cheekybarnes

[cheekybarnes]

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER 2011, dir. Joe Johnston

[cheekybarnes]

IRON MAN 2008, dir. Jon Favreau

[cheekybarnes]

ohhh friend 🥹 i’m wrapping you in the biggest hug right now. i’m so sorry you’re dealing with that feeling, it’s the worst, and i wish i could just magic it away for you!!! i’m really glad this one could give you even a tiny bit of comfort in the middle of it all. you’re gonna look incredible at that wedding (and i hope you can feel even a fraction of what bucky would see if he were there with you 💖)

dress rehearsal | bucky barnes x reader

Summary: Minutes before a gala, Bucky finds you spiraling in front of the mirror and decides there are better ways to remind you you’re worth every second of the spotlight.

MCU Timeline Placement: Thunderbolts*

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: established relationship, explicit sexual content (f receiving oral), body image issues, self-esteem issues, discussion of insecurity, praise kink(?), language, light teasing, mild possessive/protective behavior, bucky ruining standards for men

Word Count: 5.3k

Author’s Note: this was a lovely request from my lovely dear mutual mare who somehow finally inspired me to get a bit more spicy???? who am i???? genuinely though this one meant a lot to write. body image and self-worth are such tender, complicated things, and getting to explore that with bucky being soft and filthy in equal measure?? yeah. thank you for lighting this particular fire. hope it wrecks you lovingly <3

The tuxedo fit too well.

Bucky tugged at the collar again, even though it hadn’t moved. Even though he’d stood in front of the mirror a full ten minutes ago and adjusted it just fine. No wrinkles. No seam out of place. Even the stupid cufflinks Val had sent over—some gaudy, high-sheen silver things with the team’s new crest etched into them like a brand—sat obediently in place.

He didn’t look like himself. Didn’t feel like it either.

But that was the point of these things, wasn’t it?

Not just the gala, but the whole new-leaf branding project: the “look how far they’ve come” parade. Clean cuts, clean lines, clean record. Congressman for six months, team player for the cameras, redemption wrapped in black tie and photo ops.

But he was still the same man who’d woken up shaking in cold sweats at three in the morning, trying not to put his fist through a wall. Still the same one who had to unclench his jaw when someone said “Winter Soldier” with that sharp little pause that always followed.

But tonight he was supposed to be…reformed. Spotlight ready. One of the good guys. One of the New Avengers, as Val had coined it. A man with both hands out of the grave.

Bucky pulled in a slow breath through his nose, shoulders rising just enough to stretch the seams of his jacket. He held it, jaw tight, before letting it out in a controlled exhale that warmed the edge of his collar. 

His gaze shifted to the bathroom door, where you’d disappeared twenty minutes ago. The clock on the dresser said they had maybe fifteen minutes before Val started sending people up to drag them downstairs, but he wasn’t about to rush you.

The light was still on beneath the frame. He caught the sound of movement—fabric rustling, a zipper tugged too hard, something metallic clattering against the tile. A muffled curse, just under your breath.

Another few seconds passed. A soft groan.

Not pain. Frustration.

He moved toward the door, careful not to let the floorboards creak beneath his boots. Leaned one shoulder against the wall and tilted his head slightly, voice low, gentle.

“Hey, you alright in there?”

Silence.

“Yeah. I’m fine," your voice came, thinner than usual, almost sheepish.

He waited. Let the silence stretch for just long enough that you might fill it. You didn’t. Just more shifting fabric and another zipper catch. The kind of fumble that didn’t come from rushing, but from second-guessing.

You were never this quiet. Not with him. Not unless something was clawing at you behind the ribs.

He cleared his throat lightly. “You’ve been in there a while, sweetheart.”

You laughed, if you could call it that. It was small, brittle. “Sorry. Just—nothing looks right.”

That pulled something tight in his chest. A knot he recognized too well.

“I’m just…trying to pick something that doesn’t make me look like an idiot. Or a stuffed sausage. Or a—God, I don’t know. Everything I bought suddenly decided to betray me.”

That earned a faint smile from him, even if it didn’t reach his eyes. He could picture you pacing around the small bathroom, dress half-zipped, tugging at fabric that never seemed to sit the way it did on the hanger. He’d had his own versions of those moments. A suit that choked around the collar. A prosthetic that never matched. A face he didn’t always recognize.

“You want help?” he asked. Not pushy. Just offering.

There was a sigh. Then the sound of a zipper tugged halfway up, then back down again.

“No. I don’t even know what you’d help with. It’s not like you can magic something that doesn’t make me feel…ugh. I mean, it’s stupid. It’s just a dress.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“I know. But it feels like it is. I feel like I’m spiraling over something small. And you’re out there already dressed like a whole movie poster, and I’m over here losing a wrestling match with tulle and my own brain.”

Bucky’s brow creased. He rested his knuckles gently against the door.

“Sweetheart, you don’t owe me a polished version of yourself. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

You were quiet again.

He let the silence hang, but not too long this time. He didn’t want you folding in on yourself.

“Look,” he said softly. “I’m not gonna lie and say this shit isn’t hard. They’re parading us out tonight like action figures in shiny packaging. And yeah, I put on the tux, but it doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to breathe in it.”

You exhaled, just barely audible.

“I think I wanted to feel good,” you admitted. “And now everything I try on just reminds me of all the reasons I don’t.”

He hesitated, then reached for the doorknob, not to open it, but just to let you know he was there. The way you did for him when he had bad nights. When he sat on the edge of the bed with a sleeveless shirt in his hands and couldn’t convince himself to put it on, because all he saw were the scars and the metal and the reminder of what had been taken.

“Can I come in?” he asked softly.

Another pause.

“I don’t know. You’ll laugh.”

“Hey,” he said, quiet and certain. “I’ve never laughed at you. Not once.”

Still, you didn’t answer. He waited anyway. Gave you the time you needed, like you’d given him, a hundred times over. And after a moment, he heard the lock click.

The door creaked open an inch, then two.

You stepped out slow, eyes downcast, hands tugging at the sides of the dress like you could rearrange the whole thing if you just held it tighter. It shimmered faintly in the low light—midnight blue, the color he always thought of when he thought of you—but it was clear from the way you fidgeted that you didn’t feel like it fit.

“I wanted to wear the black one,” you said quickly. “But the zipper was too high and the red one makes me look like a—god, I don’t know. I just—this one was the only one that didn’t make me cry, and even then I still almost did, and I’m being ridiculous, I know, but it just—none of it feels right.”

You shook your head, like you were trying to physically dislodge the thoughts. “Forget it. I sound insane.”

Bucky didn’t respond right away. Didn’t rush to contradict you, or smother the moment in sweet nothings you’d only half believe. He just looked at you.

Not the way everyone else would tonight—cataloguing, assessing, slotting you into someone else’s narrative. Not like a possession on display, or an accessory to his redemption arc. Not like the plus-one to a man with a metal arm and too much blood on his hands. 

Bucky looked at you like you were his. Like the gravity in the room bent differently when you were near. Like every cracked seam, every insecurity you were holding together with safety pins and sheer force of will, only made you more real.

“Hey,” he said softly, drawing your gaze back up to meet his. “You don’t sound insane.”

You tried to scoff. Tried to laugh it off, but it wobbled halfway up your throat. He reached out and brushed his thumb along the underside of your jaw, coaxing your eyes to hold his. You let him.

“I’ve seen you angry,” he murmured. “I’ve seen you covered in blood, outnumbered, exhausted, ready to break. I’ve seen you laugh so hard you cried and cry so hard you laughed. I’ve seen every version of you—and not once have I ever thought you were being ridiculous.”

Your shoulders dipped slightly, like maybe he’d carved out a little air where there hadn’t been any. But your fingers still tugged at the fabric around your waist, fidgeting, pulling, adjusting a dress that wouldn’t settle the way you needed it to.

“I just…wanted to feel good tonight,” you said, voice thin, like you weren’t sure it was worth saying. “I wanted to walk in and not wonder what everyone’s thinking when they see me next to you. Or what Valentina’s thinking, or what the headlines will say, or if someone’s going to post some photo of us and it’ll be the worst angle imaginable, and I’ll have to spend the whole week trying not to look at it but knowing it’s there—”

You stopped yourself. Took a breath. Shook your head.

“I didn’t want it to get to me,” you whispered. “But it does.”

Bucky’s jaw ticked.

There it was—that protective heat rising in him, quiet and searing. The same thing that stirred in his gut when someone so much as looked at you wrong on a mission. The same thing that made him keep an eye on entrances, exits, camera flashes, social feeds. Not out of paranoia, but out of need. Because he knew what it felt like to be dissected by the world. To be seen in pieces. To have your worst moments live longer than your best.

He stepped in closer, the space between you shrinking to almost nothing. His metal hand found the fabric at your side, not to fix it, not to smooth it out, but just to touch, to remind you he was there.

“You know what I see?” he asked, low.

You didn’t answer. Not because you didn’t want to, but because you couldn’t trust your voice to hold steady.

“I see the woman who made me breakfast barefoot in my kitchen three mornings in a row after staying up all night with me when I couldn’t sleep and never once looked at me like I was broken. I see the same woman who told off a U.S. Senator with red wine on her teeth and didn’t blink. I see someone who stands her ground when people twice her size start barking orders. Someone who gets shit done even when the whole world wants her to shrink down and stay quiet.”

He leaned in, just enough that his forehead almost touched yours. The metal of his left hand skimmed your hip, a familiar coolness through the fabric. His right thumb still traced along your jaw.

“You walk into that room with me tonight, and I guarantee you they’ll see it too,” he said. “But even if they don’t? Even if the whole damn world somehow misses it—I won’t.”

You blinked, quick. He saw the way your throat bobbed, the way your lower lip wavered before you bit it down.

“You don’t have to be anything but yourself,” he said. “You don’t have to win anyone over. You don’t have to impress a soul.”

You let out a shaky breath.

“But I do want to impress you,” you admitted, almost too quiet.

That undid something in him.

His mouth twitched, not into a grin, but something far more solemn.

“You already have,” he said, with that same certainty he used on the field when the odds looked bad and the exits were burning. “Every goddamn day. Whether you’re in this dress or sweats or half-asleep in my arms mumbling shit that doesn’t make sense. You don’t have to try for me.”

He said it like a vow. Like a line he’d carve into the marble of your shared life if he could.

“I love you in ways I still don’t know how to say out loud. But I don’t just love you despite the parts you hate. I love you with them. Through them. I love you even when you don’t believe me. Especially then.”

You didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there with your hands still fisted in the sides of the dress, eyes glassy, throat working like you were trying to swallow the lump down before it gave you away.

Bucky could see it, though.

The flicker of doubt you were trying to blink away. The war still playing out just behind your eyes—quiet, ugly, familiar. He knew it too well. The voice that waited for the mirror to catch you from the wrong angle, that twisted a glance into judgment, that made everything too tight, too loud, too much. He’d lived with that voice. Sometimes he still did.

And because he knew it, because he’d heard it in his own head, he didn’t dare let you pull away.

Instead, he kept his hands on you. Not holding or restraining, just there. 

He drew a breath through his nose.

“People are cruel,” he said finally. “You and I both know that.”

You didn’t move. But something in your jaw twitched—tightening, then unclenching.

“They look at what they don’t understand and tear it down to feel better. They pick at the things that make you different, like that’s a flaw instead of the whole fucking point. And the worst part? You start believing them. Little by little. Like maybe if you shrink just enough, they’ll leave you alone.”

You closed your eyes, but Bucky didn’t stop.

“But I’m not letting you believe them,” he said, voice firmer now. “Not when they’re wrong. And they are wrong. Every single one of those assholes who’s ever made you feel small—whether it was with a comment, a glance, or some passive-aggressive bullshit about ‘expectations’—they’re cowards.”

His arm at your waist slid around you fully now, drawing you into his chest. His voice dropped low, all gravel and steel and unswerving conviction.

“If anyone looks at you sideways tonight, I won’t hesitate. I’ll break their nose and make ‘em apologize in the same breath.”

You huffed, half a startled breath, half a laugh. “You can’t do that. This is a diplomatic event.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t want to,” he muttered. “And you know I could make it look like an accident.”

You tilted your head back to look at him. His expression was stone. Unflinching. But his hand smoothed gently up your back in contrast, the duality of him radiating from every breath. Soft and hard. Quiet and deadly. Yours.

“I just hate that they ever made you question it,” he said, a little quieter now. “Your worth. Your body. Your existence. That anyone ever made you think that this—” his gaze flicked down, slow and deliberate, before coming back to your face “—wasn’t something to revere.”

You felt it in the way he said it. Not just appreciate. Not desire, not even admire. 

Revere.

The word settled deep, slow-burning and reverent, like a palm laid flat against your sternum.

His hand at your jaw moved, brushing your hair back gently, and then his fingers traced the curve of your neck. Your breath caught when his thumb dipped to trace the space just beneath your ear.

“You should think you’re beautiful,” he said, and his voice dropped, rougher now—not angry, but intimate. “You should see what I see every time you walk into a room.”

He tilted his head, mouth grazing just shy of your cheek. “You don’t know what that does to a man like me.”

You huffed, nose brushing his, your hands coming up behind his neck. “I think you’re being dramatic.”

“Dramatic?” His brow rose slightly, lips curving in that dry, knowing way he used when you pushed his buttons on purpose. “Baby, if I’m dramatic it’s only because you’re walkin’ around here lookin’ like that and expecting me to act normal.”

His vibranium hand slid a little lower on your back, fingers splaying, settling possessively at the top of your ass. You shifted instinctively toward him, and he smirked.

“That’s not fair,” you muttered, cheeks flushed now in a way that had nothing to do with shame. “You’re the one who’s looking like James Bond’s meaner older brother.”

“You like it.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

His thumb tapped your lower back. “Then quit squirming like I’m lying to you.”

You narrowed your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you—pulling into something faintly sheepish, barely there. Bucky’s gaze softened again, but the warmth stayed low, coiled behind his ribs.

“Say it,” he murmured.

You blinked up at him. “Say what?”

“That you look good.”

You tried to look away. He didn’t let you.

“That you know you make me crazy,” he added, leaning in close enough to nip your jaw with his teeth, gentle but not quite innocent. “That you’ve had me on edge since you walked outta that bathroom looking like you’re daring someone to say the wrong thing.”

You snorted. “I’m sure you were pacing before I even got the dress on.”

He grinned. “And whose fault is that?”

Yours. His. All of it.

Still, the warmth inside you climbed a notch. Not just because of the teasing, or the heat in his voice, but because it was easy. Because there was no pressure to be something you weren’t. No pedestal, no pedestal-smashing. Just this. Just you, exactly as you were, and Bucky Barnes pressing into you like gravity itself was a thing he’d fight off with his bare hands if it meant keeping you close.

“I don’t think I look bad,” you said slowly, cautiously, like the words might crack your teeth if you spoke them wrong.

Bucky didn’t press.

He just nodded once. “Good start.”

You tilted your head, giving him a look. “What, you want me to practice affirmations now?”

“I want you to say one nice thing about yourself,” he said, leaning his mouth down to your ear. “And if you don’t, I’ll just have to spend the next few hours whisperin’ filthy ones in your ear until you start believing me.”

You laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”

“Mm.” He kissed the corner of your mouth, then lingered just long enough for your lips to part. “But you’re blushing.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“I will bite you.”

He gave you a look like please, and dipped his head to kiss you properly.

It wasn’t exactly delicate. It was open-mouthed and hot and familiar in all the right ways, and when your fingers moved from his hair to curl into the lapels of his tux like you were considering ripping it off, he only growled against your lips.

“God, I hate that we have to leave this room,” he muttered, pulling back just enough to look at you, eyes heavy, voice low. “I’d trade a week’s mission reports to be late. Maybe two.”

“That’s a bribe,” you whispered, breathless.

“That’s a threat,” he corrected, mouth grazing yours again. “You keep looking at me like that, we’re not makin’ it out of this bedroom without some wrinkled seams.”

You shifted your weight onto one hip, eyes glinting just under your lashes like you were daring him again—no, testing him. Bucky could see it in the way your mouth curved. Not all the way into a smile, not fully confident, but enough to mask the edge of nerves underneath.

The way you always did when you felt too seen.

“Bet I’d look better out of the dress anyway,” you murmured, eyes flicking down to the dress like it was the punchline to your own joke.

It was the way you said it, like you didn’t really believe it. Like maybe if you got there first and said it like it was sexy, it wouldn’t sound so close to shame.

And that was what set something alight in him. Not because of what you said. But because you didn’t believe it the way he did. Because you still thought you had to prove yourself to him in some invisible way. Like he couldn’t already see the whole damn universe when he looked at you.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t give you time to backpedal or bury it under another joke.

He gripped the backs of your thighs and lifted you clean off the floor before you had the chance to blink. Your surprised laugh turned into a squeal as he twisted, stepping the two long strides it took to cross the room, and tossed you onto the edge of the bed. Not rough. Not careless. Just enough to bounce, just enough to feel the shock of air and momentum leave your lungs as you landed on your back.

The dress pooled around your hips like spilled ink, shimmer catching the low light. Your hair was mussed now, lips parted, hands splayed out across the sheets like you weren’t sure whether to push yourself up or reach for him again.

Bucky stood over you for a second, just long enough to look. Really look. Let you see him seeing you.

Not appraising. Not comparing. Just reverent.

“What, is this better, Sergeant?" you asked breathlessly, voice hitching with a shaky laugh as you tried to lighten the moment, eyes flicking to the ceiling like maybe you could play this off.

But he didn’t laugh.

He dropped to his knees at the end of the bed, hands sliding along the outside of your thighs. His flesh hand skimmed up until his palm flattened against your side, his thumb grazing bare skin where the dress had shifted.

“You know what I see when I look at you?” he said, voice lower now. Thicker.

You rolled your eyes, not unkindly, but he saw the flash of deflection in it. Heard it in the silence before you responded.

“Bucky—”

“I’m serious,” he said, and his hand pressed just slightly, grounding you in place. “You walked out of that bathroom thinking you had to sell it. Sell yourself. Like you needed to convince everyone that you belonged, that you were enough. But you don’t. Not for me. Not for them. You don’t owe a single person proof of your worth.”

Your breath caught.

And he leaned closer, mouth near your stomach now, where the fabric had pulled tight against your skin. He kissed the fabric, right over where your hand had earlier tried to hide the soft edge of yourself, the place you'd fidgeted with and tugged at like it might betray you.

“You keep covering and hiding this,” he murmured, pressing another kiss, slower now. “Like it’s something to be ashamed of. But this—you—this is where I rest my head when I can’t sleep.”

Another kiss, higher now, just below your ribs.

“This is where your warmth lives. Where you hold me at night. Where you laugh from.”

And another, right at the center of your chest, just above your heart. “Don’t you dare think there’s a single part of you that should be different.”

His hands moved again, thumbs brushing the curve of your hips as you let out a breath like you hadn’t meant to hold it.

“I know you don’t see it the way I do,” he said, his voice rough with feeling. “But I’m not gonna stop reminding you until you do. Even if it takes the rest of my life.”

You looked at him then. Really looked. Eyes more glassy now. Lips parted, body slack against the covers like the tension had finally begun to slip.

He kissed your thigh, slow and soft, then looked up at you with a grin that broke through the heat.

“And if it means throwing you on the bed every time you talk shit about yourself, then that’s just the price I’ll pay.”

You laughed—this time real, open, easy. The sound of it shot straight through him, leaving something warm and vital in its place.

He loved that sound. Loved how rare it used to be, how easily it came now. Loved that he could coax it from you with the right look, the right line, the right pressure of his hand on your skin like you weren’t a thing to be handled carefully but rather something holy, something his.

He wanted to bottle it, to trap it in the space between your ribs and whisper it back to you on the nights you couldn’t find it yourself.

But more than that—right now, with you laid out across the bed, that dress clinging to all the parts you’d tried to hide—he wanted to make sure you never questioned again whether or not you were wanted.

Needed.

Loved.

Because fuck the gala. Fuck the flashbulbs and the politicians and whatever the hell Valentina was trying to prove by trotting them out like reformed zoo animals. If they showed up late, they’d still have to shake his hand. Still have to smile like he didn’t see through all of it.

So when he leaned back in, he did it with intent.

No more trying to talk you out of the mirror. No more dragging you gently back from the edge. He was here. You were his. And if you couldn’t see yourself the way he did—if the words still caught in your chest, if the dress still clung in the wrong places in your mind—then he’d show you in a language you couldn’t argue with.

His hands slid beneath the hem of your dress, fingers parting the folds of the dress at your thighs. The fabric bunched in his palms like silk, and he kept his touch light, not asking, just offering. You shifted for him instinctively, thighs parting with that familiar, silent trust that still wrecked him every time.

He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee first. Just one. Then another, higher, where your skin grew warmer, softer. You inhaled through your nose, eyes fluttering shut.

He mouthed higher, slow, deliberate, tracing lazy, open-mouthed kisses along the inside of your thigh. He could feel your pulse just beneath your skin, could feel the way you were already trembling. It made something low in him twist, dark and heady.

His hands gripped the outside of your hips again, thumbs dragging slow circles, grounding you to the mattress. His mouth found the edge of your underwear, and he didn’t pull it down. Not yet. Just kissed over the fabric, his breath warm through it, lips soft and coaxing.

You gasped, quiet and strangled.

So he did it again.

And again.

Until your hips arched just slightly into his mouth.

His tongue followed the shape of you through the fabric, slow and teasing, not giving you everything, but just enough to make your hands twist in the sheets. He licked through the center of you, and the choked little sound you made shattered whatever restraint he had left.

He slipped two fingers beneath the edge of the fabric then, pulling it gently to the side just enough to expose the part of you already waiting. He didn’t speak. Just breathed against you once before sealing his mouth over you fully.

You gasped—high and sudden and so fucking sweet—and Bucky groaned against you, like the sound alone rewired something in his chest. His tongue moved slow at first, savoring you, mapping every tremor and shift in your body like it mattered more than breathing. Because to him, it did.

He loved you like this. Loved you most when you couldn’t keep still, when you forgot to hold your breath, when all the things the world told you to hide came pouring out of you in gasps and whispered curses and the soft whimper of his name.

“Fuck, Bucky—”

You reached for him blindly, one hand finding his hair and threading through it, gripping hard when he moved his tongue just right. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Not with the way you moaned for him, not with the way you tilted your hips, chasing the heat he’d stoked into a flame.

He swore he could’ve stayed between your thighs for the rest of his life and died a content man. The sounds you made—the way your body arched under his mouth, the way you let go with him—was better than any redemption arc the world could’ve written for him. Better than clean records and polished tuxes and state-sanctioned forgiveness. This was real. This was his.

And God, you were gorgeous like this. You always were. But now, flushed and writhing and half-wild with need, hands buried in his hair like you’d drown without something to hold onto, you were divine.

He drew his mouth back just slightly, just enough to suck in a shaky breath and tilt his head to kiss the inside of your thigh. Then the other. Not just kissing, but revering—lingering, warm, open-mouthed. As if he could burn the shape of you into muscle memory.

Your fingers trembled against his scalp, and you let out something between a gasp and a curse.

He grinned softly, kissed higher, then slid his tongue up the center of you again, right before easing two fingers along your entrance, gathering slick before easing the first one in.

Your body jolted beneath him, muscles fluttering tight, and he kissed your inner thigh again just to ground you, to keep you in this place with him.

“Beautiful,” he breathed. “You are fuckin’ perfect.”

Another finger joined the first, slow but sure, and the sound you made twisted something inside him. He could feel you clench around him, so warm and wet and open, and he let his forehead rest against your thigh for a moment like he needed to catch up to how much he adored you.

“Can’t believe you looked at yourself in the mirror and thought you weren’t enough,” he murmured, fingers curling inside you just right, thumb brushing lightly against the swollen part of you in time with the motion of his mouth. “You’re everything.”

He dragged his tongue along you again, slow and greedy, while his fingers moved deeper, angling until you cried out softly and tugged at his hair. And God, the way you sounded—wrecked and radiant and just for him—he could’ve come undone right there, still fully clothed, just from the sound of your pleasure.

“You’re so goddamn gorgeous,” he whispered against you, his voice breaking slightly. “Every fuckin’ inch of you, sweetheart. I mean it. All of you.”

And just as he was about to lower his mouth to you again—

BANG. BANG. BANG.

“Barnes! You two decent yet?” The voice carried that clipped, rolling edge of a Russian accent, each word sharp and certain, vowels flattened just enough to make it sound more like an order than a question.

“Are you ready, or did you fucking die in there?!” Yelena added after a bout of silence, louder this time, the consonants biting hard, the sarcasm wound tight enough to cut.

Bucky exhaled against your skin.

​���You were already covering your mouth with one hand, shaking with silent laughter. Your legs twitched, thighs squeezing around his shoulders as he grumbled against your skin.

“Ten more minutes,” he muttered to himself, voice muffled. “Just ten more fucking minutes and I could’ve—”

“You’re already five late!” Yelena shouted through the door, like she could hear his internal monologue. “We were supposed to be fashionably on time, not scandalously late, and I swear to god if I have to stand next to Alexei by myself I will murder you both and frame Walker.”

“We’re coming!” you called out, voice strangled as you tried not to laugh and moan in the same breath.

“Clearly!” she snapped. Then, quieter—though not by much—“Tell Barnes to zip up. The hallway echoes.”

Bucky sat back on his heels, rubbing a hand down his face, then looked down at you with a rueful, breathless smile. Your hair was a little frizzy now, your chest heaving, your lips kiss-swollen and pink, and you’d never looked more beautiful to him in your life.

You blinked up at him, still flushed, still breathless, and raised an eyebrow.

He exhaled hard through his nose. “We’re finishing this later.”

You grinned, humming softly. “That a threat?”

“That’s a promise.”

He leaned down and kissed you again, deep and claiming and just a little filthy, like he wanted the taste of you on his tongue for the rest of the night.

And then, reluctantly, he stood, adjusted his ruined tux, and offered you his hand like a gentleman who’d very much just had his mouth between your thighs.

“You good?” he asked, voice low again. Soft.

You took his hand.

“Better than good,” you said, fingers curling around his.

no more taglists! tumblr’s @ limit said no 💔 follow @cheekybarnesupdates + turn on notifs for all fic drops!

[cheekybarnes]

brb crying that means the world that you think so 😭🫶🏻

dress rehearsal | bucky barnes x reader

Summary: Minutes before a gala, Bucky finds you spiraling in front of the mirror and decides there are better ways to remind you you’re worth every second of the spotlight.

MCU Timeline Placement: Thunderbolts*

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: established relationship, explicit sexual content (f receiving oral), body image issues, self-esteem issues, discussion of insecurity, praise kink(?), language, light teasing, mild possessive/protective behavior, bucky ruining standards for men

Word Count: 5.3k

Author’s Note: this was a lovely request from my lovely dear mutual mare who somehow finally inspired me to get a bit more spicy???? who am i???? genuinely though this one meant a lot to write. body image and self-worth are such tender, complicated things, and getting to explore that with bucky being soft and filthy in equal measure?? yeah. thank you for lighting this particular fire. hope it wrecks you lovingly <3

The tuxedo fit too well.

Bucky tugged at the collar again, even though it hadn’t moved. Even though he’d stood in front of the mirror a full ten minutes ago and adjusted it just fine. No wrinkles. No seam out of place. Even the stupid cufflinks Val had sent over—some gaudy, high-sheen silver things with the team’s new crest etched into them like a brand—sat obediently in place.

He didn’t look like himself. Didn’t feel like it either.

But that was the point of these things, wasn’t it?

Not just the gala, but the whole new-leaf branding project: the “look how far they’ve come” parade. Clean cuts, clean lines, clean record. Congressman for six months, team player for the cameras, redemption wrapped in black tie and photo ops.

But he was still the same man who’d woken up shaking in cold sweats at three in the morning, trying not to put his fist through a wall. Still the same one who had to unclench his jaw when someone said “Winter Soldier” with that sharp little pause that always followed.

But tonight he was supposed to be…reformed. Spotlight ready. One of the good guys. One of the New Avengers, as Val had coined it. A man with both hands out of the grave.

Bucky pulled in a slow breath through his nose, shoulders rising just enough to stretch the seams of his jacket. He held it, jaw tight, before letting it out in a controlled exhale that warmed the edge of his collar. 

His gaze shifted to the bathroom door, where you’d disappeared twenty minutes ago. The clock on the dresser said they had maybe fifteen minutes before Val started sending people up to drag them downstairs, but he wasn’t about to rush you.

The light was still on beneath the frame. He caught the sound of movement—fabric rustling, a zipper tugged too hard, something metallic clattering against the tile. A muffled curse, just under your breath.

Another few seconds passed. A soft groan.

Not pain. Frustration.

He moved toward the door, careful not to let the floorboards creak beneath his boots. Leaned one shoulder against the wall and tilted his head slightly, voice low, gentle.

“Hey, you alright in there?”

Silence.

“Yeah. I’m fine," your voice came, thinner than usual, almost sheepish.

He waited. Let the silence stretch for just long enough that you might fill it. You didn’t. Just more shifting fabric and another zipper catch. The kind of fumble that didn’t come from rushing, but from second-guessing.

You were never this quiet. Not with him. Not unless something was clawing at you behind the ribs.

He cleared his throat lightly. “You’ve been in there a while, sweetheart.”

You laughed, if you could call it that. It was small, brittle. “Sorry. Just—nothing looks right.”

That pulled something tight in his chest. A knot he recognized too well.

“I’m just…trying to pick something that doesn’t make me look like an idiot. Or a stuffed sausage. Or a—God, I don’t know. Everything I bought suddenly decided to betray me.”

That earned a faint smile from him, even if it didn’t reach his eyes. He could picture you pacing around the small bathroom, dress half-zipped, tugging at fabric that never seemed to sit the way it did on the hanger. He’d had his own versions of those moments. A suit that choked around the collar. A prosthetic that never matched. A face he didn’t always recognize.

“You want help?” he asked. Not pushy. Just offering.

There was a sigh. Then the sound of a zipper tugged halfway up, then back down again.

“No. I don’t even know what you’d help with. It’s not like you can magic something that doesn’t make me feel…ugh. I mean, it’s stupid. It’s just a dress.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“I know. But it feels like it is. I feel like I’m spiraling over something small. And you’re out there already dressed like a whole movie poster, and I’m over here losing a wrestling match with tulle and my own brain.”

Bucky’s brow creased. He rested his knuckles gently against the door.

“Sweetheart, you don’t owe me a polished version of yourself. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

You were quiet again.

He let the silence hang, but not too long this time. He didn’t want you folding in on yourself.

“Look,” he said softly. “I’m not gonna lie and say this shit isn’t hard. They’re parading us out tonight like action figures in shiny packaging. And yeah, I put on the tux, but it doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to breathe in it.”

You exhaled, just barely audible.

“I think I wanted to feel good,” you admitted. “And now everything I try on just reminds me of all the reasons I don’t.”

He hesitated, then reached for the doorknob, not to open it, but just to let you know he was there. The way you did for him when he had bad nights. When he sat on the edge of the bed with a sleeveless shirt in his hands and couldn’t convince himself to put it on, because all he saw were the scars and the metal and the reminder of what had been taken.

“Can I come in?” he asked softly.

Another pause.

“I don’t know. You’ll laugh.”

“Hey,” he said, quiet and certain. “I’ve never laughed at you. Not once.”

Still, you didn’t answer. He waited anyway. Gave you the time you needed, like you’d given him, a hundred times over. And after a moment, he heard the lock click.

The door creaked open an inch, then two.

You stepped out slow, eyes downcast, hands tugging at the sides of the dress like you could rearrange the whole thing if you just held it tighter. It shimmered faintly in the low light—midnight blue, the color he always thought of when he thought of you—but it was clear from the way you fidgeted that you didn’t feel like it fit.

“I wanted to wear the black one,” you said quickly. “But the zipper was too high and the red one makes me look like a—god, I don’t know. I just—this one was the only one that didn’t make me cry, and even then I still almost did, and I’m being ridiculous, I know, but it just—none of it feels right.”

You shook your head, like you were trying to physically dislodge the thoughts. “Forget it. I sound insane.”

Bucky didn’t respond right away. Didn’t rush to contradict you, or smother the moment in sweet nothings you’d only half believe. He just looked at you.

Not the way everyone else would tonight—cataloguing, assessing, slotting you into someone else’s narrative. Not like a possession on display, or an accessory to his redemption arc. Not like the plus-one to a man with a metal arm and too much blood on his hands. 

Bucky looked at you like you were his. Like the gravity in the room bent differently when you were near. Like every cracked seam, every insecurity you were holding together with safety pins and sheer force of will, only made you more real.

“Hey,” he said softly, drawing your gaze back up to meet his. “You don’t sound insane.”

You tried to scoff. Tried to laugh it off, but it wobbled halfway up your throat. He reached out and brushed his thumb along the underside of your jaw, coaxing your eyes to hold his. You let him.

“I’ve seen you angry,” he murmured. “I’ve seen you covered in blood, outnumbered, exhausted, ready to break. I’ve seen you laugh so hard you cried and cry so hard you laughed. I’ve seen every version of you—and not once have I ever thought you were being ridiculous.”

Your shoulders dipped slightly, like maybe he’d carved out a little air where there hadn’t been any. But your fingers still tugged at the fabric around your waist, fidgeting, pulling, adjusting a dress that wouldn’t settle the way you needed it to.

“I just…wanted to feel good tonight,” you said, voice thin, like you weren’t sure it was worth saying. “I wanted to walk in and not wonder what everyone’s thinking when they see me next to you. Or what Valentina’s thinking, or what the headlines will say, or if someone’s going to post some photo of us and it’ll be the worst angle imaginable, and I’ll have to spend the whole week trying not to look at it but knowing it’s there—”

You stopped yourself. Took a breath. Shook your head.

“I didn’t want it to get to me,” you whispered. “But it does.”

Bucky’s jaw ticked.

There it was—that protective heat rising in him, quiet and searing. The same thing that stirred in his gut when someone so much as looked at you wrong on a mission. The same thing that made him keep an eye on entrances, exits, camera flashes, social feeds. Not out of paranoia, but out of need. Because he knew what it felt like to be dissected by the world. To be seen in pieces. To have your worst moments live longer than your best.

He stepped in closer, the space between you shrinking to almost nothing. His metal hand found the fabric at your side, not to fix it, not to smooth it out, but just to touch, to remind you he was there.

“You know what I see?” he asked, low.

You didn’t answer. Not because you didn’t want to, but because you couldn’t trust your voice to hold steady.

“I see the woman who made me breakfast barefoot in my kitchen three mornings in a row after staying up all night with me when I couldn’t sleep and never once looked at me like I was broken. I see the same woman who told off a U.S. Senator with red wine on her teeth and didn’t blink. I see someone who stands her ground when people twice her size start barking orders. Someone who gets shit done even when the whole world wants her to shrink down and stay quiet.”

He leaned in, just enough that his forehead almost touched yours. The metal of his left hand skimmed your hip, a familiar coolness through the fabric. His right thumb still traced along your jaw.

“You walk into that room with me tonight, and I guarantee you they’ll see it too,” he said. “But even if they don’t? Even if the whole damn world somehow misses it—I won’t.”

You blinked, quick. He saw the way your throat bobbed, the way your lower lip wavered before you bit it down.

“You don’t have to be anything but yourself,” he said. “You don’t have to win anyone over. You don’t have to impress a soul.”

You let out a shaky breath.

“But I do want to impress you,” you admitted, almost too quiet.

That undid something in him.

His mouth twitched, not into a grin, but something far more solemn.

“You already have,” he said, with that same certainty he used on the field when the odds looked bad and the exits were burning. “Every goddamn day. Whether you’re in this dress or sweats or half-asleep in my arms mumbling shit that doesn’t make sense. You don’t have to try for me.”

He said it like a vow. Like a line he’d carve into the marble of your shared life if he could.

“I love you in ways I still don’t know how to say out loud. But I don’t just love you despite the parts you hate. I love you with them. Through them. I love you even when you don’t believe me. Especially then.”

You didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there with your hands still fisted in the sides of the dress, eyes glassy, throat working like you were trying to swallow the lump down before it gave you away.

Bucky could see it, though.

The flicker of doubt you were trying to blink away. The war still playing out just behind your eyes—quiet, ugly, familiar. He knew it too well. The voice that waited for the mirror to catch you from the wrong angle, that twisted a glance into judgment, that made everything too tight, too loud, too much. He’d lived with that voice. Sometimes he still did.

And because he knew it, because he’d heard it in his own head, he didn’t dare let you pull away.

Instead, he kept his hands on you. Not holding or restraining, just there. 

He drew a breath through his nose.

“People are cruel,” he said finally. “You and I both know that.”

You didn’t move. But something in your jaw twitched—tightening, then unclenching.

“They look at what they don’t understand and tear it down to feel better. They pick at the things that make you different, like that’s a flaw instead of the whole fucking point. And the worst part? You start believing them. Little by little. Like maybe if you shrink just enough, they’ll leave you alone.”

You closed your eyes, but Bucky didn’t stop.

“But I’m not letting you believe them,” he said, voice firmer now. “Not when they’re wrong. And they are wrong. Every single one of those assholes who’s ever made you feel small—whether it was with a comment, a glance, or some passive-aggressive bullshit about ‘expectations’—they’re cowards.”

His arm at your waist slid around you fully now, drawing you into his chest. His voice dropped low, all gravel and steel and unswerving conviction.

“If anyone looks at you sideways tonight, I won’t hesitate. I’ll break their nose and make ‘em apologize in the same breath.”

You huffed, half a startled breath, half a laugh. “You can’t do that. This is a diplomatic event.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t want to,” he muttered. “And you know I could make it look like an accident.”

You tilted your head back to look at him. His expression was stone. Unflinching. But his hand smoothed gently up your back in contrast, the duality of him radiating from every breath. Soft and hard. Quiet and deadly. Yours.

“I just hate that they ever made you question it,” he said, a little quieter now. “Your worth. Your body. Your existence. That anyone ever made you think that this—” his gaze flicked down, slow and deliberate, before coming back to your face “—wasn’t something to revere.”

You felt it in the way he said it. Not just appreciate. Not desire, not even admire. 

Revere.

The word settled deep, slow-burning and reverent, like a palm laid flat against your sternum.

His hand at your jaw moved, brushing your hair back gently, and then his fingers traced the curve of your neck. Your breath caught when his thumb dipped to trace the space just beneath your ear.

“You should think you’re beautiful,” he said, and his voice dropped, rougher now—not angry, but intimate. “You should see what I see every time you walk into a room.”

He tilted his head, mouth grazing just shy of your cheek. “You don’t know what that does to a man like me.”

You huffed, nose brushing his, your hands coming up behind his neck. “I think you’re being dramatic.”

“Dramatic?” His brow rose slightly, lips curving in that dry, knowing way he used when you pushed his buttons on purpose. “Baby, if I’m dramatic it’s only because you’re walkin’ around here lookin’ like that and expecting me to act normal.”

His vibranium hand slid a little lower on your back, fingers splaying, settling possessively at the top of your ass. You shifted instinctively toward him, and he smirked.

“That’s not fair,” you muttered, cheeks flushed now in a way that had nothing to do with shame. “You’re the one who’s looking like James Bond’s meaner older brother.”

“You like it.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

His thumb tapped your lower back. “Then quit squirming like I’m lying to you.”

You narrowed your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you—pulling into something faintly sheepish, barely there. Bucky’s gaze softened again, but the warmth stayed low, coiled behind his ribs.

“Say it,” he murmured.

You blinked up at him. “Say what?”

“That you look good.”

You tried to look away. He didn’t let you.

“That you know you make me crazy,” he added, leaning in close enough to nip your jaw with his teeth, gentle but not quite innocent. “That you’ve had me on edge since you walked outta that bathroom looking like you’re daring someone to say the wrong thing.”

You snorted. “I’m sure you were pacing before I even got the dress on.”

He grinned. “And whose fault is that?”

Yours. His. All of it.

Still, the warmth inside you climbed a notch. Not just because of the teasing, or the heat in his voice, but because it was easy. Because there was no pressure to be something you weren’t. No pedestal, no pedestal-smashing. Just this. Just you, exactly as you were, and Bucky Barnes pressing into you like gravity itself was a thing he’d fight off with his bare hands if it meant keeping you close.

“I don’t think I look bad,” you said slowly, cautiously, like the words might crack your teeth if you spoke them wrong.

Bucky didn’t press.

He just nodded once. “Good start.”

You tilted your head, giving him a look. “What, you want me to practice affirmations now?”

“I want you to say one nice thing about yourself,” he said, leaning his mouth down to your ear. “And if you don’t, I’ll just have to spend the next few hours whisperin’ filthy ones in your ear until you start believing me.”

You laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”

“Mm.” He kissed the corner of your mouth, then lingered just long enough for your lips to part. “But you’re blushing.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“I will bite you.”

He gave you a look like please, and dipped his head to kiss you properly.

It wasn’t exactly delicate. It was open-mouthed and hot and familiar in all the right ways, and when your fingers moved from his hair to curl into the lapels of his tux like you were considering ripping it off, he only growled against your lips.

“God, I hate that we have to leave this room,” he muttered, pulling back just enough to look at you, eyes heavy, voice low. “I’d trade a week’s mission reports to be late. Maybe two.”

“That’s a bribe,” you whispered, breathless.

“That’s a threat,” he corrected, mouth grazing yours again. “You keep looking at me like that, we’re not makin’ it out of this bedroom without some wrinkled seams.”

You shifted your weight onto one hip, eyes glinting just under your lashes like you were daring him again—no, testing him. Bucky could see it in the way your mouth curved. Not all the way into a smile, not fully confident, but enough to mask the edge of nerves underneath.

The way you always did when you felt too seen.

“Bet I’d look better out of the dress anyway,” you murmured, eyes flicking down to the dress like it was the punchline to your own joke.

It was the way you said it, like you didn’t really believe it. Like maybe if you got there first and said it like it was sexy, it wouldn’t sound so close to shame.

And that was what set something alight in him. Not because of what you said. But because you didn’t believe it the way he did. Because you still thought you had to prove yourself to him in some invisible way. Like he couldn’t already see the whole damn universe when he looked at you.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t give you time to backpedal or bury it under another joke.

He gripped the backs of your thighs and lifted you clean off the floor before you had the chance to blink. Your surprised laugh turned into a squeal as he twisted, stepping the two long strides it took to cross the room, and tossed you onto the edge of the bed. Not rough. Not careless. Just enough to bounce, just enough to feel the shock of air and momentum leave your lungs as you landed on your back.

The dress pooled around your hips like spilled ink, shimmer catching the low light. Your hair was mussed now, lips parted, hands splayed out across the sheets like you weren’t sure whether to push yourself up or reach for him again.

Bucky stood over you for a second, just long enough to look. Really look. Let you see him seeing you.

Not appraising. Not comparing. Just reverent.

“What, is this better, Sergeant?" you asked breathlessly, voice hitching with a shaky laugh as you tried to lighten the moment, eyes flicking to the ceiling like maybe you could play this off.

But he didn’t laugh.

He dropped to his knees at the end of the bed, hands sliding along the outside of your thighs. His flesh hand skimmed up until his palm flattened against your side, his thumb grazing bare skin where the dress had shifted.

“You know what I see when I look at you?” he said, voice lower now. Thicker.

You rolled your eyes, not unkindly, but he saw the flash of deflection in it. Heard it in the silence before you responded.

“Bucky—”

“I’m serious,” he said, and his hand pressed just slightly, grounding you in place. “You walked out of that bathroom thinking you had to sell it. Sell yourself. Like you needed to convince everyone that you belonged, that you were enough. But you don’t. Not for me. Not for them. You don’t owe a single person proof of your worth.”

Your breath caught.

And he leaned closer, mouth near your stomach now, where the fabric had pulled tight against your skin. He kissed the fabric, right over where your hand had earlier tried to hide the soft edge of yourself, the place you'd fidgeted with and tugged at like it might betray you.

“You keep covering and hiding this,” he murmured, pressing another kiss, slower now. “Like it’s something to be ashamed of. But this—you—this is where I rest my head when I can’t sleep.”

Another kiss, higher now, just below your ribs.

“This is where your warmth lives. Where you hold me at night. Where you laugh from.”

And another, right at the center of your chest, just above your heart. “Don’t you dare think there’s a single part of you that should be different.”

His hands moved again, thumbs brushing the curve of your hips as you let out a breath like you hadn’t meant to hold it.

“I know you don’t see it the way I do,” he said, his voice rough with feeling. “But I’m not gonna stop reminding you until you do. Even if it takes the rest of my life.”

You looked at him then. Really looked. Eyes more glassy now. Lips parted, body slack against the covers like the tension had finally begun to slip.

He kissed your thigh, slow and soft, then looked up at you with a grin that broke through the heat.

“And if it means throwing you on the bed every time you talk shit about yourself, then that’s just the price I’ll pay.”

You laughed—this time real, open, easy. The sound of it shot straight through him, leaving something warm and vital in its place.

He loved that sound. Loved how rare it used to be, how easily it came now. Loved that he could coax it from you with the right look, the right line, the right pressure of his hand on your skin like you weren’t a thing to be handled carefully but rather something holy, something his.

He wanted to bottle it, to trap it in the space between your ribs and whisper it back to you on the nights you couldn’t find it yourself.

But more than that—right now, with you laid out across the bed, that dress clinging to all the parts you’d tried to hide—he wanted to make sure you never questioned again whether or not you were wanted.

Needed.

Loved.

Because fuck the gala. Fuck the flashbulbs and the politicians and whatever the hell Valentina was trying to prove by trotting them out like reformed zoo animals. If they showed up late, they’d still have to shake his hand. Still have to smile like he didn’t see through all of it.

So when he leaned back in, he did it with intent.

No more trying to talk you out of the mirror. No more dragging you gently back from the edge. He was here. You were his. And if you couldn’t see yourself the way he did—if the words still caught in your chest, if the dress still clung in the wrong places in your mind—then he’d show you in a language you couldn’t argue with.

His hands slid beneath the hem of your dress, fingers parting the folds of the dress at your thighs. The fabric bunched in his palms like silk, and he kept his touch light, not asking, just offering. You shifted for him instinctively, thighs parting with that familiar, silent trust that still wrecked him every time.

He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee first. Just one. Then another, higher, where your skin grew warmer, softer. You inhaled through your nose, eyes fluttering shut.

He mouthed higher, slow, deliberate, tracing lazy, open-mouthed kisses along the inside of your thigh. He could feel your pulse just beneath your skin, could feel the way you were already trembling. It made something low in him twist, dark and heady.

His hands gripped the outside of your hips again, thumbs dragging slow circles, grounding you to the mattress. His mouth found the edge of your underwear, and he didn’t pull it down. Not yet. Just kissed over the fabric, his breath warm through it, lips soft and coaxing.

You gasped, quiet and strangled.

So he did it again.

And again.

Until your hips arched just slightly into his mouth.

His tongue followed the shape of you through the fabric, slow and teasing, not giving you everything, but just enough to make your hands twist in the sheets. He licked through the center of you, and the choked little sound you made shattered whatever restraint he had left.

He slipped two fingers beneath the edge of the fabric then, pulling it gently to the side just enough to expose the part of you already waiting. He didn’t speak. Just breathed against you once before sealing his mouth over you fully.

You gasped—high and sudden and so fucking sweet—and Bucky groaned against you, like the sound alone rewired something in his chest. His tongue moved slow at first, savoring you, mapping every tremor and shift in your body like it mattered more than breathing. Because to him, it did.

He loved you like this. Loved you most when you couldn’t keep still, when you forgot to hold your breath, when all the things the world told you to hide came pouring out of you in gasps and whispered curses and the soft whimper of his name.

“Fuck, Bucky—”

You reached for him blindly, one hand finding his hair and threading through it, gripping hard when he moved his tongue just right. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Not with the way you moaned for him, not with the way you tilted your hips, chasing the heat he’d stoked into a flame.

He swore he could’ve stayed between your thighs for the rest of his life and died a content man. The sounds you made—the way your body arched under his mouth, the way you let go with him—was better than any redemption arc the world could’ve written for him. Better than clean records and polished tuxes and state-sanctioned forgiveness. This was real. This was his.

And God, you were gorgeous like this. You always were. But now, flushed and writhing and half-wild with need, hands buried in his hair like you’d drown without something to hold onto, you were divine.

He drew his mouth back just slightly, just enough to suck in a shaky breath and tilt his head to kiss the inside of your thigh. Then the other. Not just kissing, but revering—lingering, warm, open-mouthed. As if he could burn the shape of you into muscle memory.

Your fingers trembled against his scalp, and you let out something between a gasp and a curse.

He grinned softly, kissed higher, then slid his tongue up the center of you again, right before easing two fingers along your entrance, gathering slick before easing the first one in.

Your body jolted beneath him, muscles fluttering tight, and he kissed your inner thigh again just to ground you, to keep you in this place with him.

“Beautiful,” he breathed. “You are fuckin’ perfect.”

Another finger joined the first, slow but sure, and the sound you made twisted something inside him. He could feel you clench around him, so warm and wet and open, and he let his forehead rest against your thigh for a moment like he needed to catch up to how much he adored you.

“Can’t believe you looked at yourself in the mirror and thought you weren’t enough,” he murmured, fingers curling inside you just right, thumb brushing lightly against the swollen part of you in time with the motion of his mouth. “You’re everything.”

He dragged his tongue along you again, slow and greedy, while his fingers moved deeper, angling until you cried out softly and tugged at his hair. And God, the way you sounded—wrecked and radiant and just for him—he could’ve come undone right there, still fully clothed, just from the sound of your pleasure.

“You’re so goddamn gorgeous,” he whispered against you, his voice breaking slightly. “Every fuckin’ inch of you, sweetheart. I mean it. All of you.”

And just as he was about to lower his mouth to you again—

BANG. BANG. BANG.

“Barnes! You two decent yet?” The voice carried that clipped, rolling edge of a Russian accent, each word sharp and certain, vowels flattened just enough to make it sound more like an order than a question.

“Are you ready, or did you fucking die in there?!” Yelena added after a bout of silence, louder this time, the consonants biting hard, the sarcasm wound tight enough to cut.

Bucky exhaled against your skin.

​​You were already covering your mouth with one hand, shaking with silent laughter. Your legs twitched, thighs squeezing around his shoulders as he grumbled against your skin.

“Ten more minutes,” he muttered to himself, voice muffled. “Just ten more fucking minutes and I could’ve—”

“You’re already five late!” Yelena shouted through the door, like she could hear his internal monologue. “We were supposed to be fashionably on time, not scandalously late, and I swear to god if I have to stand next to Alexei by myself I will murder you both and frame Walker.”

“We’re coming!” you called out, voice strangled as you tried not to laugh and moan in the same breath.

“Clearly!” she snapped. Then, quieter—though not by much—“Tell Barnes to zip up. The hallway echoes.”

Bucky sat back on his heels, rubbing a hand down his face, then looked down at you with a rueful, breathless smile. Your hair was a little frizzy now, your chest heaving, your lips kiss-swollen and pink, and you’d never looked more beautiful to him in your life.

You blinked up at him, still flushed, still breathless, and raised an eyebrow.

He exhaled hard through his nose. “We’re finishing this later.”

You grinned, humming softly. “That a threat?”

“That’s a promise.”

He leaned down and kissed you again, deep and claiming and just a little filthy, like he wanted the taste of you on his tongue for the rest of the night.

And then, reluctantly, he stood, adjusted his ruined tux, and offered you his hand like a gentleman who’d very much just had his mouth between your thighs.

“You good?” he asked, voice low again. Soft.

You took his hand.

“Better than good,” you said, fingers curling around his.

no more taglists! tumblr’s @ limit said no 💔 follow @cheekybarnesupdates + turn on notifs for all fic drops!

[cheekybarnes]

MAREEEEE i am actually sitting here staring at my screen like how am i supposed to function after reading this???? this is not feedback or even a comment this is a full-body experience and i’m just… flailing?? sobbing?? pacing the room?? the fact that you not only dreamed up this premise to request to me, but then took the time to pour all of this out, to connect with it so deeply, to pull pieces of yourself into the way you read it and i can’t even put into words how much that means to me. that's all i could ever ask for as a writer omg i feel like i just got handed a love letter disguised as an emotional autopsy. i’m so glad i was able to do this justice after you sent it out and trusted me with it, and i’m even gladder that you let it wreck you in the best way possible!!!!! i’m just gonna go lie down on the floor for a while now but ILY!! 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

dress rehearsal | bucky barnes x reader

Summary: Minutes before a gala, Bucky finds you spiraling in front of the mirror and decides there are better ways to remind you you’re worth every second of the spotlight.

MCU Timeline Placement: Thunderbolts*

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: established relationship, explicit sexual content (f receiving oral), body image issues, self-esteem issues, discussion of insecurity, praise kink(?), language, light teasing, mild possessive/protective behavior, bucky ruining standards for men

Word Count: 5.3k

Author’s Note: this was a lovely request from my lovely dear mutual mare who somehow finally inspired me to get a bit more spicy???? who am i???? genuinely though this one meant a lot to write. body image and self-worth are such tender, complicated things, and getting to explore that with bucky being soft and filthy in equal measure?? yeah. thank you for lighting this particular fire. hope it wrecks you lovingly <3

The tuxedo fit too well.

Bucky tugged at the collar again, even though it hadn’t moved. Even though he’d stood in front of the mirror a full ten minutes ago and adjusted it just fine. No wrinkles. No seam out of place. Even the stupid cufflinks Val had sent over—some gaudy, high-sheen silver things with the team’s new crest etched into them like a brand—sat obediently in place.

He didn’t look like himself. Didn’t feel like it either.

But that was the point of these things, wasn’t it?

Not just the gala, but the whole new-leaf branding project: the “look how far they’ve come” parade. Clean cuts, clean lines, clean record. Congressman for six months, team player for the cameras, redemption wrapped in black tie and photo ops.

But he was still the same man who’d woken up shaking in cold sweats at three in the morning, trying not to put his fist through a wall. Still the same one who had to unclench his jaw when someone said “Winter Soldier” with that sharp little pause that always followed.

But tonight he was supposed to be…reformed. Spotlight ready. One of the good guys. One of the New Avengers, as Val had coined it. A man with both hands out of the grave.

Bucky pulled in a slow breath through his nose, shoulders rising just enough to stretch the seams of his jacket. He held it, jaw tight, before letting it out in a controlled exhale that warmed the edge of his collar. 

His gaze shifted to the bathroom door, where you’d disappeared twenty minutes ago. The clock on the dresser said they had maybe fifteen minutes before Val started sending people up to drag them downstairs, but he wasn’t about to rush you.

The light was still on beneath the frame. He caught the sound of movement—fabric rustling, a zipper tugged too hard, something metallic clattering against the tile. A muffled curse, just under your breath.

Another few seconds passed. A soft groan.

Not pain. Frustration.

He moved toward the door, careful not to let the floorboards creak beneath his boots. Leaned one shoulder against the wall and tilted his head slightly, voice low, gentle.

“Hey, you alright in there?”

Silence.

“Yeah. I’m fine," your voice came, thinner than usual, almost sheepish.

He waited. Let the silence stretch for just long enough that you might fill it. You didn’t. Just more shifting fabric and another zipper catch. The kind of fumble that didn’t come from rushing, but from second-guessing.

You were never this quiet. Not with him. Not unless something was clawing at you behind the ribs.

He cleared his throat lightly. “You’ve been in there a while, sweetheart.”

You laughed, if you could call it that. It was small, brittle. “Sorry. Just—nothing looks right.”

That pulled something tight in his chest. A knot he recognized too well.

“I’m just…trying to pick something that doesn’t make me look like an idiot. Or a stuffed sausage. Or a—God, I don’t know. Everything I bought suddenly decided to betray me.”

That earned a faint smile from him, even if it didn’t reach his eyes. He could picture you pacing around the small bathroom, dress half-zipped, tugging at fabric that never seemed to sit the way it did on the hanger. He’d had his own versions of those moments. A suit that choked around the collar. A prosthetic that never matched. A face he didn’t always recognize.

“You want help?” he asked. Not pushy. Just offering.

There was a sigh. Then the sound of a zipper tugged halfway up, then back down again.

“No. I don’t even know what you’d help with. It’s not like you can magic something that doesn’t make me feel…ugh. I mean, it’s stupid. It’s just a dress.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“I know. But it feels like it is. I feel like I’m spiraling over something small. And you’re out there already dressed like a whole movie poster, and I’m over here losing a wrestling match with tulle and my own brain.”

Bucky’s brow creased. He rested his knuckles gently against the door.

“Sweetheart, you don’t owe me a polished version of yourself. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

You were quiet again.

He let the silence hang, but not too long this time. He didn’t want you folding in on yourself.

“Look,” he said softly. “I’m not gonna lie and say this shit isn’t hard. They’re parading us out tonight like action figures in shiny packaging. And yeah, I put on the tux, but it doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to breathe in it.”

You exhaled, just barely audible.

“I think I wanted to feel good,” you admitted. “And now everything I try on just reminds me of all the reasons I don’t.”

He hesitated, then reached for the doorknob, not to open it, but just to let you know he was there. The way you did for him when he had bad nights. When he sat on the edge of the bed with a sleeveless shirt in his hands and couldn’t convince himself to put it on, because all he saw were the scars and the metal and the reminder of what had been taken.

“Can I come in?” he asked softly.

Another pause.

“I don’t know. You’ll laugh.”

“Hey,” he said, quiet and certain. “I’ve never laughed at you. Not once.”

Still, you didn’t answer. He waited anyway. Gave you the time you needed, like you’d given him, a hundred times over. And after a moment, he heard the lock click.

The door creaked open an inch, then two.

You stepped out slow, eyes downcast, hands tugging at the sides of the dress like you could rearrange the whole thing if you just held it tighter. It shimmered faintly in the low light—midnight blue, the color he always thought of when he thought of you—but it was clear from the way you fidgeted that you didn’t feel like it fit.

“I wanted to wear the black one,” you said quickly. “But the zipper was too high and the red one makes me look like a—god, I don’t know. I just—this one was the only one that didn’t make me cry, and even then I still almost did, and I’m being ridiculous, I know, but it just—none of it feels right.”

You shook your head, like you were trying to physically dislodge the thoughts. “Forget it. I sound insane.”

Bucky didn’t respond right away. Didn’t rush to contradict you, or smother the moment in sweet nothings you’d only half believe. He just looked at you.

Not the way everyone else would tonight—cataloguing, assessing, slotting you into someone else’s narrative. Not like a possession on display, or an accessory to his redemption arc. Not like the plus-one to a man with a metal arm and too much blood on his hands. 

Bucky looked at you like you were his. Like the gravity in the room bent differently when you were near. Like every cracked seam, every insecurity you were holding together with safety pins and sheer force of will, only made you more real.

“Hey,” he said softly, drawing your gaze back up to meet his. “You don’t sound insane.”

You tried to scoff. Tried to laugh it off, but it wobbled halfway up your throat. He reached out and brushed his thumb along the underside of your jaw, coaxing your eyes to hold his. You let him.

“I’ve seen you angry,” he murmured. “I’ve seen you covered in blood, outnumbered, exhausted, ready to break. I’ve seen you laugh so hard you cried and cry so hard you laughed. I’ve seen every version of you—and not once have I ever thought you were being ridiculous.”

Your shoulders dipped slightly, like maybe he’d carved out a little air where there hadn’t been any. But your fingers still tugged at the fabric around your waist, fidgeting, pulling, adjusting a dress that wouldn’t settle the way you needed it to.

“I just…wanted to feel good tonight,” you said, voice thin, like you weren’t sure it was worth saying. “I wanted to walk in and not wonder what everyone’s thinking when they see me next to you. Or what Valentina’s thinking, or what the headlines will say, or if someone’s going to post some photo of us and it’ll be the worst angle imaginable, and I’ll have to spend the whole week trying not to look at it but knowing it’s there—”

You stopped yourself. Took a breath. Shook your head.

“I didn’t want it to get to me,” you whispered. “But it does.”

Bucky’s jaw ticked.

There it was—that protective heat rising in him, quiet and searing. The same thing that stirred in his gut when someone so much as looked at you wrong on a mission. The same thing that made him keep an eye on entrances, exits, camera flashes, social feeds. Not out of paranoia, but out of need. Because he knew what it felt like to be dissected by the world. To be seen in pieces. To have your worst moments live longer than your best.

He stepped in closer, the space between you shrinking to almost nothing. His metal hand found the fabric at your side, not to fix it, not to smooth it out, but just to touch, to remind you he was there.

“You know what I see?” he asked, low.

You didn’t answer. Not because you didn’t want to, but because you couldn’t trust your voice to hold steady.

“I see the woman who made me breakfast barefoot in my kitchen three mornings in a row after staying up all night with me when I couldn’t sleep and never once looked at me like I was broken. I see the same woman who told off a U.S. Senator with red wine on her teeth and didn’t blink. I see someone who stands her ground when people twice her size start barking orders. Someone who gets shit done even when the whole world wants her to shrink down and stay quiet.”

He leaned in, just enough that his forehead almost touched yours. The metal of his left hand skimmed your hip, a familiar coolness through the fabric. His right thumb still traced along your jaw.

“You walk into that room with me tonight, and I guarantee you they’ll see it too,” he said. “But even if they don’t? Even if the whole damn world somehow misses it—I won’t.”

You blinked, quick. He saw the way your throat bobbed, the way your lower lip wavered before you bit it down.

“You don’t have to be anything but yourself,” he said. “You don’t have to win anyone over. You don’t have to impress a soul.”

You let out a shaky breath.

“But I do want to impress you,” you admitted, almost too quiet.

That undid something in him.

His mouth twitched, not into a grin, but something far more solemn.

“You already have,” he said, with that same certainty he used on the field when the odds looked bad and the exits were burning. “Every goddamn day. Whether you’re in this dress or sweats or half-asleep in my arms mumbling shit that doesn’t make sense. You don’t have to try for me.”

He said it like a vow. Like a line he’d carve into the marble of your shared life if he could.

“I love you in ways I still don’t know how to say out loud. But I don’t just love you despite the parts you hate. I love you with them. Through them. I love you even when you don’t believe me. Especially then.”

You didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there with your hands still fisted in the sides of the dress, eyes glassy, throat working like you were trying to swallow the lump down before it gave you away.

Bucky could see it, though.

The flicker of doubt you were trying to blink away. The war still playing out just behind your eyes—quiet, ugly, familiar. He knew it too well. The voice that waited for the mirror to catch you from the wrong angle, that twisted a glance into judgment, that made everything too tight, too loud, too much. He’d lived with that voice. Sometimes he still did.

And because he knew it, because he’d heard it in his own head, he didn’t dare let you pull away.

Instead, he kept his hands on you. Not holding or restraining, just there. 

He drew a breath through his nose.

“People are cruel,” he said finally. “You and I both know that.”

You didn’t move. But something in your jaw twitched—tightening, then unclenching.

“They look at what they don’t understand and tear it down to feel better. They pick at the things that make you different, like that’s a flaw instead of the whole fucking point. And the worst part? You start believing them. Little by little. Like maybe if you shrink just enough, they’ll leave you alone.”

You closed your eyes, but Bucky didn’t stop.

“But I’m not letting you believe them,” he said, voice firmer now. “Not when they’re wrong. And they are wrong. Every single one of those assholes who’s ever made you feel small—whether it was with a comment, a glance, or some passive-aggressive bullshit about ‘expectations’—they’re cowards.”

His arm at your waist slid around you fully now, drawing you into his chest. His voice dropped low, all gravel and steel and unswerving conviction.

“If anyone looks at you sideways tonight, I won’t hesitate. I’ll break their nose and make ‘em apologize in the same breath.”

You huffed, half a startled breath, half a laugh. “You can’t do that. This is a diplomatic event.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t want to,” he muttered. “And you know I could make it look like an accident.”

You tilted your head back to look at him. His expression was stone. Unflinching. But his hand smoothed gently up your back in contrast, the duality of him radiating from every breath. Soft and hard. Quiet and deadly. Yours.

“I just hate that they ever made you question it,” he said, a little quieter now. “Your worth. Your body. Your existence. That anyone ever made you think that this—” his gaze flicked down, slow and deliberate, before coming back to your face “—wasn’t something to revere.”

You felt it in the way he said it. Not just appreciate. Not desire, not even admire. 

Revere.

The word settled deep, slow-burning and reverent, like a palm laid flat against your sternum.

His hand at your jaw moved, brushing your hair back gently, and then his fingers traced the curve of your neck. Your breath caught when his thumb dipped to trace the space just beneath your ear.

“You should think you’re beautiful,” he said, and his voice dropped, rougher now—not angry, but intimate. “You should see what I see every time you walk into a room.”

He tilted his head, mouth grazing just shy of your cheek. “You don’t know what that does to a man like me.”

You huffed, nose brushing his, your hands coming up behind his neck. “I think you’re being dramatic.”

“Dramatic?” His brow rose slightly, lips curving in that dry, knowing way he used when you pushed his buttons on purpose. “Baby, if I’m dramatic it’s only because you’re walkin’ around here lookin’ like that and expecting me to act normal.”

His vibranium hand slid a little lower on your back, fingers splaying, settling possessively at the top of your ass. You shifted instinctively toward him, and he smirked.

“That’s not fair,” you muttered, cheeks flushed now in a way that had nothing to do with shame. “You’re the one who’s looking like James Bond’s meaner older brother.”

“You like it.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

His thumb tapped your lower back. “Then quit squirming like I’m lying to you.”

You narrowed your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you—pulling into something faintly sheepish, barely there. Bucky’s gaze softened again, but the warmth stayed low, coiled behind his ribs.

“Say it,” he murmured.

You blinked up at him. “Say what?”

“That you look good.”

You tried to look away. He didn’t let you.

“That you know you make me crazy,” he added, leaning in close enough to nip your jaw with his teeth, gentle but not quite innocent. “That you’ve had me on edge since you walked outta that bathroom looking like you’re daring someone to say the wrong thing.”

You snorted. “I’m sure you were pacing before I even got the dress on.”

He grinned. “And whose fault is that?”

Yours. His. All of it.

Still, the warmth inside you climbed a notch. Not just because of the teasing, or the heat in his voice, but because it was easy. Because there was no pressure to be something you weren’t. No pedestal, no pedestal-smashing. Just this. Just you, exactly as you were, and Bucky Barnes pressing into you like gravity itself was a thing he’d fight off with his bare hands if it meant keeping you close.

“I don’t think I look bad,” you said slowly, cautiously, like the words might crack your teeth if you spoke them wrong.

Bucky didn’t press.

He just nodded once. “Good start.”

You tilted your head, giving him a look. “What, you want me to practice affirmations now?”

“I want you to say one nice thing about yourself,” he said, leaning his mouth down to your ear. “And if you don’t, I’ll just have to spend the next few hours whisperin’ filthy ones in your ear until you start believing me.”

You laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”

“Mm.” He kissed the corner of your mouth, then lingered just long enough for your lips to part. “But you’re blushing.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“I will bite you.”

He gave you a look like please, and dipped his head to kiss you properly.

It wasn’t exactly delicate. It was open-mouthed and hot and familiar in all the right ways, and when your fingers moved from his hair to curl into the lapels of his tux like you were considering ripping it off, he only growled against your lips.

“God, I hate that we have to leave this room,” he muttered, pulling back just enough to look at you, eyes heavy, voice low. “I’d trade a week’s mission reports to be late. Maybe two.”

“That’s a bribe,” you whispered, breathless.

“That’s a threat,” he corrected, mouth grazing yours again. “You keep looking at me like that, we’re not makin’ it out of this bedroom without some wrinkled seams.”

You shifted your weight onto one hip, eyes glinting just under your lashes like you were daring him again—no, testing him. Bucky could see it in the way your mouth curved. Not all the way into a smile, not fully confident, but enough to mask the edge of nerves underneath.

The way you always did when you felt too seen.

“Bet I’d look better out of the dress anyway,” you murmured, eyes flicking down to the dress like it was the punchline to your own joke.

It was the way you said it, like you didn’t really believe it. Like maybe if you got there first and said it like it was sexy, it wouldn’t sound so close to shame.

And that was what set something alight in him. Not because of what you said. But because you didn’t believe it the way he did. Because you still thought you had to prove yourself to him in some invisible way. Like he couldn’t already see the whole damn universe when he looked at you.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t give you time to backpedal or bury it under another joke.

He gripped the backs of your thighs and lifted you clean off the floor before you had the chance to blink. Your surprised laugh turned into a squeal as he twisted, stepping the two long strides it took to cross the room, and tossed you onto the edge of the bed. Not rough. Not careless. Just enough to bounce, just enough to feel the shock of air and momentum leave your lungs as you landed on your back.

The dress pooled around your hips like spilled ink, shimmer catching the low light. Your hair was mussed now, lips parted, hands splayed out across the sheets like you weren’t sure whether to push yourself up or reach for him again.

Bucky stood over you for a second, just long enough to look. Really look. Let you see him seeing you.

Not appraising. Not comparing. Just reverent.

“What, is this better, Sergeant?" you asked breathlessly, voice hitching with a shaky laugh as you tried to lighten the moment, eyes flicking to the ceiling like maybe you could play this off.

But he didn’t laugh.

He dropped to his knees at the end of the bed, hands sliding along the outside of your thighs. His flesh hand skimmed up until his palm flattened against your side, his thumb grazing bare skin where the dress had shifted.

“You know what I see when I look at you?” he said, voice lower now. Thicker.

You rolled your eyes, not unkindly, but he saw the flash of deflection in it. Heard it in the silence before you responded.

“Bucky—”

“I’m serious,” he said, and his hand pressed just slightly, grounding you in place. “You walked out of that bathroom thinking you had to sell it. Sell yourself. Like you needed to convince everyone that you belonged, that you were enough. But you don’t. Not for me. Not for them. You don’t owe a single person proof of your worth.”

Your breath caught.

And he leaned closer, mouth near your stomach now, where the fabric had pulled tight against your skin. He kissed the fabric, right over where your hand had earlier tried to hide the soft edge of yourself, the place you'd fidgeted with and tugged at like it might betray you.

“You keep covering and hiding this,” he murmured, pressing another kiss, slower now. “Like it’s something to be ashamed of. But this—you—this is where I rest my head when I can’t sleep.”

Another kiss, higher now, just below your ribs.

“This is where your warmth lives. Where you hold me at night. Where you laugh from.”

And another, right at the center of your chest, just above your heart. “Don’t you dare think there’s a single part of you that should be different.”

His hands moved again, thumbs brushing the curve of your hips as you let out a breath like you hadn’t meant to hold it.

“I know you don’t see it the way I do,” he said, his voice rough with feeling. “But I’m not gonna stop reminding you until you do. Even if it takes the rest of my life.”

You looked at him then. Really looked. Eyes more glassy now. Lips parted, body slack against the covers like the tension had finally begun to slip.

He kissed your thigh, slow and soft, then looked up at you with a grin that broke through the heat.

“And if it means throwing you on the bed every time you talk shit about yourself, then that’s just the price I’ll pay.”

You laughed—this time real, open, easy. The sound of it shot straight through him, leaving something warm and vital in its place.

He loved that sound. Loved how rare it used to be, how easily it came now. Loved that he could coax it from you with the right look, the right line, the right pressure of his hand on your skin like you weren’t a thing to be handled carefully but rather something holy, something his.

He wanted to bottle it, to trap it in the space between your ribs and whisper it back to you on the nights you couldn’t find it yourself.

But more than that—right now, with you laid out across the bed, that dress clinging to all the parts you’d tried to hide—he wanted to make sure you never questioned again whether or not you were wanted.

Needed.

Loved.

Because fuck the gala. Fuck the flashbulbs and the politicians and whatever the hell Valentina was trying to prove by trotting them out like reformed zoo animals. If they showed up late, they’d still have to shake his hand. Still have to smile like he didn’t see through all of it.

So when he leaned back in, he did it with intent.

No more trying to talk you out of the mirror. No more dragging you gently back from the edge. He was here. You were his. And if you couldn’t see yourself the way he did—if the words still caught in your chest, if the dress still clung in the wrong places in your mind—then he’d show you in a language you couldn’t argue with.

His hands slid beneath the hem of your dress, fingers parting the folds of the dress at your thighs. The fabric bunched in his palms like silk, and he kept his touch light, not asking, just offering. You shifted for him instinctively, thighs parting with that familiar, silent trust that still wrecked him every time.

He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee first. Just one. Then another, higher, where your skin grew warmer, softer. You inhaled through your nose, eyes fluttering shut.

He mouthed higher, slow, deliberate, tracing lazy, open-mouthed kisses along the inside of your thigh. He could feel your pulse just beneath your skin, could feel the way you were already trembling. It made something low in him twist, dark and heady.

His hands gripped the outside of your hips again, thumbs dragging slow circles, grounding you to the mattress. His mouth found the edge of your underwear, and he didn’t pull it down. Not yet. Just kissed over the fabric, his breath warm through it, lips soft and coaxing.

You gasped, quiet and strangled.

So he did it again.

And again.

Until your hips arched just slightly into his mouth.

His tongue followed the shape of you through the fabric, slow and teasing, not giving you everything, but just enough to make your hands twist in the sheets. He licked through the center of you, and the choked little sound you made shattered whatever restraint he had left.

He slipped two fingers beneath the edge of the fabric then, pulling it gently to the side just enough to expose the part of you already waiting. He didn’t speak. Just breathed against you once before sealing his mouth over you fully.

You gasped—high and sudden and so fucking sweet—and Bucky groaned against you, like the sound alone rewired something in his chest. His tongue moved slow at first, savoring you, mapping every tremor and shift in your body like it mattered more than breathing. Because to him, it did.

He loved you like this. Loved you most when you couldn’t keep still, when you forgot to hold your breath, when all the things the world told you to hide came pouring out of you in gasps and whispered curses and the soft whimper of his name.

“Fuck, Bucky—”

You reached for him blindly, one hand finding his hair and threading through it, gripping hard when he moved his tongue just right. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Not with the way you moaned for him, not with the way you tilted your hips, chasing the heat he’d stoked into a flame.

He swore he could’ve stayed between your thighs for the rest of his life and died a content man. The sounds you made—the way your body arched under his mouth, the way you let go with him—was better than any redemption arc the world could’ve written for him. Better than clean records and polished tuxes and state-sanctioned forgiveness. This was real. This was his.

And God, you were gorgeous like this. You always were. But now, flushed and writhing and half-wild with need, hands buried in his hair like you’d drown without something to hold onto, you were divine.

He drew his mouth back just slightly, just enough to suck in a shaky breath and tilt his head to kiss the inside of your thigh. Then the other. Not just kissing, but revering—lingering, warm, open-mouthed. As if he could burn the shape of you into muscle memory.

Your fingers trembled against his scalp, and you let out something between a gasp and a curse.

He grinned softly, kissed higher, then slid his tongue up the center of you again, right before easing two fingers along your entrance, gathering slick before easing the first one in.

Your body jolted beneath him, muscles fluttering tight, and he kissed your inner thigh again just to ground you, to keep you in this place with him.

“Beautiful,” he breathed. “You are fuckin’ perfect.”

Another finger joined the first, slow but sure, and the sound you made twisted something inside him. He could feel you clench around him, so warm and wet and open, and he let his forehead rest against your thigh for a moment like he needed to catch up to how much he adored you.

“Can’t believe you looked at yourself in the mirror and thought you weren’t enough,” he murmured, fingers curling inside you just right, thumb brushing lightly against the swollen part of you in time with the motion of his mouth. “You’re everything.”

He dragged his tongue along you again, slow and greedy, while his fingers moved deeper, angling until you cried out softly and tugged at his hair. And God, the way you sounded—wrecked and radiant and just for him—he could’ve come undone right there, still fully clothed, just from the sound of your pleasure.

“You’re so goddamn gorgeous,” he whispered against you, his voice breaking slightly. “Every fuckin’ inch of you, sweetheart. I mean it. All of you.”

And just as he was about to lower his mouth to you again—

BANG. BANG. BANG.

“Barnes! You two decent yet?” The voice carried that clipped, rolling edge of a Russian accent, each word sharp and certain, vowels flattened just enough to make it sound more like an order than a question.

“Are you ready, or did you fucking die in there?!” Yelena added after a bout of silence, louder this time, the consonants biting hard, the sarcasm wound tight enough to cut.

Bucky exhaled against your skin.

​​You were already covering your mouth with one hand, shaking with silent laughter. Your legs twitched, thighs squeezing around his shoulders as he grumbled against your skin.

“Ten more minutes,” he muttered to himself, voice muffled. “Just ten more fucking minutes and I could’ve—”

“You’re already five late!” Yelena shouted through the door, like she could hear his internal monologue. “We were supposed to be fashionably on time, not scandalously late, and I swear to god if I have to stand next to Alexei by myself I will murder you both and frame Walker.”

“We’re coming!” you called out, voice strangled as you tried not to laugh and moan in the same breath.

“Clearly!” she snapped. Then, quieter—though not by much—“Tell Barnes to zip up. The hallway echoes.”

Bucky sat back on his heels, rubbing a hand down his face, then looked down at you with a rueful, breathless smile. Your hair was a little frizzy now, your chest heaving, your lips kiss-swollen and pink, and you’d never looked more beautiful to him in your life.

You blinked up at him, still flushed, still breathless, and raised an eyebrow.

He exhaled hard through his nose. “We’re finishing this later.”

You grinned, humming softly. “That a threat?”

“That’s a promise.”

He leaned down and kissed you again, deep and claiming and just a little filthy, like he wanted the taste of you on his tongue for the rest of the night.

And then, reluctantly, he stood, adjusted his ruined tux, and offered you his hand like a gentleman who’d very much just had his mouth between your thighs.

“You good?” he asked, voice low again. Soft.

You took his hand.

“Better than good,” you said, fingers curling around his.

no more taglists! tumblr’s @ limit said no 💔 follow @cheekybarnesupdates + turn on notifs for all fic drops!

[cheekybarnes]

dress rehearsal | bucky barnes x reader

Summary: Minutes before a gala, Bucky finds you spiraling in front of the mirror and decides there are better ways to remind you you’re worth every second of the spotlight.

MCU Timeline Placement: Thunderbolts*

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: established relationship, explicit sexual content (f receiving oral), body image issues, self-esteem issues, discussion of insecurity, praise kink(?), language, light teasing, mild possessive/protective behavior, bucky ruining standards for men

Word Count: 5.3k

Author’s Note: this was a lovely request from my lovely dear mutual mare who somehow finally inspired me to get a bit more spicy???? who am i???? genuinely though this one meant a lot to write. body image and self-worth are such tender, complicated things, and getting to explore that with bucky being soft and filthy in equal measure?? yeah. thank you for lighting this particular fire. hope it wrecks you lovingly <3

The tuxedo fit too well.

Bucky tugged at the collar again, even though it hadn’t moved. Even though he’d stood in front of the mirror a full ten minutes ago and adjusted it just fine. No wrinkles. No seam out of place. Even the stupid cufflinks Val had sent over—some gaudy, high-sheen silver things with the team’s new crest etched into them like a brand—sat obediently in place.

He didn’t look like himself. Didn’t feel like it either.

But that was the point of these things, wasn’t it?

Not just the gala, but the whole new-leaf branding project: the “look how far they’ve come” parade. Clean cuts, clean lines, clean record. Congressman for six months, team player for the cameras, redemption wrapped in black tie and photo ops.

But he was still the same man who’d woken up shaking in cold sweats at three in the morning, trying not to put his fist through a wall. Still the same one who had to unclench his jaw when someone said “Winter Soldier” with that sharp little pause that always followed.

But tonight he was supposed to be…reformed. Spotlight ready. One of the good guys. One of the New Avengers, as Val had coined it. A man with both hands out of the grave.

Bucky pulled in a slow breath through his nose, shoulders rising just enough to stretch the seams of his jacket. He held it, jaw tight, before letting it out in a controlled exhale that warmed the edge of his collar. 

His gaze shifted to the bathroom door, where you’d disappeared twenty minutes ago. The clock on the dresser said they had maybe fifteen minutes before Val started sending people up to drag them downstairs, but he wasn’t about to rush you.

The light was still on beneath the frame. He caught the sound of movement—fabric rustling, a zipper tugged too hard, something metallic clattering against the tile. A muffled curse, just under your breath.

Another few seconds passed. A soft groan.

Not pain. Frustration.

He moved toward the door, careful not to let the floorboards creak beneath his boots. Leaned one shoulder against the wall and tilted his head slightly, voice low, gentle.

“Hey, you alright in there?”

Silence.

“Yeah. I’m fine," your voice came, thinner than usual, almost sheepish.

He waited. Let the silence stretch for just long enough that you might fill it. You didn’t. Just more shifting fabric and another zipper catch. The kind of fumble that didn’t come from rushing, but from second-guessing.

You were never this quiet. Not with him. Not unless something was clawing at you behind the ribs.

He cleared his throat lightly. “You’ve been in there a while, sweetheart.”

You laughed, if you could call it that. It was small, brittle. “Sorry. Just—nothing looks right.”

That pulled something tight in his chest. A knot he recognized too well.

“I’m just…trying to pick something that doesn’t make me look like an idiot. Or a stuffed sausage. Or a—God, I don’t know. Everything I bought suddenly decided to betray me.”

That earned a faint smile from him, even if it didn’t reach his eyes. He could picture you pacing around the small bathroom, dress half-zipped, tugging at fabric that never seemed to sit the way it did on the hanger. He’d had his own versions of those moments. A suit that choked around the collar. A prosthetic that never matched. A face he didn’t always recognize.

“You want help?” he asked. Not pushy. Just offering.

There was a sigh. Then the sound of a zipper tugged halfway up, then back down again.

“No. I don’t even know what you’d help with. It’s not like you can magic something that doesn’t make me feel…ugh. I mean, it’s stupid. It’s just a dress.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“I know. But it feels like it is. I feel like I’m spiraling over something small. And you’re out there already dressed like a whole movie poster, and I’m over here losing a wrestling match with tulle and my own brain.”

Bucky’s brow creased. He rested his knuckles gently against the door.

“Sweetheart, you don’t owe me a polished version of yourself. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

You were quiet again.

He let the silence hang, but not too long this time. He didn’t want you folding in on yourself.

“Look,” he said softly. “I’m not gonna lie and say this shit isn’t hard. They’re parading us out tonight like action figures in shiny packaging. And yeah, I put on the tux, but it doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to breathe in it.”

You exhaled, just barely audible.

“I think I wanted to feel good,” you admitted. “And now everything I try on just reminds me of all the reasons I don’t.”

He hesitated, then reached for the doorknob, not to open it, but just to let you know he was there. The way you did for him when he had bad nights. When he sat on the edge of the bed with a sleeveless shirt in his hands and couldn’t convince himself to put it on, because all he saw were the scars and the metal and the reminder of what had been taken.

“Can I come in?” he asked softly.

Another pause.

“I don’t know. You’ll laugh.”

“Hey,” he said, quiet and certain. “I’ve never laughed at you. Not once.”

Still, you didn’t answer. He waited anyway. Gave you the time you needed, like you’d given him, a hundred times over. And after a moment, he heard the lock click.

The door creaked open an inch, then two.

You stepped out slow, eyes downcast, hands tugging at the sides of the dress like you could rearrange the whole thing if you just held it tighter. It shimmered faintly in the low light—midnight blue, the color he always thought of when he thought of you—but it was clear from the way you fidgeted that you didn’t feel like it fit.

“I wanted to wear the black one,” you said quickly. “But the zipper was too high and the red one makes me look like a—god, I don’t know. I just—this one was the only one that didn’t make me cry, and even then I still almost did, and I’m being ridiculous, I know, but it just—none of it feels right.”

You shook your head, like you were trying to physically dislodge the thoughts. “Forget it. I sound insane.”

Bucky didn’t respond right away. Didn’t rush to contradict you, or smother the moment in sweet nothings you’d only half believe. He just looked at you.

Not the way everyone else would tonight—cataloguing, assessing, slotting you into someone else’s narrative. Not like a possession on display, or an accessory to his redemption arc. Not like the plus-one to a man with a metal arm and too much blood on his hands. 

Bucky looked at you like you were his. Like the gravity in the room bent differently when you were near. Like every cracked seam, every insecurity you were holding together with safety pins and sheer force of will, only made you more real.

“Hey,” he said softly, drawing your gaze back up to meet his. “You don’t sound insane.”

You tried to scoff. Tried to laugh it off, but it wobbled halfway up your throat. He reached out and brushed his thumb along the underside of your jaw, coaxing your eyes to hold his. You let him.

“I’ve seen you angry,” he murmured. “I’ve seen you covered in blood, outnumbered, exhausted, ready to break. I’ve seen you laugh so hard you cried and cry so hard you laughed. I’ve seen every version of you—and not once have I ever thought you were being ridiculous.”

Your shoulders dipped slightly, like maybe he’d carved out a little air where there hadn’t been any. But your fingers still tugged at the fabric around your waist, fidgeting, pulling, adjusting a dress that wouldn’t settle the way you needed it to.

“I just…wanted to feel good tonight,” you said, voice thin, like you weren’t sure it was worth saying. “I wanted to walk in and not wonder what everyone’s thinking when they see me next to you. Or what Valentina’s thinking, or what the headlines will say, or if someone’s going to post some photo of us and it’ll be the worst angle imaginable, and I’ll have to spend the whole week trying not to look at it but knowing it’s there—”

You stopped yourself. Took a breath. Shook your head.

“I didn’t want it to get to me,” you whispered. “But it does.”

Bucky’s jaw ticked.

There it was—that protective heat rising in him, quiet and searing. The same thing that stirred in his gut when someone so much as looked at you wrong on a mission. The same thing that made him keep an eye on entrances, exits, camera flashes, social feeds. Not out of paranoia, but out of need. Because he knew what it felt like to be dissected by the world. To be seen in pieces. To have your worst moments live longer than your best.

He stepped in closer, the space between you shrinking to almost nothing. His metal hand found the fabric at your side, not to fix it, not to smooth it out, but just to touch, to remind you he was there.

“You know what I see?” he asked, low.

You didn’t answer. Not because you didn’t want to, but because you couldn’t trust your voice to hold steady.

“I see the woman who made me breakfast barefoot in my kitchen three mornings in a row after staying up all night with me when I couldn’t sleep and never once looked at me like I was broken. I see the same woman who told off a U.S. Senator with red wine on her teeth and didn’t blink. I see someone who stands her ground when people twice her size start barking orders. Someone who gets shit done even when the whole world wants her to shrink down and stay quiet.”

He leaned in, just enough that his forehead almost touched yours. The metal of his left hand skimmed your hip, a familiar coolness through the fabric. His right thumb still traced along your jaw.

“You walk into that room with me tonight, and I guarantee you they’ll see it too,” he said. “But even if they don’t? Even if the whole damn world somehow misses it—I won’t.”

You blinked, quick. He saw the way your throat bobbed, the way your lower lip wavered before you bit it down.

“You don’t have to be anything but yourself,” he said. “You don’t have to win anyone over. You don’t have to impress a soul.”

You let out a shaky breath.

“But I do want to impress you,” you admitted, almost too quiet.

That undid something in him.

His mouth twitched, not into a grin, but something far more solemn.

“You already have,” he said, with that same certainty he used on the field when the odds looked bad and the exits were burning. “Every goddamn day. Whether you’re in this dress or sweats or half-asleep in my arms mumbling shit that doesn’t make sense. You don’t have to try for me.”

He said it like a vow. Like a line he’d carve into the marble of your shared life if he could.

“I love you in ways I still don’t know how to say out loud. But I don’t just love you despite the parts you hate. I love you with them. Through them. I love you even when you don’t believe me. Especially then.”

You didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there with your hands still fisted in the sides of the dress, eyes glassy, throat working like you were trying to swallow the lump down before it gave you away.

Bucky could see it, though.

The flicker of doubt you were trying to blink away. The war still playing out just behind your eyes—quiet, ugly, familiar. He knew it too well. The voice that waited for the mirror to catch you from the wrong angle, that twisted a glance into judgment, that made everything too tight, too loud, too much. He’d lived with that voice. Sometimes he still did.

And because he knew it, because he’d heard it in his own head, he didn’t dare let you pull away.

Instead, he kept his hands on you. Not holding or restraining, just there. 

He drew a breath through his nose.

“People are cruel,” he said finally. “You and I both know that.”

You didn’t move. But something in your jaw twitched—tightening, then unclenching.

“They look at what they don’t understand and tear it down to feel better. They pick at the things that make you different, like that’s a flaw instead of the whole fucking point. And the worst part? You start believing them. Little by little. Like maybe if you shrink just enough, they’ll leave you alone.”

You closed your eyes, but Bucky didn’t stop.

“But I’m not letting you believe them,” he said, voice firmer now. “Not when they’re wrong. And they are wrong. Every single one of those assholes who’s ever made you feel small—whether it was with a comment, a glance, or some passive-aggressive bullshit about ‘expectations’—they’re cowards.”

His arm at your waist slid around you fully now, drawing you into his chest. His voice dropped low, all gravel and steel and unswerving conviction.

“If anyone looks at you sideways tonight, I won’t hesitate. I’ll break their nose and make ‘em apologize in the same breath.”

You huffed, half a startled breath, half a laugh. “You can’t do that. This is a diplomatic event.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t want to,” he muttered. “And you know I could make it look like an accident.”

You tilted your head back to look at him. His expression was stone. Unflinching. But his hand smoothed gently up your back in contrast, the duality of him radiating from every breath. Soft and hard. Quiet and deadly. Yours.

“I just hate that they ever made you question it,” he said, a little quieter now. “Your worth. Your body. Your existence. That anyone ever made you think that this—” his gaze flicked down, slow and deliberate, before coming back to your face “—wasn’t something to revere.”

You felt it in the way he said it. Not just appreciate. Not desire, not even admire. 

Revere.

The word settled deep, slow-burning and reverent, like a palm laid flat against your sternum.

His hand at your jaw moved, brushing your hair back gently, and then his fingers traced the curve of your neck. Your breath caught when his thumb dipped to trace the space just beneath your ear.

“You should think you’re beautiful,” he said, and his voice dropped, rougher now—not angry, but intimate. “You should see what I see every time you walk into a room.”

He tilted his head, mouth grazing just shy of your cheek. “You don’t know what that does to a man like me.”

You huffed, nose brushing his, your hands coming up behind his neck. “I think you’re being dramatic.”

“Dramatic?” His brow rose slightly, lips curving in that dry, knowing way he used when you pushed his buttons on purpose. “Baby, if I’m dramatic it’s only because you’re walkin’ around here lookin’ like that and expecting me to act normal.”

His vibranium hand slid a little lower on your back, fingers splaying, settling possessively at the top of your ass. You shifted instinctively toward him, and he smirked.

“That’s not fair,” you muttered, cheeks flushed now in a way that had nothing to do with shame. “You’re the one who’s looking like James Bond’s meaner older brother.”

“You like it.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

His thumb tapped your lower back. “Then quit squirming like I’m lying to you.”

You narrowed your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you—pulling into something faintly sheepish, barely there. Bucky’s gaze softened again, but the warmth stayed low, coiled behind his ribs.

“Say it,” he murmured.

You blinked up at him. “Say what?”

“That you look good.”

You tried to look away. He didn’t let you.

“That you know you make me crazy,” he added, leaning in close enough to nip your jaw with his teeth, gentle but not quite innocent. “That you’ve had me on edge since you walked outta that bathroom looking like you’re daring someone to say the wrong thing.”

You snorted. “I’m sure you were pacing before I even got the dress on.”

He grinned. “And whose fault is that?”

Yours. His. All of it.

Still, the warmth inside you climbed a notch. Not just because of the teasing, or the heat in his voice, but because it was easy. Because there was no pressure to be something you weren’t. No pedestal, no pedestal-smashing. Just this. Just you, exactly as you were, and Bucky Barnes pressing into you like gravity itself was a thing he’d fight off with his bare hands if it meant keeping you close.

“I don’t think I look bad,” you said slowly, cautiously, like the words might crack your teeth if you spoke them wrong.

Bucky didn’t press.

He just nodded once. “Good start.”

You tilted your head, giving him a look. “What, you want me to practice affirmations now?”

“I want you to say one nice thing about yourself,” he said, leaning his mouth down to your ear. “And if you don’t, I’ll just have to spend the next few hours whisperin’ filthy ones in your ear until you start believing me.”

You laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”

“Mm.” He kissed the corner of your mouth, then lingered just long enough for your lips to part. “But you’re blushing.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“I will bite you.”

He gave you a look like please, and dipped his head to kiss you properly.

It wasn’t exactly delicate. It was open-mouthed and hot and familiar in all the right ways, and when your fingers moved from his hair to curl into the lapels of his tux like you were considering ripping it off, he only growled against your lips.

“God, I hate that we have to leave this room,” he muttered, pulling back just enough to look at you, eyes heavy, voice low. “I’d trade a week’s mission reports to be late. Maybe two.”

“That’s a bribe,” you whispered, breathless.

“That’s a threat,” he corrected, mouth grazing yours again. “You keep looking at me like that, we’re not makin’ it out of this bedroom without some wrinkled seams.”

You shifted your weight onto one hip, eyes glinting just under your lashes like you were daring him again—no, testing him. Bucky could see it in the way your mouth curved. Not all the way into a smile, not fully confident, but enough to mask the edge of nerves underneath.

The way you always did when you felt too seen.

“Bet I’d look better out of the dress anyway,” you murmured, eyes flicking down to the dress like it was the punchline to your own joke.

It was the way you said it, like you didn’t really believe it. Like maybe if you got there first and said it like it was sexy, it wouldn’t sound so close to shame.

And that was what set something alight in him. Not because of what you said. But because you didn’t believe it the way he did. Because you still thought you had to prove yourself to him in some invisible way. Like he couldn’t already see the whole damn universe when he looked at you.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t give you time to backpedal or bury it under another joke.

He gripped the backs of your thighs and lifted you clean off the floor before you had the chance to blink. Your surprised laugh turned into a squeal as he twisted, stepping the two long strides it took to cross the room, and tossed you onto the edge of the bed. Not rough. Not careless. Just enough to bounce, just enough to feel the shock of air and momentum leave your lungs as you landed on your back.

The dress pooled around your hips like spilled ink, shimmer catching the low light. Your hair was mussed now, lips parted, hands splayed out across the sheets like you weren’t sure whether to push yourself up or reach for him again.

Bucky stood over you for a second, just long enough to look. Really look. Let you see him seeing you.

Not appraising. Not comparing. Just reverent.

“What, is this better, Sergeant?" you asked breathlessly, voice hitching with a shaky laugh as you tried to lighten the moment, eyes flicking to the ceiling like maybe you could play this off.

But he didn’t laugh.

He dropped to his knees at the end of the bed, hands sliding along the outside of your thighs. His flesh hand skimmed up until his palm flattened against your side, his thumb grazing bare skin where the dress had shifted.

“You know what I see when I look at you?” he said, voice lower now. Thicker.

You rolled your eyes, not unkindly, but he saw the flash of deflection in it. Heard it in the silence before you responded.

“Bucky—”

“I’m serious,” he said, and his hand pressed just slightly, grounding you in place. “You walked out of that bathroom thinking you had to sell it. Sell yourself. Like you needed to convince everyone that you belonged, that you were enough. But you don’t. Not for me. Not for them. You don’t owe a single person proof of your worth.”

Your breath caught.

And he leaned closer, mouth near your stomach now, where the fabric had pulled tight against your skin. He kissed the fabric, right over where your hand had earlier tried to hide the soft edge of yourself, the place you'd fidgeted with and tugged at like it might betray you.

“You keep covering and hiding this,” he murmured, pressing another kiss, slower now. “Like it’s something to be ashamed of. But this—you—this is where I rest my head when I can’t sleep.”

Another kiss, higher now, just below your ribs.

“This is where your warmth lives. Where you hold me at night. Where you laugh from.”

And another, right at the center of your chest, just above your heart. “Don’t you dare think there’s a single part of you that should be different.”

His hands moved again, thumbs brushing the curve of your hips as you let out a breath like you hadn’t meant to hold it.

“I know you don’t see it the way I do,” he said, his voice rough with feeling. “But I’m not gonna stop reminding you until you do. Even if it takes the rest of my life.”

You looked at him then. Really looked. Eyes more glassy now. Lips parted, body slack against the covers like the tension had finally begun to slip.

He kissed your thigh, slow and soft, then looked up at you with a grin that broke through the heat.

“And if it means throwing you on the bed every time you talk shit about yourself, then that’s just the price I’ll pay.”

You laughed—this time real, open, easy. The sound of it shot straight through him, leaving something warm and vital in its place.

He loved that sound. Loved how rare it used to be, how easily it came now. Loved that he could coax it from you with the right look, the right line, the right pressure of his hand on your skin like you weren’t a thing to be handled carefully but rather something holy, something his.

He wanted to bottle it, to trap it in the space between your ribs and whisper it back to you on the nights you couldn’t find it yourself.

But more than that—right now, with you laid out across the bed, that dress clinging to all the parts you’d tried to hide—he wanted to make sure you never questioned again whether or not you were wanted.

Needed.

Loved.

Because fuck the gala. Fuck the flashbulbs and the politicians and whatever the hell Valentina was trying to prove by trotting them out like reformed zoo animals. If they showed up late, they’d still have to shake his hand. Still have to smile like he didn’t see through all of it.

So when he leaned back in, he did it with intent.

No more trying to talk you out of the mirror. No more dragging you gently back from the edge. He was here. You were his. And if you couldn’t see yourself the way he did—if the words still caught in your chest, if the dress still clung in the wrong places in your mind—then he’d show you in a language you couldn’t argue with.

His hands slid beneath the hem of your dress, fingers parting the folds of the dress at your thighs. The fabric bunched in his palms like silk, and he kept his touch light, not asking, just offering. You shifted for him instinctively, thighs parting with that familiar, silent trust that still wrecked him every time.

He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee first. Just one. Then another, higher, where your skin grew warmer, softer. You inhaled through your nose, eyes fluttering shut.

He mouthed higher, slow, deliberate, tracing lazy, open-mouthed kisses along the inside of your thigh. He could feel your pulse just beneath your skin, could feel the way you were already trembling. It made something low in him twist, dark and heady.

His hands gripped the outside of your hips again, thumbs dragging slow circles, grounding you to the mattress. His mouth found the edge of your underwear, and he didn’t pull it down. Not yet. Just kissed over the fabric, his breath warm through it, lips soft and coaxing.

You gasped, quiet and strangled.

So he did it again.

And again.

Until your hips arched just slightly into his mouth.

His tongue followed the shape of you through the fabric, slow and teasing, not giving you everything, but just enough to make your hands twist in the sheets. He licked through the center of you, and the choked little sound you made shattered whatever restraint he had left.

He slipped two fingers beneath the edge of the fabric then, pulling it gently to the side just enough to expose the part of you already waiting. He didn’t speak. Just breathed against you once before sealing his mouth over you fully.

You gasped—high and sudden and so fucking sweet—and Bucky groaned against you, like the sound alone rewired something in his chest. His tongue moved slow at first, savoring you, mapping every tremor and shift in your body like it mattered more than breathing. Because to him, it did.

He loved you like this. Loved you most when you couldn’t keep still, when you forgot to hold your breath, when all the things the world told you to hide came pouring out of you in gasps and whispered curses and the soft whimper of his name.

“Fuck, Bucky—”

You reached for him blindly, one hand finding his hair and threading through it, gripping hard when he moved his tongue just right. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Not with the way you moaned for him, not with the way you tilted your hips, chasing the heat he’d stoked into a flame.

He swore he could’ve stayed between your thighs for the rest of his life and died a content man. The sounds you made—the way your body arched under his mouth, the way you let go with him—was better than any redemption arc the world could’ve written for him. Better than clean records and polished tuxes and state-sanctioned forgiveness. This was real. This was his.

And God, you were gorgeous like this. You always were. But now, flushed and writhing and half-wild with need, hands buried in his hair like you’d drown without something to hold onto, you were divine.

He drew his mouth back just slightly, just enough to suck in a shaky breath and tilt his head to kiss the inside of your thigh. Then the other. Not just kissing, but revering—lingering, warm, open-mouthed. As if he could burn the shape of you into muscle memory.

Your fingers trembled against his scalp, and you let out something between a gasp and a curse.

He grinned softly, kissed higher, then slid his tongue up the center of you again, right before easing two fingers along your entrance, gathering slick before easing the first one in.

Your body jolted beneath him, muscles fluttering tight, and he kissed your inner thigh again just to ground you, to keep you in this place with him.

“Beautiful,” he breathed. “You are fuckin’ perfect.”

Another finger joined the first, slow but sure, and the sound you made twisted something inside him. He could feel you clench around him, so warm and wet and open, and he let his forehead rest against your thigh for a moment like he needed to catch up to how much he adored you.

“Can’t believe you looked at yourself in the mirror and thought you weren’t enough,” he murmured, fingers curling inside you just right, thumb brushing lightly against the swollen part of you in time with the motion of his mouth. “You’re everything.”

He dragged his tongue along you again, slow and greedy, while his fingers moved deeper, angling until you cried out softly and tugged at his hair. And God, the way you sounded—wrecked and radiant and just for him—he could’ve come undone right there, still fully clothed, just from the sound of your pleasure.

“You’re so goddamn gorgeous,” he whispered against you, his voice breaking slightly. “Every fuckin’ inch of you, sweetheart. I mean it. All of you.”

And just as he was about to lower his mouth to you again—

BANG. BANG. BANG.

“Barnes! You two decent yet?” The voice carried that clipped, rolling edge of a Russian accent, each word sharp and certain, vowels flattened just enough to make it sound more like an order than a question.

“Are you ready, or did you fucking die in there?!” Yelena added after a bout of silence, louder this time, the consonants biting hard, the sarcasm wound tight enough to cut.

Bucky exhaled against your skin.

​​You were already covering your mouth with one hand, shaking with silent laughter. Your legs twitched, thighs squeezing around his shoulders as he grumbled against your skin.

“Ten more minutes,” he muttered to himself, voice muffled. “Just ten more fucking minutes and I could’ve—”

“You’re already five late!” Yelena shouted through the door, like she could hear his internal monologue. “We were supposed to be fashionably on time, not scandalously late, and I swear to god if I have to stand next to Alexei by myself I will murder you both and frame Walker.”

“We’re coming!” you called out, voice strangled as you tried not to laugh and moan in the same breath.

“Clearly!” she snapped. Then, quieter—though not by much—“Tell Barnes to zip up. The hallway echoes.”

Bucky sat back on his heels, rubbing a hand down his face, then looked down at you with a rueful, breathless smile. Your hair was a little frizzy now, your chest heaving, your lips kiss-swollen and pink, and you’d never looked more beautiful to him in your life.

You blinked up at him, still flushed, still breathless, and raised an eyebrow.

He exhaled hard through his nose. “We’re finishing this later.”

You grinned, humming softly. “That a threat?”

“That’s a promise.”

He leaned down and kissed you again, deep and claiming and just a little filthy, like he wanted the taste of you on his tongue for the rest of the night.

And then, reluctantly, he stood, adjusted his ruined tux, and offered you his hand like a gentleman who’d very much just had his mouth between your thighs.

“You good?” he asked, voice low again. Soft.

You took his hand.

“Better than good,” you said, fingers curling around his.

no more taglists! tumblr’s @ limit said no 💔 follow @cheekybarnesupdates + turn on notifs for all fic drops!

[cheekybarnes]

ok, listen. I've had this idea for AWHILE and I just know that no one aside from you could write it with the conviction, grit, and bleeding heart that you can. lock in.

let's be real, Bucky has some body confidence issues because he literally has a cybernetic arm. I can imagine that a traumatic amputation does that to a soul on top of all the twisted self-esteem he probably has just existing and being a man beyond the reach of time, ok? track with me.

and that said — everyone here knows that we are not always our most confident self, and that sometimes translates into relationships. so, our man building girlie up when she's tearing herself down would be PEAK progress for him, because he gets it, he does. he's taking those steps with her, the one person who has never failed to see him and love where he is at, right now.

for me this is a delicate blade as a girlie who has huge esteem issues, and I know it invades a lot of our brain space. seeing Bucky with a less than perfect girl but she's his brand of perfect would be a refreshing twist; seeing them conquer their own confidence issues together is feels I am HERE FOR.

thank you for your attention, this is too long but I can't apologize.

MARE! you absolute menace!! the minute i read this i knew i was doomed in the best way and wrote a majority of this while in work meetings lol. i adore this concept and i hope this scratches the itch in the exact way you imagined, maybe a little messier, maybe a little spicier (omg who am i???) than expected 👀

read here: dress rehearsal

[cheekybarnes]

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER — 1.04 “The Whole World Is Watching”

[cheekybarnes]

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER 1.03 | "Power Broker"

[cheekybarnes]

Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in THUNDERBOLTS* 2025, dir. Jake Schreier

[cheekybarnes]

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER 1.03 | "Power Broker"

[cheekybarnes]

BLACK WIDOW 2021 | dir. Cate Shortland

[cheekybarnes]

𝐒𝐄𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍 as 𝐉𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 "𝐁𝐔𝐂𝐊𝐘" 𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐒/𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐑

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Various Episodes. Bucky's blue with red details jacket.

[cheekybarnes]

“I fear sometimes that people sort of see me a certain way from some of these roles, and I can’t wait for the opportunity to be like, ‘I’m such a dork!’ Really, really — I’m such a dork. I just pretend to be cool.”

Happy Birthday Sebastian Stan! (August 13, 1982)

[cheekybarnes]

wintergold things • making the same face after saying something a little stupid

[cheekybarnes]

currently in the absolute trenches of my angst era tonight. i'm writing a bucky x reader fic inspired by gethsemane by sleep token and it’s already eating me alive in the draft stage. this is gonna ruin me and then ruin all of you when i post it. like no one is making it out of this one 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[cheekybarnes]

may all your favorite fanfic writers never lose their hyperfixation and love for your blorbos so they keep writing fanfics about your blorbos forever