Harshly, your teeth sink into your lip, fighting to stifle the sob that trembles on the edge of you. But again, you are losing.

Because hearing your name in the middle of something so intimate, spoken in the same breath of his pleasure, is pure anguish.

Because your name should not exist there. Not like this. Not casually sneaking into a mind occupied with pleasuring someone else.

If he were to say your name in a moment like this, it should be a soft whisper against your skin, entangled in sheets, buried in kisses that steal the air from your lungs. It should be something private, something sacred.

Not an idle afterthought. A consideration. A passing thought before he loses himself in someone else’s body. You have never heard him say any girl’s name before when sleeping with them, but hell you also don’t try to listen too closely.

You won’t talk about this. You never talk about this. When the morning comes and you meet Bucky in the kitchen for breakfast, you will not mention it. Just like you never mention the other nights. Just like you never dwell on the soft apologies he offers when they got too loud. And just like always, you will brush it off, force a brittle smile, and tell him that it’s fine.

It’s not. It never has been. And you don’t think you ever manage to make it sound like you mean it. But you are gone before Bucky can push or apologize again. Or see how deep the knife has gone.

Because he might be careful to be quiet. But he will never be careful enough to stop breaking your heart.

So what is the point?

You don’t want to do another morning like this.

You can’t do another morning like this.

Not three times in a row.

Not when the night has already taken your soul and what was precious of it, barely sewn together by the time the sun fights its way through the window.

Not when you know how it will play out. Like it has the day before. And the day before that.

The door to his room will creak open, the girl already gone. You will hear the shuffle of his bare feet against the floor, the sigh as he stretches, and the yawn that usually makes it past his lips. He never tries to stifle it.

And then, him standing there and watching you.

Disheveled. Bed hair sticking up in a mess. You never let your mind wander to how her fingers might have something to do with that. His shirt would loosely hang over his frame, probably thrown on in a hurry, collar askew, revealing a sliver of skin you shouldn’t be looking at.

That lazy and slightly flustered smile. Sleep still in the corners of his eyes, his lips, his voice, when he greets you with a scratchy morning.

Like nothing happened. Like he didn’t shatter you into a thousand unfixable pieces last night. And the night before that. And now this night.

You will do your best to greet him back without sounding pained. Focusing on making coffee. The way the steam normally curls into the air, the warmth of the mug in your hands. You will have to focus on it as if it’s the only thing keeping you upright.

And despite knowing you shouldn’t - despite hating yourself for it - you will slide a cup toward him. As you always do.

His smile would shift. Settling into something fond, something warm, something that digs its claws into your ribs and refuses to let go.

Because that’s usually the worst part. He’s always so sweet with you. Thoughtful, affectionate in ways that don’t count. In the ways that make you feel like maybe if you just hold on a little longer, if you wait just a little more, he might start feeling what you do.

But you are certain, he won’t.

Because for him, everything seems fine. For him, this will be just another morning. Another easy, comfortable start to the day. With his eyes on you and sipping his coffee, exhaling like he is finally at peace, and leaning against the counter with a lightness that always has your stomach all up in shambles.

He always makes it seem so normal. Starting conversation with you, talking to you as if nothing has changed. Like you didn’t spend the night curled in on yourself, swallowing down sobs so thick they feel like razor blades. Like you didn’t spend the night choking on the sound of him with her.

He never mentions them. Never says any of the girl’s names, not that you even know what they are. He never makes plans to see them again. Just another faceless but very loud girl. One to be forgotten.

But tomorrow night, there will be another.

Tomorrow night will be the same.

And in the morning nothing will have happened.

Only him standing there with his sleep-mussed hair and that sweet, easy smile, drinking the coffee you should have stopped making for him a long, long time ago.

You rise out of bed, not even aware of it. The cold air nips at your tear-streaked cheeks, your sheets thrown back in a mass of tangled fabric still warm from the ball your body was curled in, breaking in silence. The pillow is still wet.

Your hands move on their own, tugging on slacks, yanking a hoodie over your head as though the fabric could hide you, save you from the devastation caving a hole into your chest.

You fumble for your phone before throwing open your bedroom door.

The moans are louder again. Yanking at your resolve and laughing at the way your tears keep coming.

Your feet move faster. You don’t actually run, but it feels like running. Like fleeing. Escaping a burning building before it collapses. The living room comes into view and it’s like a cruel trick, like the universe is taunting you, because all you see are phantoms.

The coffee machine on the counter. How many times have you two stood there, still tousled with sleep, you making coffee for the both of you because Bucky burns everything. How many times did he lean on the counter, watching you with that stupid little half-smirk, pretending to judge your process but always humming in satisfaction when he took the first sip.

The bookshelf in the corner - the one you swore you could build on your own. And you tried, you really did, but the second the screwdriver slipped and you gasped out loud, Bucky was there immediately. Hands on yours, worry furrowing his brows, grumbling about your stubbornness and continuing to grumble when he passive-aggressively built it himself.

You sat cross-legged on the floor, watching him, pretending to be annoyed but secretly savoring the way he kept glancing at you, again and again, to make sure you were okay and giving you instructions as to how it’s done but throwing you a glare when you insisted on trying again.

The carpet. The same one you both collapsed onto after a night out with your friends, too tipsy to move, giggling like teenagers as you pointed at the ceiling, pretending to find constellations in the uneven paint. He named one after you. You named one after him. You fell asleep there, side by side, and when you woke up he was so close. So close.

The couch. The one he practically melted into last week when he had a fever, whining dramatically until you caved and brought him soup. He kept pulling you back when you tried to leave, pouting like a child, demanding your attention because I’m sick, doll. Can’t ignore me when I’m sick. Until you sighed and sat down, letting his head rest in your lap. He fell asleep like that. Snoring. And you didn’t have the heart to move.

And now he is in his room, tangled in her, moaning into her skin, kissing her - like it doesn’t mean anything. Like none of it ever meant anything.

Your breath is uneven, your hands shaking as you grab your shoes. The laces blur, your vision fogs, but you can’t stop.

You throw open the door to your shared apartment, barely thinking, barely breathing, only moving. It swings back into the frame with a sharp sound echoing through the hallway, louder than you had intended. But it doesn’t matter now. Because you are sure that Bucky doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t notice. He is otherwise occupied and you are utterly drained of thinking about with what.

The air outside the apartment feels different. Lighter and cooler, but it doesn’t bring relief. It’s thin and hard to pull into your lungs properly.

Natasha’s place isn’t far. Fifteen minutes on foot. You tell yourself that over and over, like a mantra, like something to grasp on.

No more moans. Lost to silence, left in a place that feels little like home right now. Still, they resonate in your skull, haunting reminders of that pain you can’t dismiss, that hurt that hangs off you like a heavy burden.

You slow your steps on the staircase and inhale deeply. It trembles on its way out.

You hate how fragile you feel. How breakable. Hate how much this affects you. How much he affects you.

But you keep walking.

Just yesterday, you talked to Natasha and she offered you to stay with her for the night, looking at you all sharp and knowing, but in her own way sympathetic. You declined. Because you thought you’d be fine. Well, you were wrong.

It’s past midnight now, completely dark, but you don’t care.

You know, Natasha will let you in. And that will have to be enough for tonight.

The city is alive even at this hour. Neon lights glow in the distance, their reflection shimmering in rain-slicked puddles that dot the cracked pavement. Somewhere across the street, there is a group of people laughing, and disappearing around a corner. A car flies past, with headlights unlocking long shadows lengthening down the sidewalk.

You focus on those things. On the shoes thumping against the pavement. The way the crisp air is somehow refreshing as it weaves through the fabric of your hoodie and stings slightly at the tear-streaked skin of your cheeks, keeping you awake and propelling you forward. Not that you need any more motivation to leave.

You wind your arms around yourself like a shield, like a last-ditch effort to keep yourself from falling apart completely.

You don’t look back.

Somewhere above you, there is a creak of a window opening.

It makes you freeze for a small second, before tightening your arms around yourself and picking up your pace.

Your stomach spins violently because fuck, you know that sound. You know the groan of that window when it moves, just a little off its hinges, just enough to make a noise you’ve heard a hundred times before. Because it’s the window of your apartment. And it makes a noise that has never felt so much like a punch to the gut.

“Y/n?”

You close your eyes.

“Y/n!”

Your name spills from his lips, laced with confusion, infused with something that makes your fingers clench around your arms.

You could ignore him. You should ignore him. Just keep walking, keep moving, pretend you didn’t hear.

But you can’t. You never can.

With a slow, dragging breath, you turn around.

Bucky is leaning over the frame, his torso reaching out the window, bare from the shoulders down. He is bathed in the hazy yellow glow of the streetlights.

His hair is messed up, brown tendrils all sticking in different directions. His brows are knitted in confusion. His lips in a frown so full of worry. And it’s just too much.

Too warm. Too intimate. Too familiar.

Your chest stutters, lurches, and swirls itself into a dozen moving shapes that hurt more than they should. Because he stands there shirtless. Shirtless. And you know why.

You swallow back your hurt, but it stays stuck in your throat and crawls right up again to make you taste it on your tongue.

You force your gaze away from staring at the curve of his collarbone, the slope of his throat, the soft lines of his skin, the hard lines of his muscles that she had her hands on just minutes ago.

“Where are you going?”

The tone highlights his concern, thick with the kind of worry that would have meant everything if it weren’t coming from him like this, not now. His voice is rough, remnants of the time already spent with that girl, but all you can hear is that damn worry in it.

As if you owe him an answer. As if he isn’t the reason your chest feels like it’s been hollowed out and left to rot.

You draw in half a breath and look away - down the street, down at your shoes, the bricks of your building. Anywhere that isn’t him.

“To Nat’s.”

It’s clipped and short. You don’t want to explain, don’t want to talk, don’t want to stand here in the night air beneath the window of the apartment you share with him like some pathetic wreck while he worries about you.

“Nat’s?” You can hear the bewilderment in his voice, the way he is trying to piece it together, the way his brain is already working overtime, scrambling to make sense of this - and you can practically feel the moment he decides he won’t let it go.

“Somethin’ happen?” His voice just won’t stop to be so perplexed, so concerned. It is softer now, but you only glance up at him briefly before averting your eyes again.

Because damn Bucky, yes, something happened. Everything happened. Every night that he brings someone home, every touch that belongs to someone else, every soft moan that isn’t meant for you.

All these moments, all these memories, every feeling left unsaid that swivels and stings and grows into what it is now - a storm inside your rib cage, a hurricane of almosts and never wills and why does it have to be like this?

But of course, you can’t say that. You won’t say that.

So you just shake your head, tighten your arms around yourself, and take a step back.

“Go back to bed, Bucky.”

Because you can’t do this right now. You won’t do this right now.

Not when you are already about to break.

“I- What?”

His voice is a little raspy, puzzled, and under any other circumstance, it might have been endearing. On a normal day, if this were some cozy Sunday morning and not the breaking stretch of midnight, you might have smiled at the sight of him like this - hair in a wild mess, eyes a little heavy from the day, bare shoulders shifting in the glow of the streets.

But this is not a Sunday morning. And nothing about this feels good or cozy or right.

You are so damn exhausted. So damn drained.

“You-” he starts again, brow furrowing deeper, but before he can get another word out, hands appear - slim fingers wrapping around the thick of his bicep, tugging, pulling, trying to drag him back inside.

Bile is pooling at the base of your throat.

She’s alone with him up there, in the space that you have spent so much time making into something warm, something filled with comfort. A space where you feel home. With him. And yet, it’s that random girl in there, laying in his bed, under his covers, in his scent, in him.

“Bucky, come on.” Her voice is thin and peevish, thick with impatience. And exhaustion you believe she has no right to feel when you are the one who has spent the time suffocating under her presence.

But Bucky doesn’t move.

His hand only grips onto the windowsill tighter, muscles in his arm locking.

And his eyes stay fixed on you.

Still searching. Still confused. Still trying to understand.

And it makes your hands clammy.

The way he looks at you like he is reaching for something just beyond his grasp, something that eludes him no matter how hard he tries to hold onto it.

He huffs out a breath that just borders on frustration when her fingers won’t stop pulling at him.

“Hold on, doll-” he calls out to you and unwinds her hands from his arm, barely sparing her a glance as he leans out the window again. There is a little something in his tone when he speaks to you again. Something like exasperation. But it’s not meant for you. “What’re you doin’ at Nat’s? Tell her it’s the middle of the goddamn night. Why would she let you walk over to her? She knows it’s not safe.”

You shake your head, already half turning away again. You just cannot do this right now.

“It’s fine. Just go back to bed, Bucky.”

“Y/n - hey. What’s wrong? What’s this about?” There it is. That softness in his voice. That concern. And it hurts. Because he doesn’t get it.

“Go. Back. To bed,” you repeat, sharper now, gritting it out between clenched teeth.

But Bucky has always been stubborn. And so infuriating. It’s like he doesn’t hear you at all.

“C’mon doll, did something happen? Talk to me,” he urges, voice gentle but he doesn’t seem to like the way you look as if you would bolt around the corner any second. His tone is coaxing in a way that makes you ache because this is what he does. This is what he has always done - pulling you in, making you feel safe, making you feel cared for, making you feel like you matter. Like he means it.

And it’s cruel. So cruel.

Because you are in love with him.

And he is standing in that window, bare-chested and rumpled from a night with another woman, while you are in slacks and a simple hoodie beneath him with your heart cracked wide open, bleeding into the pavement.

“I don’t wanna do this right now, Bucky,” you snip, voice losing patience. But you are so tired.

Bucky sighs and runs a hand through his hair, frustration growing, seeping into his voice. “You’re killin’ me here, sweetheart. Just tell me what’s goin’ on. It’s cold out, doll. You’re not even wearin’ a jacket.”

You swallow down a choked breath.

Because this is making things so much worse.

That he cares. That he is looking at you like this, like you matter, like you are his.

Like you are something he wants to figure out. And he wants to take his time with. Like he wants to fix you.

But you are not broken. You are just in love.

“Bucky,” that girl calls out again, dragging his name out, voice honey-thick and pettish. “Come on babe, let it go. Just-” She tugs at his arm again, nails skimming along his forearm. “Come back to bed.”

But he doesn’t move.

Doesn’t even glance at her.

His mouth twitches, jaw ticking as he exhales sharply through his nose, shaking her off with a firm roll of his shoulder. “Would you quit it for a sec?” His voice is edged now, tinged with a kind of terse impatience he seldom ever lets out. “Jesus, m’tryin to talk here.”

The girl huffs, clearly displeased, but Bucky doesn’t spare her another second.

But the one second he threw his head around at her was your chance. Your feet move before you can think, before you can talk yourself into staying, because if you do, if you let him pull you in, let yourself hope-

“Woah, doll, hey. Wait, I-”

His voice is frantic, stammering over its own syllables and filled with too many things your mind is too jumbled to focus on.

But it makes you stop your body in the midst of a step. And you grind down on your teeth against the frustration burning inside you.

You should keep walking. Shouldn’t have stopped.

But Bucky is leaning even further out now, his knuckles bracing against the sill, the night air tousling his hair, eyes wide and concerned, searching. One of his arms is reaching out, down to you as if he could touch you like this.

“Hold up, yeah? I’m comin’ down.”

You whip halfway back to him, brows snapping together, heart slamming against your ribs.

“No, you-”

He’s already pulling himself back inside, shaking his head as if it should be obvious. “I’m coming down,” he repeats, more insistent, more sure. Leaving no room for argument.

Your fists squeeze the fabric of your hoodie. Your stomach churns. “Bucky-” you try again. But he has already made up his mind.

“Wait there, alright?” His voice dips lower, steadier but still urgent. Resolute, as if he would run after you if you bolted down the street. “Doll. Promise me you’ll wait.”

Something in his tone, the look he is giving you, like he’s begging, almost a sweet-talking declaration. It’s catching your breath somewhere in your throat.

You could run.

You should.

You should turn right back around, disappear into the night, and leave him standing there, shirtless and confused and worried.

But you hold his gaze for just one long and heavy beat, then exhale shakily, shoulders dropping slightly.

“Okay,” you say weakly.

Bucky nods determined and taps his fingers against the windowsill, before rushing away, leaving the window wide open.

And you stand there hating yourself for waiting.

Hating yourself for hoping.

Technically, you could just leave.

Take a different route to Nat’s apartment, slip into the dark veins of the city where his voice wouldn’t reach, and let him walk out onto an empty sidewalk with his hair still tousled from another woman’s fingers and the taste of someone else’s lips still lingering on his own.

You could make him feel just a fraction of what you feel, with something hollow pressing up against his ribs when he finds nothing but cold pavement where you used to stand.

But you don’t.

You know you won’t.

Because it wouldn’t just frustrate him. It would hurt him.

And that’s the one thing you could never bring yourself to do.

Not Bucky.

Never Bucky.

You know him. The way he chews at the inside of his cheek when he’s trying not to say something reckless. The way his brows pull just a little too tight when he’s agitated but trying to play it off like he is fine. The way he folds his arms over his chest, not because he’s closed off, but because he needs something to hold onto.

You know exactly how he would react if he stepped out here and you weren’t there.

How the slight crease between his brows would deepen. How his fingers would twitch, opening and closing, like he’d missed his chance to catch you. How his lips would open and he would stare helplessly around and call your name.

And god, as much as this pain is devouring you from the inside out, pushing its way into the light but leaving you sitting in the dark, as much as your heart feels like being torn apart with unsaid words and unmet confessions - you cannot stand the thought of hurting him.

So you stay.

With feet planted on the concrete, fists clenched so hard, that your fingers start to cramp. You lift your trembling hands to your aching cheeks to hastily scrub away the fresh wave of tears surging forth downwards, willing your body to erase any evidence of your devastation.

But the more you wipe, the more it hurts.

You believe your cheeks are red from the effort of wiping so much, eyes swollen and puffy, your body trying to rebel against all of your commands.

Inhaling shakily, you force the breath down, down, down where you can pretend it doesn’t hurt so much. You angle your face slightly away from the building, hoping the dim spill of moonlight won’t betray your inner struggles.

Because the moment Bucky steps out that door, it will be the same as always.

He’ll look at you like you are his best friend. Like you are his safe place. Like you are the person he can always count on.

And you will look at him like you aren’t falling apart.

Like your heart isn’t unraveling at the seams.

Like you aren’t drowning in a love that will never be returned.

The door swings open with a force that startles you, the sound of it hitting the frame a little too sharp against the night.

Bucky storms out onto the sidewalk like he’s got something urgent to say, like the world might stop spinning if he doesn’t get to you fast enough. He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t pause. Just moves straight to you, his steps quick, closing the space before you can change your mind about standing here. He has a crumpled shirt thrown on and it hangs a little off. But it makes you want to run so hard.

His fingers wrap around your arms, not hard, not forceful but firm.

Those warm hands on you make you want to crumble.

His breath is coming fast, chest rising and falling, like he ran down the staircase to get here as fast as possible.

His eyes are so deep, deep and blue, roaming your face with so much intensity, searching and scanning and pausing.

Shadows cast over his sharp cheekbones at the way his brows are furrowed, his lips slightly parted.

“What’s going on, doll? You been cryin’?” His voice comes out rough and he talks fast. Urgent, breaths spilling over themselves as he rushed through the words, almost tripping on them in his desperation to get them out. “Why’ve you been crying? What happened?”

His thumb twitches against the fabric of your hoodie.

You open your mouth, close it again. Your throat is dry from the sobs you tried to silence earlier. You shake your head, a knee-jerk reaction.

“I was just going to Nat’s, Bucky. Nothing happened.”

It’s a weak excuse, said in a weak voice.

And you hate how it makes Bucky’s expression shift. That tiny wounded something that crosses his features, something that shouldn’t be there, because you did wait for him, you didn’t leave, but it’s still not enough. You lied to him. And he knows it. And he’s hurt. And you hate yourself.

He shakes his head, his jaw going tight.

“No,” he murmurs, eyes never leaving you, voice so low. “That ain’t nothin’, doll. C’mon. You’re runnin’ off in the middle of the night, how could this be nothing?”

You look away. Because if you keep looking at him, him with his concern and confusion and hurt all interflowing in the pool of those blue eyes, you won’t be able to hold yourself together much longer.

You swallow hard and force yourself to breathe slowly.

The sting behind your eyes is never really leaving you.

Bucky leans in, just a little. His grip on your arms tightens, but it’s not harsh. Only insistent. Desperate for you to give him something here.

“Somethin’ up with Natasha?” His voice is gentle, like he knows this has nothing to do with her, but he has to ask anyway to go through all the possible options of what might be going on.

“No,” you croak, barely managing the word.

He softens at the sound of it, but that frown doesn’t ease.

“What’re you doing then, huh? Why’re you running off like that? S’ not safe, you know that.” His voice is soft. Almost like he’s trying to soothe a skittish animal. But the concern is wrapping around every word. “What’s got you so upset, sweetheart? Talk to me, yeah? Please?”

His voice takes on a desperate intensity. Like he’s begging you to just let him in. To make him understand.

You bite down hard on your bottom lip, willing it not to tremble, willing your face not to crumble right in front of him, but the air is too thick for your airway, making it harder and harder to breathe.

And Bucky is looking at you, like you are breaking his goddamn heart. Like you took a shot straight for it.

He is so full of worry, it looks painful, the crease of his brow always there when he’s thinking too hard, when he’s feeling too hard. His lips are still parted, like he wants to beg for an explanation, for some string of words that will make this all click into place and turn this into something fixable.

Because Bucky Barnes fixes things.

But this might be the only thing he can’t fix.

His hands on you are a contrast to the way you feel as if you’re falling apart. You hate how much you just want to collapse into it, to let yourself lean into him, let him hold you up. Because he would. You know he would. He would pull you in without hesitation, wrap his arms around you like he has done so many times before.

But you don’t want him to hold you. Don’t want him to hold you like a friend.

You want him to hold you like he means it. Like you mean something more than the sum of all the nights you spent choking on your own silence, swallowing words you could never say.

So all you can do is stay frozen, bones locked, eyes burning, heart splitting itself open in the middle of the street where he doesn’t even know he’s killing you.

“I-”

You try. You really try.

But then the door swings open again. And the sound of it alone is enough to send a bolt of ice down your spine.

Because this time it’s her walking out.

She steps out onto the sidewalk like she has every right to be a part of this moment.

Like she hasn’t spent the first part of the night in Bucky’s bed. Like she hasn’t been touched by him, kissed by him, fucked by him, wanted by him in a way that you have only ever ached for.

Like she hasn’t taken something that was never hers to have.

But it’s not yours either.

She looks so composed, too. More put together than you would have imagined. Her hair smoothed, clothes adjusted, skin glowing in a way that tells you she wasn’t just sleeping up there - she was living in something you’ve been dying for. She probably took a moment in your bathroom to check herself, to fix her lipstick, maybe even to admire herself in the mirror while you were downstairs, breaking apart.

She had the time for that.

Meanwhile, you can barely stand.

Your body is alive with magnitudes of unspoken things, suffocating. You feel like you’ve been sanded down, like a piece of wood, leaving nothing but the ache and longing and all the words you can’t say. This destruction is slow and ruthless, it doesn’t come with an explosion, but rather a slow erasure.

Like you’re being unmade. Piece by piece.

Like you were never meant to be here in the first place.

And Bucky is still looking at you.

Not at her.

You.

And maybe that should be enough. Maybe it should mean something.

But it just puts more pressure on the knife that is already turning around in your flesh.

The girl doesn’t leave and Bucky stiffens.

“Bucky,” she drawls, almost lazy, like she’s bored with this already. “Are you coming back up, or…?”

Your stomach lurches.

You feel exposed, scraped raw, like you’ve been trampled over, flattened by something massive, left behind for everyone else to step around.

Bucky lets out a slow breath through his nose. His jaw works under pressure. And then, he huffs. Annoyed. Like she’s interrupting something important.

“Go home,” he flatly tells her, his attention still on you. Not even addressing her with a name. Perhaps he doesn’t even know it.

“Seriously?” she scoffs, crossing her arms. Her eyes flick between the two of you.

Bucky exhales another breath and drops one of his arms from you to scrub it over his face, pushing through his hair. He turns toward her just a little, stance rigid.

“Yeah, seriously,” he mutters, already turning back to you. “I’ll call you a cab if you need-”

“God, you’re such a dick,” she snaps, cutting him off, rolling her eyes with an exasperated huff. “Unbelievable.”

And then she’s gone.

But so are you.

You don’t even think about it. You just move.

Your arm slips from Bucky’s loosened grip, your body already shifting, already turning, already pulling you down the sidewalk, away from him, away from this.

It’s pathetic. You know this. But you have to get away.

Your vision is a blur, the streetlights smearing into a soft, hazy glow against the wetness welling in your eyes, and no matter how much you try to breathe through it, it’s too much. Simply too much.

You’re hurting. And you need to go. Now.

But Bucky doesn’t let you.

“Woah, whoah, hey!” His voice is quick, rushed, and then he is moving, closing the space between you. And this time, he cuts you off completely, stepping right into your path, right in front of you, blocking the way like a wall. He’s so broad in front of you, and so fucking present, making it impossible to escape.

You stop so fast it almost sends you stumbling back.

His eyes flick over you so quickly, so intensely, scanning for something he doesn’t understand but is so desperate to find.

“Alright,” he exhales, low and careful, holding his arms out as if ready to stop you again if you make a run for it.

“You want me to put you in chains to keep you still?”It’s a weak and failed attempt at humor.

And it’s not funny. Not even close.

His voice is too thin, too strained, and there is something in his eyes, something tight and aching, that makes it clear he is not even trying all that hard to make his joke work.

You don’t smile. Don’t look at him. Arms still around yourself.

Bucky’s throat bobs as he swallows, as he shifts his weight, as he lets out another slow and deliberate breath. He moves so slow. As if any tiny movement of him would make you walk away from him.

“What’s going on with you, mhm?” His voice is so soft. So concerned. Brooklyn warmth and worry combined with something gentler than you can handle right now.

“What’s this - this fight-or-flight thing you got goin’ on?” he continues, tilting his head just slightly, watching you too closely, reading too much. “You’re rushing off like the damn place is on fire. The hell is that about, doll?” Still so soft. So cautious.

His eyes are on you like you are the only thing in the world that matters, like he’s trying to solve you, like if he just looks long enough, he’ll figure it out.

But if he really understood, if he really found out, everything between you would change.

And you can’t handle that. You can’t handle anything at the moment.

“Just drop it, Bucky, alright?” It comes out sharper than you mean for it to. Harsher. A little spit of venom that you hate yourself for the second it hits the air. He doesn’t deserve your attitude. But you can’t hold it back.

You see the way it lands. The way his brows pull in tighter, the way his lips press together, the way his chest rises and falls so measured. But it’s all not out of irritation. He just tries to figure out where that came from. What is happening. What has you react the way you do.

His voice is even and calm. But oh so careful. “I don’t think I will, doll.”

You look anywhere than at him and his troubled face.

Your throat tightens so fast, you have to swallow hard against it, teeth digging into the inside of your cheek as you blink up at the sky like maybe that keeps the tears from spilling over.

And Bucky watches all of that.

His expression stays soft, but his eyes are burning with something deep, something real, something that makes you feel like you might actually drown if you keep looking at them for too long.

“Y/n,” he almost whispers, and it sounds so pained. “Why are you crying, sweetheart.” He’s so gentle, so tender, so fucking careful like he’s afraid that if he pushes too hard, you’ll just break.

You shake your head, arms around yourself tightening. “I’m fine.”

Bucky makes a quiet noise in his throat, somewhere between a sigh and a scoff, something deep and disbelieving.

“See, that’s bullshit.”

You’re about to turn again, but he anticipates and gets hold of your arms.

“Look,” he sighs, heedfully taking off a hand of you to rub it down his face. “You don’t wanna talk? Fine. You wanna bite my head off cause I’m askin’? Fine. But don’t stand here and tell me you’re okay. Because I’ve got eyes, doll, and I can see that you’re not.”

You want him to stop.

You want him to turn around.

You want him to leave you here to fall apart in peace.

But he won’t.

And you don’t know what to do with that.

And you break.

No matter how hard you bite your lip, it doesn’t matter.

The tears slip and streak down your face before there is anything you can do. A sob follows. You can’t choke it down. Your shoulders shake, your breath stutters, and your face tilts towards the ground as you bring trembling hands up to wipe at your cheeks, in a futile and desperate attempt to regain composure. It’s useless.

You feel so pathetic.

Embarrassed. Ashamed that you ran off like this. That you’re standing here, crying in the middle of the night, on a sidewalk with no explanation, making a fool of yourself in front of him.

And the second your face crumbles, his does, too.

The second your breath hitches, he is moving.

Strong arms envelope you, winding tight, pulling you straight into his chest like he doesn’t even need to think about it. Not for a single second.

You let him.

Because it’s either this, or you’ll collapse down onto the asphalt.

His grip is firm, grounding, warm in a way that makes you ache even more. His hand cradles the back of your head, tucking you against him, and you feel the press of his lips there, gentle, but somehow rough.

Like your pain is his own.

“It’s okay. Shh… it’s okay,” he breathes, pained and low, the words pressed into your hair, into your skin. Making space between your ribs. “Oh, doll.” He presses you tighter to him. His hand brushes over your hair. “It’s okay.”

There is something so deep and aching in the way he talks to you, like the sound of his own voice hurts him. Like you hurt him.

His other hand moves over your back, soothingly, trying to give you some strength.

“I gotcha,” he breathes. “M’here, doll. Okay? Just breathe. Gotta breathe for me, baby. Please.”

It’s a slip. Baby. A mistake.

And it makes you cry harder.

Because it’s so soft. Gentle. Because it falls from his lips like something that’s always been there, something that’s always belonged to you.

Except it hasn’t.

It doesn’t.

Not in the way you want.

You don’t know what he calls those girls he takes home. If they get to hear him say it. Girls who have felt his hands in places you never will. Girls who have heard his voice rasp against their skin in the dark.

But you are not one of those girls.

You never will be.

And you know you will never be able to untangle that damaging wrench in your stomach.

So hearing him call you that. Baby. Like it means something. Like it’s yours. Like it hasn’t been whispered in the dim glow of your apartment, murmured against someone else’s lips, someone else’s skin, just someone else just hours ago.

It’s too hard. too cruel.

You wish it didn’t matter. You wish it didn’t rip through you the way it does, splitting you down the center, carving you open.

But it does.

Because even if it doesn’t belong to you, you still want it.

So you cry harder.

Sobs wrack through you, your chest hitching with the force of them, your hands gripping the fabric of his shirt, clumping it in your fists.

Bucky feels it and he hears it and he grips you tighter, pulls you closer.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he coos, voice just above a whisper, more desperate now. Like he’s drowning in your hurt right along with you.

“Sweetheart,” he tries again, voice strained, thick. His lips are in your hair. “Please talk to me. Make me understand, baby, please! Tell me what’s wrong.”

But you can’t.

Because what the hell would you even say?

That you’re in love with him?

That you’ve been in love with him?

That seeing him with her - hearing the sounds that bleed through the walls, the ones you’ll never be able to unhear - feels like being skinned alive?

That you want him in a way you shouldn’t?

That you want him in a way he will never want you back?

You won’t.

So instead, you just press yourself harder into his chest and squeeze your eyes shut, letting him hold you like you are something precious. Like you are his. Even if you are not.

“Help me understand here, baby. Please,” he repeats with a voice so soft, that makes him seem afraid you might break apart completely if he speaks any louder.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe you’re already in pieces at his feet, shattered beyond repair, and he just hasn’t realized it yet.

He lets you cry when you don’t answer, hand stroking up and down your back, the other soothing over your head. He whispers into your hair, words you can’t even process, just the deep cadence of him, the low rasp of his voice against your temple.

His lips move to your forehead, brushing over it. His breath is warm against your skin. You don’t have it in you to pull away, but you wish you would.

Because none of this makes it any easier.

Because his hands feel too good, too steady, too right - and it’s a lie.

Because it’s him.

And that means it hurts.

You wish he would just go and let you have your pathetic heartbreak alone.

But Bucky Barnes has never been the kind of a guy to leave things unsolved.

He pulls back just slightly after a while, just enough to get a better look at you, and when you try to duck your head, to keep him from seeing too much, he doesn’t let you.

Strong, warm fingers cradle your face, thumbs brushing over the damp skin of your cheeks, tilting your head up and forcing your gaze to his.

He looks wrecked.

His brows are drawn, lips parted, chest rising and falling unevenly. His hands tremble just a little against your skin, but his grip stays firm. Solid.

“Don’t look away, doll. Eyes on me, yeah?”

You swallow hard, jaw tight. “You just ruined your good night,” you say, the words falling out bitter, self-deprecating, stiff with something that tastes like resentment but feels like heartbreak.

Bucky’s frown deepens, his lips pressing together, eyes scanning over your face like he’s searching for something, anything that’ll make this make sense.

“The hell I did,” he scoffs, shaking his head. Confused you even brought this up. “I don’t give a shit about her. Don’t even know her name, if I’m bein’ honest.” He lets out a huffed laugh.

But you don’t.

Because somehow this makes it worse.

And you hate it.

You hate that some part of you wanted her to mean something.

Because if she meant something, if she was special, then at least this ache in your chest would have a name. A reason. A shape you could hold in trembling hands and squeeze so hard that it stops hurting at one point.

Then, at least, you could maybe finally accept that there is no hope. No reason to hold on to those feelings.

But Bucky just shrugs.

It meant nothing. It never meant anything. Not with them.

Not with the girls that come and go, the ones who pass through his nights in the same easy way the hours do - fleeting, ephemeral, touched, and forgotten.

Not with anyone. Not even with you.

You have spent so long feeling this, holding onto it, trying to keep it hidden beneath layers of friendship and longing and careful restraint. You have spent so long pretending that it is fine, that it doesn’t matter, that you can live like this - on the sidelines, just the girl in the other room, in the shadows, in the spaces between what you want and what you’re allowed to have.

And he stands here and looks you in the eyes, telling you that it is nothing. That she is nothing. That they - all of them before her, and all of them after her - are nothing.

You can barely breathe past it.

You don’t say anything.

And Bucky freezes.

His hands, where they cup your face, stop their soft, absentminded strokes. His thumbs, which had been tracing reassuring circles along your cheekbones halt. His breath catches and his eyes shift.

There is something uncertain in there.

And then, his lips part. His brows go up ever so slightly. His pupils flare.

Something settles over his expression that you don’t recognize.

Like a switch has been flipped.

Like a puzzle piece has clicked into place.

Like suddenly he is seeing something in your eyes, something like an answer, something that has been there all along.

His fingers tighten, anchoring himself. Making it seem that if he lets go, if he moves even a fraction, something will break. In him, or you, you’re not sure.

He pulls back. Not far. Just an inch. But he needs to see you better. Just enough to search your face for something he needs to know. His gaze locks onto yours and holds you there, testing something, making sure.

His voice is hushed when he talks. Breathless.

“Is that what this is about?”

It’s quiet, the way he says it. Like he’s afraid of it. Like he’s careful with it. There is disbelief on his face. Astonishment.

You shake your head too fast, too sharp, like if you deny it hard enough, it’ll erase the way he’s looking at you right now. That it’ll undo the meaning of his words and the way they sit between you. Something fragile on the verge of breaking.

“No,” you say, but it barely comes out, barely sounds convincing. Your voice is hoarse, scraped raw form holding back everything you don’t want to say. Your lungs refuse to work in sync with the rest of you. You swallow, eyes darting away, grasping for something to latch onto.

But Bucky doesn’t let you.

“Doll…” It comes like a sigh. Weightless and soft. His hands don’t drop from your face, don’t loosen, don’t give you the space you’re so desperately trying to carve out between you. If anything, his grip grows more robust. Just enough to keep you there.

“Hey. Look at me.” His tone is low, carrying the kind of warmth you’d usually like to lean into, but now all you want is to get away from it. You don’t want to meet those stormy blues.

Bucky’s thumbs are sweeping, so feather-light, over the curve of your jaw, smoothing along the damp trail of your tears, and his voice dips even lower. Softer. He is so close.

“C’mon, sweetheart. Give me somethin’ here.”

It’s not fair that he gets to call you all those sweet names like he means them. Like you mean something. Like it’s not the same word he probably called her and all those others who got to have him, even if only for a night.

“I don’t-” you try, but your voice is trembling and thick with tears, and Bucky’s gaze shadows.

“Don’t what?” he coaxes, leaning in just a little, close enough that his breath skims your skin, warm and stable in a way you aren’t. His fingers slightly move against your cheeks, as if resisting the urge to pull you closer.

You shake your head again, your hands wrapping around his wrists - not to push him away exactly, but to have something to hold onto. You have no idea what to say.

“It’s- It’s not-” Your words trip over themselves, stuck somewhere between your throat and your ribs, tangled up in everything you’ve never let yourself say.

But Bucky just watches you, unreadable things swirling in those impossibly blue eyes. Wary things. Still so damn careful.

He exhales and his hands slide down, skimming the column of your throat, settling against the curve of your neck like he’s grounding you. Holding you both together.

“Doll,” he sighs, and it’s too much.

It’s not teasing. It’s not playful. It’s not easy. Not the charming lilt he likes to throw in his tone.

It’s vulnerable. Tender. Substantial.

“You’re breakin’ my heart here.”

And that’s what has another tear slip over your lashes.

Because you’re breaking his heart?

What does that even mean?

You were the one trying to escape the heartache he caused and now he tells you it’s his heart that hurts?

“Please,” he whispers, and his voice is wrecked, gravel thick in his throat. “Just tell me, doll. Tell me what I did. Tell me so I can fix it.”

His lips stay parted, trying to find air, trying to find some kind of solid ground. There is a sheen over his eyes.

“I can’t-” Your voice cracks, but you don’t look away this time. His hands won’t let you. He won’t let you.

His eyes are pleading.

“Can’t what, sweetheart?” he urges, dipping closer, voice just a rasp of sound between you. His thumbs wipe away the new tears and he winces while doing it as if it actually causes him pain that they fell.

The streetlight flickers above. It casts shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw, the tight pull of his mouth. His fingers flex against your face.

“Is it-” he starts, then stops, then starts again, throat bobbing and voice rough and hesitant. “Is it those girls?”

A shallow gasp slips from your lips. Fractured and tripping over something unseen. Your shoulders grow stiff.

You can’t answer. You only shake your head, not in denial, not in confirmation, but in something else, something tired and so fucking done with feeling like this.

You try to pull back, try to slip free from the heat of his palms, try to turn away. Another tear drops onto the back of his hand.

Your reaction must be answer enough.

Bucky’s head, Bucky’s hands, Bucky’s eyes, Bucky’s whole body - everything is moving so much, keeping you from slipping away, reaching for you, not letting you go.

A breath. A pause. Like his brain needs an extra moment to process what this all could mean. His breath catches in his throat and you can feel the exact moment he gets it.

The exact moment he realizes.

“Shit,” he breathes, so quiet you almost miss it. His grip tightens. It grows distressed. Despairing. Keeping you from leaving his hold, although you don’t stop trying.

You sob and his hands press into your cheeks, thumbs smoothing away tears like he can erase this, like maybe if he holds you tight enough, he can go back five minutes, five months, five years, to a time before he made you feel like this.

“Shit, doll, I-” His voice breaks, gravel and regret and anguish - and something so painful - landing with every syllable.

You don’t stop trying to pull back, trying to push him away. You can’t talk. You can’t stop crying. You can’t look at him.

But Bucky is devastated. And he is desperate. And he won’t let you go.

“No, no, don’t - please, Y/n, don’t.” He runs through his words, frantically getting them out, frantically trying to make you look at him.

He reaches your face again and holds on like it’s important. Your tears won’t stop falling. A whimper falls from your lips when you realize he won’t let you leave.

Bucky panics.

His swallow seems to hurt him. Everything he does seems to hurt him.

“Oh, sweetheart - fuck, fuck, I didn’t-” He lets out a rough breath, one of his hands letting go of you to scrub over his face, pushing through his hair in frustration.

Not at you.

At himself.

“Doll, I didn’t - Jesus Christ, I didn’t know.”

It comes out hoarse, scraped down to nothing but feeling. Each word drags from his throat like sandpaper against silence. Coarse and raspy.

And then he’s shaking his head, hands sliding to your shoulders, his hold firm, his eyes darting over your face like he is trying to memorize it, searching for the right words in the curve of your lips, the glisten of your tears, the way your breathing is a single shuddering mess.

“I didn’t - fuck, I didn’t mean-”

He seems to hold back a scream.

Sucking in another sharp breath, he squeezes his eyes shut like he’s in pain, angry at himself, wanting to go back and rewrite everything, tear out every page where he made you feel like you were anything but his.

You wish you could believe it.

“Bucky-” you croak out.

“No, don’t-” His head doesn’t stop shaking. His jaw is clenched tight. Hands shaking against you. “Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?” Your voice is whisper-thin.

His breath shudders out, and when his eyes meet yours again, they are so earnest. Glossy with a sheen of tears.

“Like it’s over.”

Your throat closes around your next breath, never making it reach your lungs.

Because what is he saying? Nothing ever had the chance to be anything.

“I didn’t know, doll,” he whispers, voice breaking. “I swear to God, I didn’t know. You gotta believe me, I - fuck, I never wanted to hurt you. Never wanted you to feel like- I didn’t think you’d-”

He cuts himself off, voice choking.

His hands drop suddenly, like he doesn’t even deserve to hold you anymore. Like the guilt is weighing them down.

And then, unsure and hesitantly, he lifts one of them again and pauses before cupping your face, waiting for something - permission, maybe, or just a sign that you won’t pull away this time.

When you don’t, when you just keep standing there, frozen and broken and bewildered, he lets his palm settle warm against your cheek, his thumb brushing so lightly it sends a shiver down your back.

“Tell me how to fix it. Tell me I can,” he pleads, like he means it. Like he would do anything. “Tell me what to do, baby. Anything. I’d do anything. Just gotta tell me. Please,” he chokes out.

Cars roll past you. There are voices in the distance. A neon sign flickers. But none of it touches this.

This thing between you.

Bucky’s hand shakes against your cheek. His breath stirs against your skin so ragged and he leans in. His forehead presses to yours, his body curling toward you like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, just needing to be close.

“I’m so sorry,” he gasps out. “God, I’m so fucking sorry.”

Never have you seen Bucky like this. He keeps things easy, keeps things light, and shrugs off pain like it never quite reaches him. But it does now.

It consumes him.

His fingers curl at the back of your neck, not pulling, just holding, grounding himself against you. And when you continue standing there, breath shaky, tears still trembling in your lashes, his whole body sags.

His chest heaves with a breath so deep it sounds like it’s costing him something.

“I never meant for this to happen. Please, believe me.”

His forehead presses harder to yours, seemingly trying to press his words straight into you, that maybe if he gets close enough you’ll feel how much he means them.

And you do. You just don’t know what the hell is going on.

He lets out a sound that resembles a sob. And then you feel the damp heat of a tear where his face brushes against yours.

Bucky is crying.

It breaks you. You don’t know what to do with all this pain. His and yours. Don’t know how to ever let it go.

You pull back. Just slightly. Just enough to breathe, to think, to process.

But Bucky’s whole body tenses, and his eyes squeeze shut as if he knew it was coming but it still pains him. Bracing himself for something he already knows is going to hurt. His hands drop to his sides.

And maybe that should give you some kind of satisfaction, a tiny sense of justice for the nights you spent lying awake, wondering if you meant anything to him while he had his hands on someone else.

But it doesn’t.

Because the way he is looking at you, when he cracks his eyes open again, when he meets your gaze with so much open ache, makes your chest hurt. It makes something inside of you quake.

“Bucky,” you start, but your own voice is so small, so lost. You shake your head, scanning his face, trying to piece it together, to make sense of something that refuses to fit. How the tables have turned. You just can’t seem to find the irony in it. “What are you even - I don’t - I don’t I understand.”

His throat bobs, thick and tight, and he pulls in a breath like it’s the last one he’s going to get.

“I love you.”

Your mind blanks. You flatline. Your knees go weak.

He says it like it’s the simplest thing to say. As if it is the most obvious thing in the world. But it isn’t.

Because if it was then why has he spent all those nights with those seemingly meaningless girls. Why has he let you ache for him while he touched someone else.

“I love you,” he says again, softer, trying to make sure you believe it.

But you don’t know how to.

Your lips part, but nothing comes out. You feel the words, heavy and warm and terrifying, but your body doesn’t know what to do with them. Your mind is screaming at you to run, to protect yourself, to build the walls back up before it’s too late, but your heart doesn’t listen.

Bucky’s hand trembles when it reaches for you, fingertips ghosting over your jaw, waiting, waiting, waiting for you to pull away.

You don’t and he steps closer again.

His whole body thrums as if he is scared to touch you but more scared not to. He looks at you with those red-rimmed and puffy eyes, so tremendously bare, holding onto your own eyes like he is drowning and you are the only thing keeping him afloat.

“Say something, doll,” he pleads, his voice so unsteady, that it guts you.

But what could you say?

Because love is not supposed to feel like this, to hurt like this. It isn’t supposed to feel like your heart has been split open and stitched back together all in the same breath.

But looking at him and at the way his eyes are just as pleading as his words, at the way he is breaking right in front of you - it makes you wonder if maybe it was hurting him all along, too.

“You-” you begin, voice barely more than a whisper. You have to stop, have to pull in a breath that doesn’t seem to want to settle, have to force your hands to stay at your sides instead of reaching for something - for him - that you don’t know if you can take. “But that-” Another inhale, sharp and broken. Your chest hurts. Your whole body hurts. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Bucky exhales, long and slow and then he drops his head. Shoulders slumping, spine curling, like something inside of him, has just given out.

Guilt.

It sits heavy in his frame, in the set of his jaw, in the way his hands jerk like he wants to touch you but knows he shouldn’t.

“Yeah,” he mutters, a humorless little laugh escaping, barely more than a breath. He drags a hand down his face, through his hair, before letting it fall uselessly at his side. His voice is lower when he speaks again, raspier, weighed down by something that feels an awful lot like regret. “I know.”

You watch him, waiting. Because he owes you this. Because he cracked open something you weren’t ready for, something you tried to bury, and now you need to understand.

And Bucky must feel that. Because after a beat, after a deep, shuddering breath, he looks at you again.

“I didn’t think I could have you,” he admits, voice quiet. Cautious. The words fragile in his mouth. “Didn’t think I was allowed to even want you. To this extent, anyway.”

Air enters you unevenly, shaking on the way in like a shiver made of sound. “Bucky-”

“You’re my best friend,” he pushes on, stepping in just a fraction, like he can’t help himself. His voice is getting rougher, rawer, like something in him is unwinding too fast for him to stop it. “I didn’t wanna mess that up, y’know? Didn’t wanna lose you over somethin’ I couldn’t control.”

Something tightens in your chest. Something shifts.

“So you-” you swallow, shaking your head, trying to put it together, trying to make sense of it. “So you just went around to go get yourself other girls you can fuck?”

Bucky flinches. Actually flinches.

Gaze dropping in shame, his features form a grimace. “I tried,” he croaks out, gesturing at his chest with one hand. “Tried to stop feeling like this. Tried to move on, tried to-” He exhales sharply, tilting his head side to side, something torn playing out with the movement. “It didn’t work. Nothin’ worked. Didn’t even make it easier. But I was afraid to face it. Really face it. So I just kept going.”

It hurts.

It hurts in a way you don’t know how to hold. Don’t know how to carry.

You thought, for so long, that the way you love him, ache for him, is a one-sided agony.

But he is confessing to you, eyes red and weary, voice splintering, telling you that he’s been afraid to speak it aloud too.

That he loves you, that he tried to kill it, that he thought losing himself in someone else would somehow erase you from his mind.

Bucky’s words are a fist curling around your ribs, squeezing the air from your lungs.

It should matter. It should mean something that he’s standing in front of you, breaking apart, pleading for you to understand. Shouldn’t it be enough that he’s telling you it was always you? That no one else ever came close?

But he still touched them.

Still chose them, even if only for a meaningless night.

While you sat in your room, staring at the ceiling, wondering if you were going insane. While you clenched your fists so tight beneath your sheets at night, biting your tongue, swallowing it down, because Bucky is your friend and friends don’t ache like this.

And yet, he is telling you, showing you, he aches too.

But instead of sitting with it, instead of letting it consume him the way it consumed you, he tried to make it disappear.

He tried to fuck it away.

And now he looks at you like you are the only thing that has ever mattered, like the ground beneath his feet, is unsteady, like he is afraid you are going to bolt at any second.

You feel like the ground beneath your feet shits a fraction of an inch, not enough to send you falling, but enough to make you question if you were ever standing solid in the first place.

“But, doll, it-” he rushes forward, watching your pain, stepping into your space until there is barely anything between you. “It never meant anything. Swear to god, none of ‘em ever meant something to me.” His hands wrap around yours, squeezing, grounding, begging. “They weren’t you. Couldn’t be you. Didn’t matter how hard I tried, how many times I told myself to stop thinking about you because you’re supposed to be my best friend, but I wanted so much more than that - it didn’t matter. Nothin’ worked.”

He is struggling to force the words out, but he does. And they leave him with a catch in his voice. Faltering.

“I thought about you, sweetheart. Every fuckin’ time.” His voice turns frantic and he leans in to make it convince you. He watches your lips tremble and shakes his head quickly. “Thought about how you’d feel. How you’d sound.”

Your breath stalls.

Bucky swallows, taking a quick pause but continuing, voice growing softer. Lower. Reverent. “Tried to picture you instead. How you’d look under me, wrapped around me. So goddamn beautiful.” His voice cracks. “But it wasn’t you. And I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it.”

He stumbles over his words, afraid of saying too much, of pushing too far, or admitting too much - but it doesn’t stop hurting.

Even if you know it might not be fair.

But the thought of him with them, the thought of his hands gripping someone else’s skin, his lips murmuring something soft against someone else’s throat - it makes you sick.

And he sees it.

You try to blink back another wave of tears.

His hands are on your face again, thumbs swiping furiously at your damp cheeks like he can rub the hurt away.

“Please tell me I didn’t ruin this.” His voice cracks through the words, the panic breaking through. Your silence seems to suffocate him, squeezing his ribs until there is no space left for air.

“I’m so sorry, baby! I wish I could take it all back. I would.” His bottom lip trembles and he bites down on it before continuing. “Tell me I can fix this. There’s gotta be somethin’ I can do. Anything.”

You blink rapidly, vision swimming, breath hiccuping in your throat. You don’t know if there is anything to fix, if there was ever anything there, to begin with, but he is looking at you like there was. Like there is. Like it is still hanging in the air between you, waiting to be caught, waiting to be named.

And you want to catch it. To press it to your heart and cherish it.

But the wounds are fresh. Still bleeding. Still open.

The images you conjured up in your mind, him with all those girls. The sounds of him bringing one after the other home - the routine.

The giggling. The keys. The apartment door. More giggling. His chuckles. The hallway. His bedroom door. The goodbyes. The mornings.

But worst of all is that you can’t even blame him.

Because what was he supposed to do? Wait for something that was never promised? Hold out hope for something that was never offered?

You had no claim on him.

But still, you hate how he tried to fuck you out of his system. Hate that he couldn’t, that he’s standing here now, telling you it was all for nothing, that you were always in his head, in his bones, and that that somehow is supposed to make it better.

You don’t know if it does now. But you hope - you hope so dearly - that it will get better. If he’ll stick with you.

“No more girls.” The words choke out of you, weak and broken, barely a breath. But he jolts like you have screamed them.

“Never,” he breathes immediately, shaking his head as if to get rid of his own images, gripping you tighter, his thumbs pressing into your cheeks, his eyes burning through yours. “No more, baby. No one else. Not ever.”

Your breath catches, body sways.

There is a burn behind your ribs, not quite pain, but not far from it. It is something that pulses in time with your heartbeat. Too quick. Too uneven.

“Only you,” he adds, his forehead dropping to yours, noses brushing, his breath warm against your lips, his hands trembling where they hold you. “It’s only ever been you.”

Heat rises up your throat, something between nausea and electricity, a burst of too much all at once.

“I got a lot to make up for.” His tone is unraveling at the seams. But it sounds firmer now. Convicted. “I know that. I know I- fuck, I screwed this up before I even knew I had a chance. And that’s on me.”

You squeeze your eyes shut, because it’s too much - his voice, his touch, the way he is looking at you like you hung the damn moon when you’ve spent years feeling invisible to him in the way that mattered.

“I don’t wanna rush this, alright?”

You blink up at him. Your chest feels stretched too tight, as if the ribs themselves are holding onto something they shouldn’t, something too large, something too consuming.

“I don’t wanna mess this up more than I already have. I don’t wanna push or expect anythin’ from you - I just wanna do this right. For you.” His voice wavers on the last word, still scared of saying the wrong thing, scared of losing something he only just realized he had. “You understand me?”

You nod wordlessly. Almost feeling hypnotized by him. His eyes are so intense. So full.

“I’ve been waitin’ for this, hopin’ for this - Christ, I don’t even know how long.”

Your stomach flips, something curling in your stomach at the heaviness of his confession, at the realization that you weren’t alone in this. Maybe never have been.

“And now that it’s happenin’ - now that I have you, even if I don’t deserve it - I wanna take my time. I wanna make this good for you. Have to. I have to make this right,” he says, voice filled with something gravelly, rough like something barely holding together.

His fingers slide over your jaw, tracing along the column of your throat, memorizing the feel of you beneath his hands.

“And I hate-” his voice falters, eyes squeezing shut for a moment before he forces himself to look at you again. “I hate that it’s happening like this. That I hurt you first. That I didn’t see this sooner.”

“Bucky-”

He cuts you off with his eyes and a shake of his head.

“Please I- I gotta do this. Gotta say this, baby.”

You nod.

He closes his eyes again for a moment like he wants to go back and shake his past self by the shoulders, tell him to wake the hell up and stop hurting the one girl he ever cared about.

He continues, voice hoarse. “I would do anything to make this different. Better. The way you deserve.”

Your breath is shallow, not quite catching, but hovering just short of where it should be, as if your body can’t decide whether to brace itself for collapse.

You’ve spent so long breaking for him, wanting him in ways he never seemed to want you back. But now he is pouring his heart out and asking for something he already has but isn’t sure he is worthy of.

“You don’t gotta say anythin’ right now, doll,” Bucky whispers. Afraid of scaring you off. “I know I shoulda told you sooner.” He grimaces, disgusted with himself. “I shoulda known sooner. I was so fuckin’ stupid. So fuckin’ blind.”

You don’t even notice you started leaning further into him.

Bucky stares at you for a moment. You look back.

“I don’t deserve you,” he says quietly. Whispers really. He exhales shakily and you feel the breath fan along your cheeks. “But I swear to God, I will.”

You don’t weigh the hurt against the want, don’t let the war in your head talk you out of your next move.

Your hands reach up, curling into the fabric of his shirt and before he can say anything else - before he can tear himself apart further - you kiss him.

And for a split second, Bucky freezes.

Not believing this is happening, not expecting it even after everything he just told you.

But then, he exhales this soft and quivering breath against your lips, relief knocking the air out of his lungs.

One hand flies to your waist, pulling you in, the other threading into your hair. He kisses you back like he is starving, like he has been dying for this, like he can’t believe you are real and this moment is something he’s imagined a thousand times but never thought he’d get to have.

And he is so warm. So solid. His lips move against yours, soft and slow at first - savoring you, afraid to go too fast, to push too much. But when you let out a little sigh and your fingers tighten, Bucky melts, pressing in closer, enveloping you in his arms in a way that has you feeling he tries to make sure you never go anywhere else again.

He breathes you in like you are something holy, tilting your head and deepening the kiss. He is not forceful. He takes what he can get and he cherishes it. Like he said, he wants to take his time with you. It makes you fall in love with him even more.

It’s like he can’t believe you are even letting him have this. But he kisses you with a hope and a determination that this will not be the only time he gets to have this.

And when you pull back again, he rests his forehead against yours once more. You feel the way his chest rises and falls against your own, the way his breath shakes, the way his grip does not loosen at all.

“Jesus, doll,” he rasps, panting. “You tryna kill me?”

And the way he says it, the way he looks at you, so full of longing and desire and relief makes you realize that maybe he’s been suffering just as much as you have.

“I want you. It’s as simple as that. I’ve spent a great deal too much of my life already trying to convince myself that I can make do with less but I can’t. You hear me? I’m done. I’m not giving up. A life without you is not enough.”

- Beau Taplin

this was the single most sexiest scrumptious smut fic i have ever had the pleasure of reading

October 14th

Orgasm Denial, Mary Goore x Reader

Previous Day | Next Day

Masterlist

Words: 3.9k

Warnings: Orgasm denial; Mary’s a sadist wbk; established relationship; all of this is consensual; naked woman, clothed man; face-slapping; praise kink; degradation kink (is it really written by me if it doesn’t have at least one of these?); fingering; no lube; cunnilingus; dacrophilia; use of sex toys; dry humping; biting; pain kink; vaginal sex; piv sex; unprotected sex; choking; squirting;

Taglist: @sodoswitchimage @enchantedbunny @bitchywitchygardener @thew0man @sodomiser @the-did-i-ask @copias-sewer-rat @gehrmansbignaturals

🔞 MDNI 🔞

Mary liked to make it hurt but the hurt was always so good you would forgive it every single time. He did things to you that you never thought you’d enjoy and opened up a whole different side of yourself you didn’t know lay dormant. Of course, you weren’t innocent like most people assumed, you did have a dark side. But Mary somehow managed to take that dark side and twist it until it had become darker and hungrier than before. And you loved every second of it.

Outside of the bedroom, Mary was the most beautiful human in the world. He was sweet, kind, caring, attentive, somewhat a golden retriever. Between the sheets, he was evil, downright demonic. And tonight was no exception. Apparently he’d gotten into a fight with one of his bandmates, and you were going to pay the price for it. He’d sent you a text before leaving his friend’s place: you better be naked with your legs spread by the time I get home or else. Or else what? Remember the safe word?

Lemon.

Good.

That was the last you heard from him. Anticipation grew in your stomach as you completely undressed and did as he asked. You knew what would happen if you were caught slacking, and given the mood he was in, you didn’t really want to risk it. The last time that happened, you couldn’t sit down for an entire week - because it wasn’t just your ass he beat. The guilt he felt afterwards was crazy and you had to keep reminding him that you wanted it.

You were scrolling on your phone, laying on the bed with your whole body on display when you heard the front door slam shut. Immediately, you threw your phone across the room and put your hands above your head, exactly how he liked. Not even three seconds later, the bedroom door swung open. Mary’s expression was dark, and he was filled with such a rage you rarely saw. He was scary when he was angry - the kindest people usually were. You felt arousal flood your cunt at the sight of him.

“Finally,” he said, “someone who does as I ask.” He placed his guitar on its stand before turning back to you, his eyes roaming the entirety of your body until they stopped on your exposed centre. “I half expected I’d have to come back and punish you. I’m disappointed.”

“I’m sorry.” You said, quietly.

He moved to the side of the bed and sat next to you, cupping your cheek in a moment of worrying calm. “For what, my angel?” He asked softly. “For being an obedient slut for me? For letting me find you with your legs spread like a fucking whore?” The same hand that was gently touching your face disappeared, only to strike your cheek with enough force to sting, but not enough to leave a mark. “Answer me.”

“Yes.”

His other hand moved down your body and immediately began playing with your clit - he didn’t bother gathering any wetness from your hole, at least to begin with. His middle finger ran circles around it, and despite the friction being enough to start a fire, it felt good. You bit your lip at the sensation, trying not to let out any moans without permission. Mary just laughed and pulled it out from between your teeth. “No, baby. I want the entire fucking neighbourhood to hear me fuck you dumb tonight. Hide those pretty moans from me and I’ll make you suffer, got it?”

“Yes!”

“Good girl.”

You felt his index and ring fingers slide inside of you, again without any additional lubrication beside your own wetness. The stretch wasn’t too painful, more uncomfortable, but he didn’t give you any time to think about it - instead he began hitting your g-spot over and over again, putting his entire wrist and hand into the roughness of his work and immediately hitting you with intense pleasure. The more he moved, the more wetness got onto his hands and the better it felt. But things really felt better when his second hand came into play, when he used his finger to play with your clit. The look of concentration on his face and the way he bit his lip was enough to make you almost blow right there, but you hadn’t gotten the permission to cum yet, and you knew that cumming without permission would have landed you in serious trouble. Though, Mary could feel how tight you were getting, how needy you were when you bucked your hips to chase that feeling.

“Are you close?” He asked, his voice teasing and bordering on condescension.

“Yes!”

“And what do we say when we’re close?”

“C-can I cum?”

“Can you cum… what?”

“Please! Can I cum please.”

“Good girl.”

You could feel it creeping up on you. It felt so fucking good. His masterful hands brought you so close you could almost taste it. Yes! Yes! Right there. Right there!

He pulled his hands away, his fingers and thumb covered in your slick. You watched him as he admired the shine you left on him, pulling his fingers apart and watching the string snap in between them. All the while you felt that orgasm ebbing away. You clearly looked dejected, and this made him laugh when he saw the expression you wore. “You were a good girl for asking, but I still didn’t give you permission, did I? Let’s go again, shall we?”

His hands went right back in to the exact position he was in beforehand. This time, however, he’d moved down the bed and was sat in between your spread legs, his tongue replacing his other hand on your clit. The same middle and ring finger that he used before, he used again, but this time he added his index finger to stretch you a little more, once again not bothering to slick it up and making you wince at the burn.

Mary would sometimes lick your clit, but he knew the real pleasure you experienced came from him sucking on it. He suctioned his mouth around your pebble and began to suck hard, stealing your breath as he did it. Your hands almost moved from your spot above your head because you were so desperate to touch him. You needed to at this point. “P-please, Mary.”

“Please what?”

“Let me t-touch you!”

“Aw,” he cooed, “is the pleasure too much for my little angel, hm? Does she need to pull on my hair?”

“Yes!”

“Go on, then.”

As soon as he dove back in, your hands flew down to his hair, grateful for the permission. You were always overly touchy during sex - the desperate need for closeness and affection too much for your body to handle, and your hands always took on a mind of their own. Mary loved it. He loved the way you pulled on his hair when he ate you out, how you cupped both of his cheeks when you kissed him while he was deep inside you, how your nails would scratch down his back when he hit that sweet spot, how your hands would always clutch onto his thighs or hips when his cock was down your throat. The constant need to be as physically close to him as possible made him feel loved and wanted. And so he would only begrudge your touch as a punishment.

Your hands tangled in his hair, the strands a little harder than usual because of the styling gel he used, but still you pulled at the roots. You heard him groan in response, no doubt growing harder in his pants the tighter you pulled. The harder you pulled, the faster his fingers moved and the harder he sucked. Again, you were so close, and you announced it only to have him pull all the way back again, completely remove all his touches. You whined and pouted.

“Now, now, angel.” He scolded. He held your chin between his thumb and index finger, swiping the tip of his thumb over your pouted lip. “Don’t do that. Don’t brat out on me now or there will be consequences. Take what I give you.”

“I wanna cum so badly.” You said. Your throat was tight from the disappointment, and you could feel tears begin to brew.

“Poor baby. Suffering so much. I know what could make it better. Close your eyes.”

You hesitated for a second, eyeing him suspiciously. But once he made it very clear he wasn’t moving until you closed your eyes, you obliged. You felt the bed shift beneath him as he reached over you, the roughness of his jeans rubbing against your soft, naked thigh. The bedside drawer opened slowly so as not to immediately alert you to what he was doing, but you had a sneaking suspicion he was reaching for one of the toys you kept in there. You didn’t hear it close, nor did you hear him grab anything. Instead, you felt something big and bulbous sit at your clit before it sprang to life at the flick of a button. Your wand. You didn’t even hear him plug it into the wall. Even on its lowest setting it was torturous enough for you to scream out, both in surprise and sensitivity. Your eyes opened entirely and you saw him kneeling between your legs, wand held tightly in his hand and a devilish smirk on his face as he watched you writhe and attempt to escape from the feeling.

“You like that?” He asked. When you didn’t answer him, he turned the vibrations up a little more and pressed the wand further into you, applying more pressure to the area and intensifying the feelings. “Fucking answer me when I’m speaking to you!”

“Yes! I like it!”

“There, that wasn’t so hard was it? Have I fucked you brain dead already, hm? I haven’t even touched you with my cock yet and you’re already fucked up. You should see yourself right now - you look so fucking pathetic.” He laughed at your whimpers and the way your hips were moving at the sound of him being so fucking vile. It always turned you on to hear him be an asshole in the bedroom, given the polar opposite personality he displayed every other day. You knew deep down that he didn’t mean any of the things he was telling you, but he always said it with such conviction, especially in the moment you believed him - and it felt amazing.

Mary lifted one of your legs over his shoulder, making it parallel to his body. The back of your thigh was resting over the top of his incredibly hard cock, that was trapped still underneath the layers of cotton and denim. His composure always made you feel like he wasn’t quite as affected as you were by all this. If it wasn’t for the blown out irises of his eyes and the way he was now rubbing himself up against you, you’d think he wasn’t bothered at all. But he took his pleasure from you as he tortured your body, humping the back of your thick thigh as if he were desperate for relief. The look of you, red-faced, sweaty and desperately wailing like a bitch in heat had him far more affected than you realised, and he needed to get it out of his system one way or another. Right now, your thigh was the closest thing he could use.

“M-Mary, I’m gonna c-cum!”

He removed all contact again, even holding your ankle to get your thigh away from his body, denying himself pleasure as he denied you. He waited, wordlessly, for you both to calm down, before he attached the wand to you again, but this time two times more powerful than before. You screamed at the feeling and your hand immediately went to the wrist that was holding the vibrator, nails digging into the white skin and leaving red scratch marks. He went back to humping the back of your thigh, with a little more vigour given the loudness of your moaning. He couldn’t wait to bury himself deep inside you, to spear you on his thick cock and take his own pleasure out of you. He couldn’t wait to make you cum, to shatter your entire world around you and make you think only of him as you tried to breathe. He’d been thinking about it all day. With every frustration he felt he was going to deny you an orgasm. Three so far. Another two to go.

You felt his lips on your calf, kissing the skin there until one particularly hard thrust against your thigh had him groaning and sinking his teeth into you.

“Cumming!”

He pulled away again before you had chance to. You were so close that time. You would have taken any punishment he dished out if it meant you could have cum there and then. But he stopped you before you had chance to tip over the edge and you screamed in frustration, punching the bed beneath you. The tears you shed at the beginning of the session were nothing compared to the tears you shed now. You watched through blurred vision as Mary’s eyes lit up at the sight of you crying in frustration. He turned the vibrator off and threw it to the side, pulling himself out of his confines and lining himself up to your entrance.

“That’s it, you fucking slut. I fucking love it when I make you cry. You’re always so pretty. Gets me so fucking hard.” The last sentence he said through gritted teeth and directly into your ear, his body lying down on top of you and trapping you between himself and the mattress beneath you. He gave you a chaste kiss to your lips, ignoring the tears you were shedding, before pushing himself all the way in, stretching you out even more than before. The tongue that had been licking your cunt earlier was now licking away the tears you shed, and a groan escaped his lips when the head of his cock kissed your cervix as his tongue registered the saltiness.

He thrust gently at first. He may have been acting like a monster but he definitely wasn’t one, even in his anger. While he thrust in and out of you shallowly and tentatively, his lips ran down your cheeks, across your jaw and down to your neck, where he licked, kissed and sucked at a sensitive spot of yours. “I fucking love this tight cunt.” He commented, his voice muffled by your skin. He pulled out and slammed back into you. “I love the noises you make when I fuck you.” Pulled out again and slammed back in. “I love hurting you and making you remember who this pussy belongs to.” Pulled out. Slammed in.

Your arms were wrapped around his neck, holding him as close as possible. The feel of his loose, grey vest softly dragging against your very erect nipples only added to the heightened sensitivity of your body making you cry out every time they rubbed against you. His jeans bit into your bikini line and thighs as he slammed into you, hitting your cervix every. Single. Time. Fuck it hurt. It hurt so fucking good.

He picked up the pace and the roughness, but he took this opportunity to attach his lips to yours, knowing how desperate for affection you’d become now. You were still crying - partly out of frustration for your almost orgasms, but also because of just how good he felt. Mary kept groaning and grunting into the kiss, his own voice coming out involuntarily from how good you wrapped around him.

He broke the kiss and sat up onto his knees, still thrusting away inside of you, his pace never faltering. “Fuck!” He grunted as he watched your body jiggle with the force of him. He always loved how your body moved,how you ricocheted off every thrust. He looked down at where you both were connected and saw a string of white around the base of his cock where you’d creamed all over him. “Fucking Hell!” He cried out. “Look at the state of you! This slutty pussy creaming all over me. Does it feel that fucking good?”

“Yes! Feels so good, Mary! You fill me so good.”

“Let the neighbours know who’s filling you this well, angel.”

“You are!”

“Say my name.”

You moaned at one of his thrusts. “Mary!”

“Again.” He slapped your thigh.

“Fuck! Mary!”

“What a good whore for me.”

He reached over to the neglected vibrator and turned it back on, setting the intensity back up to where it was the last time he used it. You visibly winced. “Mary, no!”

“Do you need to use the safe word?”

You shook your head in response.

“Then you’re gonna fucking take it, aren’t you?”

He placed the vibrator over your clit again and continued to fuck you as hard as he could. His grey vest shirt was now dark in most places from the sweat that coincided with the exertion. The sight of him wet and determined had your cunt tightening around him, earning you an appreciative, “fucking slut.” Then, with no warning, the vibrator’s intensity was turned up again, causing you to scream out loud and tears to start falling again. The stimulation bordered on painful, teetering on the edge of delicious and unbearable. You didn’t think he’d ever let you cum - that he’d keep you dancing the line until he finished and that he’d leave you. The thought of it was hot, of course, but by this point you were exhausted. Tired of being brought to the precipice but never quite falling over it. Mary watched your reactions intensely, drool practically slipping from his mouth. You were getting closer and closer by the second.

“Mary, I’m gonna cum.”

This time, he didn’t move the vibrator away. Instead he kept the speed and pressure exactly the same. You could feel it building and building, your entire body tingling in anticipation. He was finally going to let you cum. You were going to cum. You were so fucking close. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

And then he moved the vibrator away.

“No!” You screamed. “Mary, you piece of shit! You fucking asshole! Let me cum, please!” You moved your hand down and began rubbing at your clit working yourself desperately to release. But you didn’t get much time as his free hand grabbed your wrist and pulled it away. “I fucking hate you!” You didn’t. Not really. But in this moment you couldn’t help it. You began thrashing against him, trying to fight against his strength but now he was putting his full weight onto you and you were having trouble winning this fight. He let go of the vibrator and slapped your face again, this time a little harder and timed with a particularly hard thrust.

“You wanna fucking fight me? You little bitch. Do you want me to tie you to the fucking bed and keep edging you all night, hm? Acting like a bitch in heat. So desperate to cum. So fucking embarrassing.” His thrusts were getting rougher and rougher. His free hand now came to your throat and began squeezing at the sides. Your breath didn’t escape you, but he was restricting the blood flow. You felt like your eyes were going to burst any second. “I should punish you for that. Remind you your place.”

“I’m sorry!” You said quietly. “Mary, please.”

He bent down and gave you another kiss, his hand still restricting your throat. When the kiss ended, he released you from his grasp and picked the vibrator up, turning it onto its highest setting. “You wanna fucking cum? That’s fine. Cum whenever you want.”

He placed it to your clit and had you screaming at the intensity, more tears falling from your eyes and wracked sobs shaking your entire body along with his insane thrusts. At this point you were practically screaming through it: babbling incoherently, screaming his name, expletives, anything just to take the intensity away and relieve some of the tension. His other hand that was once restraining yours now rest at your hip and allowed him some leverage to continue to rail you into the mattress. He was exhausted, you could see it from the look in his eyes. You wondered how many times during this whole ordeal he almost came too.

One of your own hands moved to the one on the vibrator, and you grabbed hold of his index and ring fingers. He let you, wanting nothing more to lock hands with you and provide you the comfort you were craving. But he was so focused now on getting you both to orgasm he would let that slip today.

“Mary, I’m close! Please.”

“It’s okay, angel.” His voice was soft now. Gentle. He wasn’t the same, angry, crazy man who was ramming into you just moments ago. “Cum for me. I’ll talk you through it. Just don’t forget to breathe, okay?” You nodded. “Such a good girl for me, hey? Feel so fucking good around my cock. I got you, angel. Let go. Cum for me.”

And you did. Oh hells, did you cum. All five of the orgasms you missed now came charging through you at full speed, freezing every muscle in your body and stealing the air from your lungs. Your eyes glazed over and for a second went black, the violence of your orgasm now taking all of your senses for you and numbing your brain until all you became was nerve endings reaching climax. No noises were made, no thoughts were thought, no breaths were taken. It wasn’t until eons later when you felt Mary’s hand tapping your cheek you were brought back down from wherever the fuck you’d gone. His voice faded back into focus, finally reaching your ears.

“Hey. Hey, angel. Come on, come back to me.”

You blinked. “Mary?”

“Hi, baby. Bear with me a little longer, I’m almost there, okay?”

You couldn’t say anything, instead you just nodded. You felt him enter you again, unsure when he pulled out completely, and after a few intense and oversensitive thrusts, you felt him still and cum inside you. His own orgasm wasn’t quite as intense as yours, but it still nearly wiped him out. He lay on top of you for a few seconds, his own body unresponsive to his wants, but once he had regained his own strengths, he gave you a chaste kiss and headed to the bathroom. He always made an effort to clean you up a bit, even if it was only a brief wipe down, it was enough. When he came back, you looked at the state of him. His black jeans even blacker around his crotch and thighs, and it looked like he’d pissed himself.

“What happened?” You asked weakly.

The smile that Mary returned made your heart skip a beat. “You came so hard I was forcibly ejected from your cunt.” He said climbing back onto the bed. “And you squirted everywhere. We’re going to have to change the sheets.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it was the hottest thing I’ve ever fucking seen. I wanna make you do it again.”

“Not tonight, love. I’m tired.”

Mary laughed. “You’re fucking incredible, you know that?” He placed the wash cloth on the bedside table and lay down next to you again, scooping you up and holding you tightly, allowing you to bury your head in his bare chest now that his shirt had been removed. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.” You replied, placing a little kiss over his heart.

this is so sweet i'm so cozy

Hey!!! I just finished reading song of Achilles and I have been crying for the better part of the last hour while reading, hence in serious need of some Bucky comfort. So how about college or lumberjack Bucky (cuz they’re my favorites) who don’t really understand the whole fuzz over books but still holding his girl while she sobs her chest out out about a book (you can change the book of you want), hot tears down her face, ugly crying yknow?

It’s okay if you don’t want to :)) Have a great day 💕💕💕

Pairing: lumberjack!bucky x reader (can be read separately from undisclosed, but also a little reference to it)

A/n: Okay sooo this was so sweet and I had to write a drabble for it!! All this angst I've been writing needs some comfort! :)

~~~

He hears the crying first. 

It’s a terrible sound that constricts his chest each time it meets his ears. Bucky would like to consider himself partially responsible for your tears becoming a rare occurrence, so when he hears them, he experiences an array of emotions—fear, panic, a twisted sort of heartbreak. 

At the front door of his home, Bucky strains his ears to confirm what he’s already dreading. Because maybe you weren’t crying. Maybe you were sick? That wasn’t much better, but at least it was a more concrete issue. 

When he hears the tissue box and the loud meow from Alpine—the closest thing to concern he’d ever heard from a cat—Bucky doesn’t even take his coat off before he’s barreling into your bedroom. 

You startle, puffy eyes darting up to him as he takes up space in the small room. 

And he’s devastated. You hadn’t looked like that in a long time, all tear-stained cheeks and frazzled hair. Bucky considers the multitude of reasons you could be so upset, but then decides it doesn't matter. Not when you’re looking at him like that. 

“Oh, honey,” he coos. His socks make soft sounds on the carpet as he walks over to you, but the action only sends more tears down your face. Bucky could collapse. “Sweetheart, what happened?” 

You don’t say much at first, opting to bury your face into his chest the second he makes contact with the bed. It’s too warm in here for the amount of clothes he’s wearing. Bucky doesn’t really care. You keep crying—Bucky keeps running his fingers through your hair. 

Each sob that leaves your lips sounds more broken than the last, breaking Bucky down bit by bit. He wants to fix this, make it better, but Bucky has never been good with words. He’d been trying, for you. He will try now. 

“Tell me what happened, sweet girl?” he mumbles into the skin of your temple, lips hesitant to leave your skin. He was always better with physical communication. He was also the best at loving you like this. 

Your breathing gets choppy as you try to calm down. Shallow puffs of air meet the stitching of his sweater, and he rocks you as a way to coax a more steady pattern into your lungs. Even though he was wrought with panic, you were okay. Bucky had you, so you were okay. 

“He—he died, Buck,” you eventually choke out. “He died and then there was no—there was nothing—” your words cut off again as more tears soak his chest. 

“Who?” he stresses, although his tone doesn’t give that away. “Who, honey? Someone you know?” 

“No,” you sob. The sound knocks the air from Bucky’s lungs. 

Taking inventory in his head, that means all of his friends are safe, all of your friends. It means your awful family is alive as well, and while that doesn't matter much to him, at least he knows it isn’t the source of your strife. But the pain in your voice, the way you were limp against him and fighting for air. 

Bucky couldn’t understand. 

“Tell me who. What has you so sad, hm?” he tries, voice dropping into an even gentler tone. 

You dig your fingers into Bucky’s jacket, pulling away after a moment. Bucky reaches for you, trying to chase your figure because he wasn’t done trying to make this better, he needs to make you better. But then you slap something into his lap and he’s confused again. 

“Them,” you all but sob, turning back into the material of his jacket. 

Bucky wraps an arm around your shoulders as he inspects the book on his thighs. He’s still lost, but your crying has morphed into sniffles so he asks, “What was that, sweet girl?” 

He’s packing it on with the endearments, but seeing you like this is brutal. 

“In the book,” you explain. “They were so in love. And then he died. And afterwards—Bucky it was awful.” 

Oh. 

A book. 

This is manageable, to Bucky. You’re not in pain and he can handle this. 

He hauls you closer into his chest. You shuffle until your frame is enclosed by his. Bucky’s size had always been something he found inconvenient until you came into his life. Because after that, he found it was good at making you feel safe. A way to protect you from anything. 

Even… a book? 

Surely a book. 

“Hey, it’s alright, I got you,” he hums.

“Never die,” you whisper, and Bucky's mouth twists uncomfortably. 

“I won’t.”