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breafromsc · 2 years

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Awake My Soul • 9

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x F!Reader

WC: 3.7k

Summary: It’s been 5 years since zombies first began their invasion, and despite everything you’ve been through, you’ve managed to survive up until this point. Now it’s time to face your most dangerous challenge yet….the grumpy, untrusting, fiercely protective Bucky Barnes.

Chapter Warnings: Angst, description of injury, blood, tending to wounds. Mentions of torture. A whole lot of emotions start flooding out BUT THEN.... :) This chapter destroyed me while writing it and I don't know if I will ever recover so please enjoy :,)

Series Masterlist / Series Playlist

A part of you was convinced that Bucky was leaving you behind when he finally got up and whispered for you to stay put.

The tears finally stopped shedding, your body an empty vessel as you watched him barge past you down the aisle of the CVS - you frozen in place - fingers resting around the painful bite mark.

The loneliness you felt in that moment was crippling. Worse than you’d ever felt before.

It had been lonely when it was just you and your parents on the run at the start of this shitshow.

It was even lonelier when you were captured by Hydra, when your main source of company when allowed outside of your cell being the monsters who were harassing you as they manipulated your body to do their bidding.

And then there was the isolation after the escape, being totally on your own for the first time, fighting for survival with no one at your back.

You were positive there was no chance you could ever be capable of feeling more lonely than you did in those months before you found Shield.

Until now, as you watched Bucky - the man you had finally realized you were completely and painfully in love with - walk away from you.

The look of confusion and fear on his face before he turned away, now knowing the Big Bad secret you had been keeping from him for months.

Was this his way of leaving you behind for good? The last time you would ever see him? The last chance you would get to stare into those perfect, radiant blue eyes?

The silence of the abandoned building roared in your ears as you stared blankly at the bodies beneath you, almost willing yourself to stop existing altogether, so that you’d never have to feel this agonizing loneliness again.

Almost wishing that you had actually turned undead moments ago, so that your mind could finally go totally blank. You wouldn’t have to worry about loneliness, fear, heartbreak. Any of it.

You wondered if, even then, you’d still feel the absence of Bucky.

A sudden, all-too familiar screech sounded from outside, pulling you from your dissociative state and you whipped your head toward the direction it came from.

Shit, the runner from outside, you thought. You had totally forgotten about it.

Instinct kicked in as you slowly and silently made your way toward the exit, hand gripping the hilt of your blade.

A shuffling sound came from your destination and you breathed out a curse, pulling it back that dagger as you prepared to attack-

Bucky stepped into view, mouth pressed into a thin line as you flinched back in shock.

When realization set in, your mouth fell open, desperate to say something but having no idea where to begin.

He came back. He was here.

“Come on,” he said, his voice void of emotion, a devastating contrast to his initial reaction of you being bitten not even five minutes ago.

Bucky grabbed both of your packs and started walking, not even looking over his shoulder to see if you were following.

You kept at least five feet away the entire journey - to both give him some distance and because he was walking at too fast a pace for you to catch up, especially as the pain from the bite began to make your head feel dizzy.

You might be immune to turning into an undead, but that didn’t make the teeth marks gouged into your skin less physically taxing than any other wound you had ever gotten.

Still, you said nothing as he continued on in silence, just used whatever remaining strength you had to keep up with him best you could.

Even from the bit of distance between you two, you could tell that Bucky was on edge. His head kept twitching from side to side, his fists kept clenching into fists, his shoulders moved up and down from breathing so heavily.

He was mad. More mad than you’d ever seen him. Angrier than he had been after the attack by the Bog.

There was no forgiving you for this.

How could you blame him?

Tears burned in your eyes as you thought back to the pharmacy, the look of fear and panic and agony on his face as he thought he was losing you.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

It wasn’t him losing you in that moment. It was you losing him.

He finally stopped when you had made it a couple hundred feet into the woods, wordlessly deeming this spot safe.

You watched his pace gradually slow as he approached one of the trees, resting a fist against the bark above him, head hanging low, shoulders still moving up and down as he breathed.

“Bucky,” you finally said, taking a tentative step forward.

He turned around, face lifeless, eyes on the ground, unable to look at you.

“We should tend the wound,” he mumbled, reaching into his bag for medical supplies.

You bit your bottom lip, debating whether to push him into having this conversation or remaining in the slightly less terrifying ignorance.

There was a fallen tree stump a few feet away that Bucky gestured towards, and the two of you straddled it facing each other, close enough that your knees nearly touched.

A crack appeared in his stoic features as he swallowed. “Can I…”

You nodded, tilting your head to the side to better expose your neck.

He opened one of the new bottles of peroxide and poured some onto a bandage. As soon as it made contact with the marks, you hissed in pain.

Bucky’s body went rigid for a second, then continued pressing it along your neck until he had gone over each indent.

The proximity made your head even more dizzy, and though the peroxide burned as it entered each wound, it had nothing on the heat you felt on the parts of your skin his fingers grazed over. Your eyes scanned his face, taking in the details you never got to notice from afar. The mole on his right ear, a very faint scar above his left brow, a cleft in his chin underneath the facial hair.

He pulled away to grab another clean bandage.

“You’re immune,” he said quietly as he dug through the bag.

You took a sharp intake of breath, all of the emotions that had been building up to this conversation suddenly smothering you.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

His nostrils flared.

“Hydra did this,” he said, another question in the form of a statement as if he had spent the entire journey from the pharmacy here working it all out.

Another nod. “Yes.”

He stilled, taking a deep breath in, readying himself for his next question.

“You’ve…you’ve been bit before.”

You blinked back tears, chin only able to move down once for this next confirmation.

Bucky’s flesh hand clenched around the roll of gauze.

“Who else knows?” Finally, an actual question.

Your hands began shaking. “Bruce. He…he tested my blood when I first got here and just recently figured it out.”

“How recent?”

You swallowed. “A week ago.”

Bucky released a bitter chuckle, shaking his head as a smile crept up his face. There was no joy in the expression.

“Right,” was all he said in response, cutting off a square of gauze and pressing it on your neck. He grabbed the tape with his metal hand and bit off a piece, securing the bandage onto the wound. Though he was angry, he still worked carefully and gently so as not to hurt you.

“I’m sorry,” you finally whispered, voice shaky.

His eyes finally met yours, the storm of blue now flooded with emotion.

“Sorry for what, exactly?” he bit out. “For lying to me from the beginning? For slowly getting me to trust you while keeping this massive fucking secret from me?” His leg swung over the stump and he stood up, pacing a few feet away. “Were you ever going to tell me, Y/n?”

The sudden hurt in his voice punctured a hole in your heart and you stood up. “I was.” He let out another bitter laugh and you scowled. “I was, Bucky. I’ve wanted to tell you since basically the fucking beginning! It may come as a surprise but I would have loved to have people know just how fucked up I am so that I didn’t feel totally alone while going through this.”

He turned around, the storm in those icy irises still raging. “Then why the fuck didn’t you?”

You scoffed, hands waving in the air. “Are you kidding me? Since day one you’ve wanted nothing but to have my head on a skewer! You’ve been waiting for me to fail, for me to slip up and prove to you that I can’t be trusted. And I’m pretty sure I just got you to stop hating me!”

Confusion washed over his face then, mixed with frustration, like a million gears were spinning in his head.

“I never hated you!” he yelled.

There could have been a hundred walkers within earshot of the two of you screaming idiots, and neither of you gave a damn. There was no stopping what was happening. It had been building up for so long, and now it was finally toppling over.

“That’s bullshit, Bucky!” you yelled back. “You could barely look at me for so long! My entire existence made you miserable!”

His hands pressed on either side of his head. “Because you scare the shit out of me!”

That took every last bit of air from your body, and his words might have actually cleaved your heart in two.

He was afraid of you. Because of who you were. Because of your past. The scars on your skin. The blood in your veins.

Your face contorted into a mix of grief and rage as you continued yelling, “What, so after all this time, you still just think that I’m some sort of freak who’s going to kill everyone we both love-”

Somehow, though it seemed impossible, Bucky’s face looked even more confused. His hands lowered to his sides. “What? No, Y/n…”

His voice was softer, but the emotions bursting within you made it impossible to calm down.

“Then what the FUCK is it Bucky? What is so wrong with me that makes it so that I’m impossible to be around-”

“Because I’m fucking terrified of how much you mean to me!” he roared, eyes welling with tears.

Your whole body went still in an instant. Stuck in place, unable to register anything in your brain except for those words.

“What?”

Bucky’s chest puffed up and down, his eyes wild as they bore into yours.

Then, suddenly, instead of being five feet away, he was a mere inches.

And his hands were cradling your face.

And then his lips were crashing against yours.

Before you even had time to process it, he was pulling away, both of you panting as he looked into your eyes once more. This time, instead of anger and fierceness, you saw fear, vulnerability.

A question of consent. If you wanted to move forward or walk away.

For months, it had always been a question of whether Bucky thought you were safe or dangerous. An asset or a liability. Trustworthy or not.

Here, in this moment, he was asking you all of those things. If you could trust him.

You answered by grabbing the back of his head and kissing him back.

A low, hungry groan vibrated into your mouth, and Bucky’s metal arm moved to wrap around you, pulling you closer until your body was completely pressed to his.

You had survived many things in life, faced many years of danger and life-threatening situations.

None of it could have prepared you for kissing Bucky. It was as if your heart could give out at any moment from the crippling feeling of it all. His lips, his hands, his tongue. The breathy moans he let out that harmonized with yours.

It was too much, it wasn’t nearly enough.

You’d live through an infinite number of apocalypses just to be able to have this moment with him. You prayed for a day where it could all be over so that the only thing you ever had to worry about was finding ways to never stop kissing him.

It took a few minutes for you two to force yourselves to pull apart, gasping for air as if you’d been running for miles.

Bucky’s forehead rested against yours as he closed his eyes, his face completely relaxed.

You giggled.

“And so…” you started, and because Bucky knew you so well, his eyes narrowed, “the lion fell in love with the lamb. Or in this case, the lion fell in love with the Beefcake.”

He let out an exacerbated groan, but all that mattered was the smile on his lips as you pulled them back to yours.

The two of you continued on your journey after a few more minutes of groping and kissing each other, walking hand in hand as Bucky led you back to camp.

With all the shit that had gone down at the pharmacy, then in the woods, along with the weakness you felt from that bite slowing you down, you were way behind schedule, and there was no way you were going to make it back until the morning.

So when night fell, you ended up snuggling together against a large pine tree a few hours away from home, your head resting on his lap.

You were starting to doze off as his fingers gently stroked over your hair, lids growing heavy from the chaos of the day when he spoke.

“Steve would have loved you,” he murmured out of nowhere.

Your eyes flew open, looking up at him. He was staring out into the distance.

“You think so?” you asked, voice raspy from sleepiness.

He nodded, the right corner of his mouth tugging upward. “He would have loved how much you love busting my balls.”

You laughed, hand searching for his as your fingers interlaced with the cool vibranium.

“Sounds like we would have been insufferable together.”

“I would have gladly suffered through it to have both of you here.”

A painful mixture of joy and dread swelled throughout your body, and your hand freed itself to rest on his cheek, applying just enough pressure to gently pull his gaze to you.

“I’m sorry he’s not here anymore.”

Bucky’s smile dropped, jaw clenching and he gave you a single nod. “Me, too.”

Your hand lowered to take his once more.

A few minutes passed before you said something.

“I’m gonna tell them when I get back.”

Bucky’s eyes flashed back to you, vibranium tightening ever so slightly in your hand.

He nodded. “Good. It’ll be good for us all to know.”

A rush of nerves ran through your body and you let out an anxious laugh. “To know they have live bait on the team to use who won’t get turned?” you joked.

Bad idea.

Rage flashed in his eyes, body going tensing around you.

“We would never do that. I will never fucking let you get bit ever again.”

A sudden sheen of tears formed in your eyes at the protectiveness in his voice. And then came the guilt. “I’m sorry. Bad joke.”

He shook his head, eyes closing for a second. When he opened them, his gaze was softer. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I’ll never be able to joke about that.”

You bobbed your head up and down and his shoulders sagged. His flesh hand moved from your head down to your face, thumb grazing along your cheek.

“That was the most scared I’ve ever been in my fucking life,” he continued. “I’ve lost so many people already, and all I could think was, I can’t lose her, too. I’m not strong enough for that.”

A small smile spread across your lips. “Why do you think I jumped down to save you Buck?”

He smiled back. “I thought it was so you could continue annoying me a little while longer.”

A giggle bubbled out of you and his smile widened. “That, too. Obviously. And to keep book club alive. I still have so many recs to make you cry your eyes out.” He rolled said eyes, still grinning. “A couple other reasons, possibly,” you finished with a wink.

Bucky huffed. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Besides, now I’m winning.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “Winning what, exactly?”

“Well, unbeknownst to you, we were one-to-one with the whole being bitten and living to tell the tale.” Your smile turned mischievous. “Now I’m at two, which means I’m winning.”

Bucky’s mouth dropped open, shaking his head. “You are unbelievable. How about this? I promise to never come for your crown and then you never have to worry about staying in the lead of number of times someone has been bitten by a fucking zombie and lived to tell the tale.”

You pursed your lips, jokingly pondering his request. “I think that’s fair.”

He rolled his eyes. “Gotta be honest, I was hoping you’d be less annoying once we kissed and everything.”

Your face scrunched as you scoffed. “No way, Beefcake. If anything, I’m going to be a million times more annoying. Then you’ll be forced to shut me up with those pretty lips of yours.”

“Oh, is that all it takes?” he asked dramatically.

“Yep.” You sat up, scooching around to face him with a smug grin. “And until then, I’m just going to keep talking and talking and annoying you and annoying you-”

He let out a low growl, grabbing your face and pulling you in for a kiss so fast that you let you a yelp before closing your eyes and resting your hands on his chest for support.

“You know,” he murmured when the two of you pulled away minutes later, “I’ll let you in on a little secret. You don’t actually need to annoy me in order to get me to kiss you, sweetheart.”

You scrunched your nose. “Possibly. But my way is more fun.”

Another groan, and then another kiss. Bucky’s hand lowered to your neck mindlessly and pressed against the bandage just a little too hard.

You winced. He pulled back.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” His eyes moved to the wound and he grimaced.

You shook your head with a reassuring smile. “Absolutely worth it, Beefcake. Trust me. Besides, it already hurts way less than it did earlier. Based on the first bite, it’ll heal and scar in no time.”

Bucky’s tongue ran over his bottom lip. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“What is it?” you asked, sensing the question he was afraid to speak.

“Can I….Can I see it?”

“What, the cut? I guess we can rebandage it if you want but I promise it’s fine-”

“No.” He shook his head, suddenly nervous. “I mean, can I see the other scar?”

You froze. “You want to see the first bite?”

“Only if you’re comfortable. You don’t have to.”

A beat passed of you staring at each other before you slowly nodded. “It’s um,” you shifted, “it’s probably easier if I stand.”

Getting to your feet, your hand hovered over your abdomen, fingers shaking as you reached for the hem of your shirt.

Bucky kept his eyes on yours, unblinking, unwavering.

You took a deep breath, then lifted up the fabric.

Slowly, his eyes traveled down your body until they landed on the scar, and you heard his breath hitch.

It was too much - to see him stare at the ugliest part of you, raised skin with jagged bumps, surrounded by those nightmarish black veins - and you ended up looking over him at the bark of the tree, teeth clenched together.

Better for him to see now. This was going to be your neck in a few weeks time, and it would be nearly impossible to hide. He could still walk away if he wanted to.

Long, agonizing seconds passed without a word, and suddenly you heard and saw shifting from your periphery, dread pooling in your stomach.

He’s trying to get away. He can’t bear to look at this anymore.

Just as you were about to lower the shirt, you gasped at an unexpected sensation.

Large, calloused fingertips, slowly tracing along each bite mark.

You forced yourself to look down at Bucky, who was now on his knees and eye level with the scar. He was transfixed by it, sending soothing touches over each ridge, each distortion.

Your breath quickened, tears welling in your eyes to the point that he started to blur as you watched him.

And then, before you could even process what was going on, Bucky leaned forward.

As soon as his lips pressed against the scar, you breathed out a small sob, tears freely falling down your face.

This scar, this part of you, had only been associated with pain and torment for months, years. It resembled a time that you were at your weakest, most helpless, when your body wasn’t your own, just a thing for others to play with as they chose.

Here, with Bucky, as his soft lips kissed each mark with more tenderness than you had ever known, you felt the weight of all that had happened leave you. The burden you had been carrying suddenly lifted, and you felt as if you were floating and Bucky was the one thing keeping you grounded.

He looked up at you, eyes filled with their own tears as his hands went on either side of your waist.

“Never again,” he said, voice quiet but strong. “I’ll never let it happen again. I promise.”

Once you mustered up the ability to nod, he wrapped his arms around you, embracing your middle, the right side of his face resting on your stomach.

Your hands cradled his head against you, fingers massaging his scalp, eyes closing from the overwhelming amount of emotion coursing through you.

Something shifted in you then. A type of strength and assurance you had never experienced before. A moment that came from binding yourself to someone so intensely, so permanently, that life could never be the same without them.

Two souls, woven together into one. Never to be parted, even in death.

Chapter 10

#gah damn #these are so good #bucky x you #bucky x reader #zombie apocalypse

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