#bc I can’t let myself just give in to the symptoms and let them dictate my life

[prozach27]

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[unfortunatelysirius]

! DEAR BROTHER, HOW I HATE THEE /// BUCKY BARNES x READER

╰❂╮ prompt ╰❂╮ You’re Tony Stark’s secretary, and also his sister, but there’s this one thing you can’t let him find out: your crush on the newest addition to the Avengers team, James Buchanan Barnes. ╰❂╮ author’s note ╰❂╮ I’m finally getting around to trying out new fandoms. Hope you guys like this; if you do, pls tell me, because I feel like it’s garbage and I’m sorry if it sucks D: Love you guys btw! Send some positivity my way pls, I’m going through some shitty times with rlly toxic people and it’s a struggle to get out of friendships with people you’ve known since childhood. AS ANOTHER SIDE NOTE, if you want tagged in future Avengers imagines, shoot me a message or just comment bc yoooo, I’ll totally do it. And rememberrrr, my inbox is open! And I’m always looking for fresh ideas for my imagines :))) ╰❂╮ warnings ╰❂╮ Swearing, Fluff ╰❂╮ word count ╰❂╮ 3869

   If there was one thing you absolutely hated about your brother—not counting his oversized ego—it’d be his habit of meddling in your affairs. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t hide secrets from Anthony Stark. It just didn’t work that way, especially with all the security cameras and the blabber-mouthed Avengers that littered the Tower.

         But there was this one secret that, if gotten out, and if exposed to the male members of the team, you’d probably move to Alaska.

         You had the biggest, fattest, most obviously obvious crush on the Avengers’ new recruit, Bucky Barnes.

         Truth be told, if it were up to you, you wouldn’t be enduring the phases of a crush. You didn’t want to be infatuated with someone who probably cared more for succulents than they did for you. The butterflies, the stomach cramps, the anxiety, the sweaty palms; you were certain Bucky noticed your behavior around him, and he probably found it uncomfortable, and it most certainly made him avoid you, but what were you supposed to do? Stay rooted in your office all day? That was not a plan you felt obligated to disclose—especially not to your crazy-ass brother. If it was up to Tony, he would have locked you in your office by now; if he ever caught you, his puny little sister, attempting to join in on field combat again, he’d probably have a heart attack. And Pepper would have your head.

         Well, maybe not. Pepper liked you. But that was liable to change if you killed her boyfriend. And Tony would turn you into Rapunzel if you kept trying to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent when you were a freakin’ secretary.

         That’s one reason why you couldn’t share your latest fancy with your brother. With all the history of Bucky being the Winter Soldier, and you always getting into trouble that’d always wind up with you sustaining some sort of injury, he’d worry himself into early sickness. You told Tony everything, only starting with the trend of raw honesty after Tony revealed that he had cameras out in the hall from your room and basically knew everything you’d ever done wrong, but this was just something he’d try and sabotage in any possible way he could.

         However, that didn’t mean you couldn’t tell other people. It just had to be outside of hearing range for the Tower. That’s what had you and Wanda Maximoff at a café around the corner from Stark Tower. A populated place that was nowhere near Tony and his rampant, exaggerative mind.

         “Oh my gosh, Wanda,” you groaned into the table, barely managing to thank the waitress as she deposited your and Wanda’s coffees and blueberry muffins in between the two of you. You peeked up, giving Wanda your best I’m-dying eyes, fit with half-slanted eyelids and creased corners. “He’s just so handsome… I can’t be normal around him. Like, how do you be normal around cute boys?”

         Wanda pursed her lips. She had taken a dainty sip of her mocha latte through your rant, and was only just putting it down when you turned your pleading gaze to her. “Well,” she said slowly, “I do not think I am the best person to approach with this information. Neither Natasha. Do you have any secretary friends you can talk to about this?”

         Your eyes turned withering. You regarded your coffee and muffin as irrelevant, pausing only for a moment to take in the delectable blueberries bursting out of the muffin-skin, before you raised your head to its full height. “You and Natasha are the only people I talk to,” you said. You sounded whiney, but you were freaking out about this, so honestly, you didn’t care. You jutted out your bottom lip, thinking a pout could win her over, and evoke from her advice. “Please?”

         A pause. Then Wanda finally sighed. “If you really want a relationship out of this, then you should approach him with your feelings,” she told you. “Feelings are no good when they stay just that: feelings.”

         “That’s true,” you said. You took a bite out of your muffin, nearly turning into goo at the scrumptious taste. “He’s just so… stoic. And he hardly smiles, or laughs. Sometimes I don’t know if he wants to kill me, feels nothing for me, or finds me likable. I mean, I hope it’s the latter, but let’s face it; the only person he truly likes in that tower is Steve, and on rare occasions, he even enjoys Natasha’s company. I’m just… a background nuisance.”

         “No, you are not.” Wanda shook her head at you. She took her hands from her coffee cup, moving them out so she could place them on your own hands. She gave you a stern, motherly look. “You must get to know him better. Try your hand at being his friend, and then, see where the road takes you. You will do nothing for yourself if you continue to mope.”

         You nodded frantically. “Yeah, yeah—that’s a great idea—but, wait…” You sighed. “What do I do about Tony?”

         Wanda rolled her eyes. “Pay him no mind,” she said, pulling away a hand to wave it dismissively in the air. “You’re a grown woman. He does not own you. Unless you are a product of Stark Industries, and you are no human, but a robot in disguise. Are you?”

         “No…”

         “There you have it, then. Talk to Bucky, and see where he stands.” She leaned back in the booth seat, taking a long sip of her coffee. You proceeded to do the same.

         Maybe she was right… You did need to start getting to know Bucky better. And you needed to stop letting Tony influence and dictate your life. After all, Bucky was only a man, and if he was as truly stoic as you thought he was, then your feelings would be one-sided and Tony would get his wish: you, single forever, an eternal bachelorette.

         -

         You were making breakfast in the kitchen Tony had on the Avengers floor (as well as the floor you stayed in, when you weren’t at your apartment in the city), clad in Hello Kitty pajamas, when you had your first encounter of the week with Bucky. You were humming to an old 80’s song, stirring pasta, and there came a deep, throaty chuckle, then his husky voice as he said, “Is that Billie Jean?”

         You jumped, a sharp squeak leaving you. A flush lit you up from head to toe, and if it wasn’t Bucky—if it was another Avenger, someone you were comfortable enough around to be yourself—you might have broken into a fit of, “Oh my god, oh my god”’s. However, just your luck, it was Bucky who graced you with his presence, seeing you in your pajamas, watching you as you jammed out to imaginary Michael Jackson records. This was downright embarrassing.

         You slowly turned to look at him. You fought back the even redder shade of blush that was struggling its way up your throat, choosing (from a multitude of other embarrassing ways to act around Bucky) to smile nervously and teeter-tot on your heels. If the symptoms of your crush were going to burn you alive, you might as well smile through the death and destruction. Bucky began to look expectant when you merely stood there and smiled at him, which made you remember you hadn’t yet replied to him. “Oh, u-um, yeah!” you said, through such a high pitch, that you internally face-palmed. Way to give yourself away, dumbass. “I was just…”

         “Dancing?” Bucky raised an eyebrow. A smirk was beginning to twitch at his lips, fighting to make its debut appearance. “That’s a bit of a safety hazard when cooking, doll.”

         Doll? Did he just call me doll? That deep-red shade you were trying to fight off your face… You were now a goner to your body’s dysfunctions. You flushed deeply, and your smile turned into a clumsy line that revealed just how much strength you had in the face of a handsome, well-mannered man, meaning zero. “There’s a reason why Tony keeps me locked up in the office all day,” you said, with an unsure laugh. “He says I make a habit of hurting myself when I’m alone. Apparently, I’m a trouble magnet!”

         Bucky’s eyebrows raised, and he no longer tried hiding his smirk. He looked amused. “Clearly,” he murmured.

         “Well, uh—” You stopped talking. You really didn’t know where you were heading with that. The curious look on his face, though, made you take a deep breath and say, “Shouldn’t you be at training?”

         Bucky’s eyes turned wide, and his smirk disappeared. He put a nervous hand on his neck, scratching at it—like this was a question he really didn’t want to answer. “Well, uh—” he parroted, looking just as jumpy as you had felt when you, too, had uttered the words. “I just wanted—I, well… I thought you might want some company.”

         You blinked. You hadn’t expected that. “Well… I could always use someone to talk to while I cook.” Your expression considerably brighter, you turned back to your pasta—which had almost burned while you were busy talking to Bucky.

         A loud scrapping sound told you Bucky had sat down, and the prickling sensation on your neck told you that he was staring. After about three minutes of you moving the pasta off the burner and putting together a marinara sauce, you decided to say something. You said over your shoulder, “So, you like Michael Jackson?”

         Bucky said, “Yes.” A simple answer.  

         “I do too,” you replied, a smile on your face as you put the marinara sauce in a pan to heat. You turned to him. “Would you want to eat with me?” At the startled expression on his face, you backtracked, a sense of panic welling up in you— “Wait, uh—only if you want to—”

         “Sure,” said Bucky, reverting you back to your normal, albeit fidgety, state. “Pasta’s nice.”

         “Oh.” You blinked. You weren’t expecting that answer. “Okay, cool!” The raised eyebrow he shot you at the amount of pent-up excitement in your tone made you feel a tad bit abashed, but what did that matter—you were having dinner with James Buchanan Barnes.

         You couldn’t stop smiling all throughout dinner, so distracted by your conversations with Bucky (and the astonishing fact that he was smiling and laughing with you, two elements of a human’s behavioral personality, which he apparently lacked, that caused you to think he disliked you) that you forgot one teeny, tiny detail about Stark Tower…

         -

         Tony cornered you the next morning, nearly sloshing your coffee all down your shirt in his haste to get to you. “You couldn’t have picked a worse person to deflower you, huh?”

         You stopped walking. What the hell? “Did you really just say ‘deflower’? What are you—fifty?”        

         “Better than being in my 90s,” Tony said snidely, an obvious reference you weren’t automatically getting, before grabbing your arm. He ignored your look of annoyance and pulled you to in front of him. “That tin-armed hand-me-down is still in the works about becoming normal, Y/N/N. One little snap, and you could be killed. You understand that?”

         “What—are you talking about Bucky?” At Tony’s deadpan expression, you had to let out a sigh; of course he saw. Of course! He had cameras in every stinkin’ crevice of this damned Tower. “Tony… there’s nothing going on between us.” Well, you wished there was, but he didn’t need to know that. “And besides, Bucky is a person. Stop talking about him like he isn’t.”

         Tony rubbed a hand over his face in exasperation. “Bucky is a person… He’s got you brainwashed, or infatuated, because all I see is a man who murdered our damn parents, Y/N.”

         You pushed him off of you. “That wasn’t him,” you snapped. “He wasn’t in control of himself. If you want to blame anyone, blame Hydra. Stop being a dickhead about it.”

         Tony’s eyes darkened. He went to say something, but he must have thought better of it because he merely shook his head, then briskly walked back down the hallway. When you got to your office, you couldn’t help the long, angry screech that left you in the safety of your personal four walls; if there was anyone who could frustrate you most in this world, it was your brother.

         -

         Taking long and well-thought measures to avoid someone usually resulted in you avoiding other people, too. Which included all of the Avengers. It wasn’t that much of a surprise when a knock on your office door sounded before Natasha was waltzing right in, a look of pure anger on her face.

         “Why are you avoiding us?” she said brusquely, barely paying your deer-in-headlights expression any attention as she plopped down on the meeting chair placed in front of your desk.

         “I’m avoiding Tony.”

         Natasha breathed out a scoff, then began to laugh. “He lives here, Y/N. How exactly did you think you were going to avoid him? Avoid us?”

         She had got you there. Your expression fell into a thin line teetering on the edge of shame, barely concealing your embarrassment. “I know… but he—”

         Natasha threw up a dismissive hand. “Whatever he did to you, it can’t be bad enough a reason for you to avoid everyone and lock yourself up in this tiny little prison you call an ‘office.’” She snorted. “Barnes is worried.”

         You were beginning to look away, not able to meet Natasha’s eyes while she was busy chastising you, but her final words caught your attention. You immediately turned to look at her. “Wait—what?”

         There was that meddling look that Tony was always giving you. Befit with a raised brow and hollowed-out cheeks, Natasha smirked. “Barnes. He’s worried about you. He’s the one who asked me to come check on you. He said Tony probably locked you up to keep you out of trouble.”

         Wow. I didn’t think Bucky cared enough to do that. Maybe there was a lot of things you didn’t know about Bucky. You pursed your lips, then said—“You can tell him I’m fine.”

         Natasha got this look on her face, before she was tilting her face towards the door leading to your office. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

         Before you could ask what she meant by that, the door to your office was pushing open, and Bucky stuck his head out from between the frame. His frown seemed bashful, and he didn’t meet your gaze head-on. “Hey, doll. Can I come in?”

         Doll. Again. You ignored Natasha’s knowing stare when you replied, “Oh, y-yeah—of course.”

         “Guess I’ll be off,” Natasha said loudly, rising from the office chair. She sent you a wink. “I’ll get Tony to lay off with the brotherly love.” She smirked.

         You waved her off awkwardly, biting hard on your lip as she passed Bucky and shot him a wicked, cheeky grin. Bucky mumbled a few choice words, shoving at her shoulder; he certainly seemed embarrassed by whatever implications were in her expression.

         When Bucky was out of the door’s range, and Natasha’s clacking heels were no longer heard above the ventilation, the two of you sat in a still, awkward silence. You were twiddling with your fingers, and Bucky was staring at his feet, both of you too introverted and shy to really speak the first words. However, in the midst of your frantic thoughts (Oh God, what do I say, what do I do, is he mad at me? Did I do something wrong?) you didn’t notice Bucky look up from his boots, or see him sink into the same chair that Natasha had only been occupying moments before. He looked at you for a long moment, and only when the hair-raising feeling that accompanied people’s centered gazes intensified did you finally look up.

         “Oh,” you said dumbly. “Hi.”

         Bucky’s lips twitched. The barest hint of a smile crawled onto his lips. “Hi.”

         You didn’t know what to say. Neither did Bucky, it seemed. This was extremely awkward, and you wondered why Natasha had to leave when she knew the two of you were the quietest members of the Tower; conversations were difficult to uphold when Bucky was silent most of the time and simplistic in his rare answers, and you always stopped before you could begin when it came to speaking.

         However, you must have misjudged Bucky for being defiant in his silence. He slowly crossed his arms, continuing to stare into your eyes, before saying, “Did Tony do something?”

         Your mouth fell agape before you were gathering your senses. Don’t be such an open book, idiot. “He said some things I didn’t like,” you said finally. “So we’re not on speaking terms, at the moment.”

         Bucky’s face brightened, then dulled. Like he was wanting a different answer. Like he knew exactly what you were talking about. “Ah,” he said. “Does the word ‘deflower’ really bother you that much?”

         Oh, shit. Did he—? “Wait.” Your reply was slow, calculated. “Did you overhear our conversation?”

         Bucky nodded.

         You sighed. Well, he must think I’m obsessed with him or something, defending him like I’m his girlfriend. “Tony’s… an asshole. I’m sorry he said the things he did.” There, that sounded friendly enough. You didn’t want to come off as a fangirl.

         Bucky just shook his head, looking determined. And like he didn’t really care about Tony, and his wonderful way with words. Bucky leaned forward, propping his crossed arms on your desk. He was close enough for you to smell his cologne, and close enough that your gaze immediately flickered towards his lips. “You said there’s nothing going on between us… What if I said there is something?”

         This conversation was heading in a direction you were not anticipating. Your jaw fell open again, eyes going wide with shock. “W-What?”

         Bucky stared at you. He seemed less confident now, with your expression of bewilderment so blatant. He started leaning back into his chair. “I’m sorry—was that too forward?”

         Now, you were dubious. Why wasn’t he referencing all the fangirl moments you’d have around him? Was he just oblivious? Since it appeared like he was embarrassed, for lack of a better word, you began to push forward in your seat; you latched a hand around his flesh arm. “N-No!” you shouted, before quieting, a blush on your face. “No… I just didn’t expect you to think that way about me, is all.”

         Bucky was the one to look dubious now. “I thought I was obvious about it.”

         “No, if anyone was obvious, it was me.” You laughed and shook your head. “Always giggling around you, and stuttering. And don’t get me started on the blushing. It’s like you’ve turned me into a schoolgirl again.”

         Bucky’s handsome face lit up with a smile. Not a smirk—a smile. It made your stomach do flips. “I guess I just didn’t think someone like you would like someone like me. I’m surprised… I even came up here. I was actually going to your office to ask you out on a date when… you and your brother talked, but when you said there was nothing going on, I just thought… And then you were avoiding Stark, which made me think maybe, you were lying, and maybe his words made you more angry than I thought.”

         That was the most Bucky had ever said to you. Maybe even around anyone in this Tower, including Steve—which made you feel smug inside. You smiled at him, and reached out a hand to lay gently on his jaw. “Well, you’re here now,” you told him softly.

         He smiled back at you. “Yeah. I am.” He cupped the back of your neck with his human hand and pulled you into a swooping kiss.

         You were shocked—completely shocked—by the amount of butterflies that lit up in your belly at the sensation of Bucky’s lips on yours. You thought the movies and books were lying when they said kissing was like a Fourth of July show. He tasted like coffee—black, no creamer and no sugar, the same way you liked your own coffee—and he smelled even more heavenly, making you nestle closer as the grip tightened on the hair at your nape. His lips grew harder against your own, moving passionately (as though both were pieces to the same puzzle) and it made you feel light, like you were airborne, the way he tasted and felt.

         So caught in this amazing feeling, you didn’t hear the door open. But you did hear the outraged noises that left whoever it was that barged in.

         “What the hell, Y/N?! Does this look like nothing to you?” your brother yelped, seeming completely bewildered by the sight of you and Bucky locked in a kiss.

         You pulled away, wracked with a sense of smugness at the deprived sound that left Bucky’s throat. You gave him a soft smile before moving your chair sideways to take a peek at the door. Tony was there, mouth fully popped open, pointing a finger between you and Bucky, like he was in utter disbelief; you were sure in that empty brain of his, he was praying for this to be nothing but a vicious nightmare, his greatest worries coming true.

         How sad it’d be when he woke up tomorrow morning to find that this was a reality, a reality not going anywhere anytime soon.

          You left your hand on top of Bucky’s as you said, “You know, Tony, it’s kind of rude to barge into a room without knocking first.”

         Tony spluttered, and gaped, raising an angry finger. Similar to how he acted when you called him a dickhead. “I’ll have you know—”

         “You own this place, you can do anything you want, you’re the great Tony Stark—blah, blah, blah.” You caught the amused smirk on Bucky’s face. And a startled look. He was probably confused about your banter with Tony; you could be talkative to people you really cared about, but the shyness came out in front of strangers and groups. You threw Tony a frown. “Listen, Tony—I get that you think you have some sort of sibling protection rules you live religiously by, but let’s be a little bit more lenient about my dating life… Okay? Okay. Now please—get out and go gossip to the Avengers about me. I know you really want to.”

         An outraged look appeared on Tony’s face. “Don’t think this is over!” he said angrily, before he was sweeping out of your office; there wasn’t a doubt in your mind that he was heading to the Avengers to mope and ask for advice on how to sabotage your relationship.

         You sighed, looking back at Bucky. He was already looking at you, and he was smirking. “Dating, huh?” he said, sounding pleased.

         You swatted at him playfully; now that you knew he didn’t hate you, it was much easier to be comfortable with him. “Oh, shut up and kiss me.”

         And he did.