saturn
summary: close to a year after you die, bucky's desperation finally finds an answer. but it may not be the one he's hoping for. (OR) you die. bucky tries to bring you back.
warnings: angst. death. body horror (being revived from death and the processes that follow). sickness. war or something. swearing. there is also fluf here and there
a/n: im drunk as fuck <3 i haven't really looked at this since December. the title is taken from saturn by sleeping at last because i couldn't think of anything better. enjoy <3333333333333
He occasionally catches a glimpse of his face in the lake.
His skin is worn from months of sun damage, splotchy and incorrectly healed. His beard has grown well past the point of respectability, with strands of grey he didn’t realise could sprout from him. Eyes sunken and half-lidded always.
Bucky waits everyday for the reaper to pull him underwater. Every day is another spent on dry, barren land.
_____________
It was closing in on a year and a half. Time moves like aged honey when you're punished, slow and grasping.
He steps off the bed and into the resolute silence of the cabin. There was a hole by his bedroom door after a regrettable night of alcohol. Mead. Something that had his head spinning and bile stuck to the walls of his throat, and of which he doesn't even remember the name of the next morning.
It's all fleeting, anyway. Names, labels, lives.
He cooks himself breakfast on an old pan. The room is bone-cold, and the floorboards creak when he drags the decades old chair from the dining room to the porch.
Paint peels under his feet, and his toe curls. A dull, faded orchestra of evergreens as far as he can see. He's had a target on his back since he was a kid, always under the gaze of something beyond his understanding. Always making sure he doesn't take a step out of line, or let too much life into his heart.
It's been a while since he's felt that. Like it had finally decided he learnt his lesson, that he wouldn't dare to take a new breath without considering if he deserved it. And so he doesn't wonder if there are irises staring back at him with the same lifelessness with which he watches them, day after day, hour after hour.
The outside cools his blood to a standstill, and he is almost entirely certain he is alone. The vast expanse of an empty sky, bearing no clouds, no birds. Some days, he almost thinks he can feel you when the winds move.
He thinks he's past the point of insane.
__________
His friends are kinder than he is. To a fault, almost. God knows he hasn't given them a reason to be.
After a couple of months of shifting to the middle of nowhere, there are fifteen fucking knocks to the door.
Bucky flings it open, ready to chew someone’s head off. Raging, still in the ratty old t-shirt and sweatpants and socks with holes in them that you swore you would burn. He is armed with a battalion of curses and threats, only for words to die a quick death at the tip of his tongue.
“Hey.”
Bucky's muscles tense to the point where they might crack, but he forces his arm to lower.
“Been a while,” Sam says, arms crossed over his chest.
He doesn't know how he's hunted him down, given the nature of his disappearance, but Sam was nothing if not determined in his humanity.
With nowhere else to turn, Bucky silently pushes the door open.
________
“I like what you’ve done with the place.”
Bucky glances around the house. There are cobwebs hanging from each corner he sees. Bulbs coated with dust. Fine china starting to fade with unuse, and utensils slowly beginning to gather rust.
He doesn’t reply. He’s offered him water, but Sam declines.
“You get cell coverage out here?”
“Don’t make a lotta calls,” Bucky’s vocal chords sound like they’re lined with gravel.
“We noticed.” Sam leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Talked to Dr. Canmore?"
"Yep." Not since the psychiatrist was forced to clear him after Bucky showed no signs of violence, or returning back to him. To him, that concluded the purpose of their relationship.
"And?"
"There's nothing to say, Sam," he rebukes, gruff. "'M fine."
Sam looks like wants to raise an eyebrow, but the patience he's grown over the years from dealing with those worse than the mess setting in front of him disallows him. "Get enough food?"
Bucky flashes him a thumbs-up, and feels the onset of a migraine.
"Sunlight? Water?"
"'M not a fuckin' plan--" he begins harshly, but clears his throat. "You?"
"Doin' alright." Sam shrugs. "Been training a buncha new recruits, getting in touch with new ones. Superheroes are poppin' up all over the place. Got a girl saying she can control squirrels."
Bucky nods absent-mindedly, picking at the hem of his shirt. He thinks you would have found that amusing, considering that you thought Scott Lang's schtick was a bit on-the-nose too.
“Do you want to?”
Bucky sharply shifts back into focus. “What?”
“Help out,” Sam clarifies. “Recruit, train.”
Bucky’s jaw inadvertently tightens. “No,” he says sharply.
"Could be good for you."
""M done with that life."
Sam's eyes reflect a reality that's different, but he still relents, "Okay. Whatever works for you."
Bucky can’t say he retired, exactly. He’d unceremoniously quit and had gone AWOL, but it had never been on paper. SHIELD was gracious enough to accept in whatever form they had, sending him funds every month as an unofficial pension.
“You should drop by sometime. Compound's all re-done."
Bucky shifts in his seat like the chair is too small for him. “‘M not exactly a joy to be around.”
“You’re actin’ like that’s somethin’ new,” he riffs, mouth curling into a smile. “Still.”
Sam's a good man who often lets his instincts lead the way, and if he's insisting on Bucky to return then something must be worth listening to. But his only company's been the thoughts in his head for a while now, and they're no good. What's impure about him surely wraps its tendrils around the world around him, poisoning them.
It's difficult, impossible, even to shake the suspicion growing on him, crawling up his back.
“Alright, well–” Sam pushes himself off the couch “-- just give us a call if there’s anything you need help with.”
Bucky may not have as many words as he used to, but he hasn’t forgotten his manners. He walks Sam to the front, where his truck lay parked, all polished from the last time he saw it.
"You got everything you need?” Sam asks again, and something inside him ignites a spark.
“Yes.”
Sam nods, hand on the hood of the truck, giving him a final look up and down. The few seconds of a leeway fans the spark into a red-hot anger, one that has Bucky's muscles painfully tight.
"Right. See you aro-"
"Why'd you come here?" Bucky interrupts. "To check if I'm losin’ it again? SHIELD couldn't get Dr. Canmore on the line so they send their next bet to tranquilise me?
Sam's eyebrows raise this time, and Bucky thinks he's finally managed to piss off the last person who cares if he's dead or alive, but everything in him is too hot, too scathing to bother.
He wants someone to get it, what it's like to claw at concrete walls with raw fingertips and broken nails. He wants someone to see what it's like, living like they've been injected over and over with needles.
"I know it’s hard, man," Sam replies, gentle like cool water on a burn.
Bucky's hands freeze, because he realises very quickly he wanted someone to hurt.
"Just thought you could use knowin' you had someone there," he continues. "Got flowers too, but I wasn't sure if you'd..."
Something in Bucky deflates, and he wants to cower into a ball. Bury himself so deep underground that he doesn't have to deal with how his ribs feel like they're cracking into splinters all over again.
Sam's already moved towards the passenger side door, and pulled from it a beautiful arrangement of evening primroses and jasmines. Of course Sam remembered.
You would have loved it.
"I don't have anywhere to keep it," Bucky croaks. He's turned the home he bought into a tomb, and he's closed the door to any remainder of life waiting to be lived.
Sam simply hands it to him, and Bucky takes it cautiously like it'll wither in a second. His touch is venomous and his want is a death-sentence, but the flowers stay alive.
"If you ever find a place," Sam says, squeezing his shoulder, "leave something there, too. Might help."
________
He'd add 'liar' to the list of words he's chosen to describe himself, if he said he didn't think about it every second since you died.
The idea initially comes to him like a snake, slithering and winding its way up his shoulder to hiss into his ear. He shudders the first time, jaws clenching, and dismisses it immediately.
But 'sinner' is a word he would use, and so on nights when he's awake too long and when your laugh sounds like a draft in his ear, he entertains the thought.
Indulges in it, grotesquely allows himself to think of an alternate ending, where his presence had not corrupted your fate, and you would have been alive and vibrant and trying out new flavours of gelato from the corner store. Stealing kisses from him, half awake, and dragging him to watch sunrises from the roof.
He thinks of things he'd do differently. Retire a lot faster. Took you to the National Parks like he said he would. Make sure your scent seared itself like a tattoo on all his clothes, because there's nothing on earth that replicated it and he's turned it inside out trying.
When the air is icy and the skin aches where his metal arm meets flesh, he thinks of how you always flicked his shoulder when he passed an off-hand comment under his breath, but muffled a laugh when his insults got more creative.
But soon, it will be closing in on two years since Bucky's last heard you groan at his stupid comments and the lake is just as pristine as the day he bought the cabin. The water glimmers like shards of diamond and there are days he thinks it's too still for even his liking.
"Have you ever been to Asgard?" you ask one night, legs splayed over his thighs.
He looks up from the book he's reading, pencil tucked into his ear. "I have not."
"Not even once?" you ask, distracted from whatever show you had gotten hooked on on TLC. Ever since you'd discovered the channel, you were convinced it was the best way to learn about "his culture". Sometimes he tuned in to learn about updates to "his culture" in the years he was gone.
"Strictly earthbound," he replies.
You nod, eyes drifting back to the TV. He watches you for a few seconds, hand gently squeezing the arm closest to his.
As it always was, your posture was pin-straight. Always ready. Like sitting still wasn't even an option. He used to think it was because you were never truly comfortable around him, until he realises that that was simply a part of you.
Bucky re-adjusts his glasses. He was getting old. His back pained and creaked like an old door hinge more each time.
He didn't think he'd get here. He's growing to love it. Mission reminders and target locations get replaced more and more with reminders that he still has to put the leftovers in the fridge from the date earlier that night, and that your shampoo needed a re-stock.
"Would you want to come with me one day?" you ask suddenly.
He puts the book down, and you turn away from the TV again.
He can always tell when you're thinking. The world buzzes a bit. When you're older than a few galaxies, the universe and you become not so distinct.
"Might be a bit too grand for a fella like me."
"I think you'd like it," you counter, "and you're in a relationship with me. You'd fit in as well as anyone could."
He's still not sure how he's managed to accomplish the second part but you must have liked something about his ragtag sarcasm and social isolating tendencies.
Bucky's growing older each day. You're the closest thing he's seen to eternity. He doesn't think he would fit in, not with his thrift shop t-shirts and unbridled insecurities.
"Do you want me to?" he asks, hesitant.
He's met Thor, and he's heard mostly about Loki through childhood tales and news reports. Thor didn't seem to mind him, but then again, Thor saw the best in everyone.
"I'd like to show you the place I grew up," you reply, playing with his metal fingers. "You showed me yours."
"That's a couple'a streets from here, sweetheart," he reminds playfully. "Not exactly another realm."
The corners of your mouth lift slightly. "But you feel connected to it, don't you? That it is a part of you?"
Bucky intertwines your grins and keeps it there. He's always felt something towards Brooklyn. Something that kept him going when Siberian frost nipped at his skin. Tethered.
But when he'd shown you the place he grew up in, it wasn't the same. Brickwall had been overlaid with plaster and paint. Doors ripped off their hinges, wallpaper a ghastly white instead of the stained floral print his sister and he drew on. It was unease, trepidation.
It didn't feel like his anymore. Probably because Bucky didn't feel like him anymore.
"Yeah," he replies after some thought, even though it's not entirely right.
"I feel that way about Asgard," you continue the thought. "Being here is lovely, and I love learning of all the things your people do, but--"
"It's not the same," he interjects gently. "I get you."
You look at him and smile, and Bucky feels the same gnawing feeling that this is something that's too good, too pure for him.
God of the Night Sky and the Mortal of Blood Stained Hands.
It shouldn't work, but you've already got a drawer in his shelf for your belongings. You've talked about moving to a cabin by the woods if you ever wanted to settle down. You kissed him that morning, and once more on his shoulder, and the last time he's laughed this much in one dinner was the one he had the night before with you.
"Whichever day you're ready," you promise. "I've got a feeling you'll be convinced."
Bucky presses a kiss to your fingers, and you turn back to the TV with a smile.
He watches you for a while. Your fingers continue to play with his. Bucky thinks getting older may just be worth it.
You made a dozen or so trips back to Asgard since the conversation, and he pushed his involvement on each one with the unfailing and ultimately misplaced certainty that he'd have time.
__________
You wouldn't approve of the way he'd kept the cabin. You wouldn't approve of the way he lived. He knows that, but he also knows if you were around then he'd have a reason to actually sow more than vegetables in the land he keeps digging up. He'd make sure of the table cloth that he found stashed away, leave the blinds open more to allow light to reach his room.
He looks at the bouquet of flowers by his feet and thinks that laying it by a boulder would be insignificant.
So for the first time in a long while, he prays the act of creation will bring him some respite and builds.
A little hut, with sticks he finds around the place, and makes it big enough to house Sam's bouquet from the wind and sun. He carves out your name onto the boulder, painstakingly with his pocket knife until each letter was guaranteed to last a century. He adds the year of your birth, and can't find it in himself to add the year you died.
He steps back and exhales. It's a memorial. It's a start.
__________
Bucky spends most of the day digging up dirt, sitting out on the porch and looking for firewood. He’s learnt how to grow his own vegetables, and how to go into town unnoticed for other essentials.
And now he has something to tend to.
It starts with fickle sticks and grows into something sturdier. He brings the memorial stronger wood, and bands to hold it together. He looks for wildflowers and pretty leaves, bunches them together and leaves them under the protection of the small roof.
It's the most he's done in over a year.
Months go from crawling to a standstill when it nears October. Bucky leaves the house less often.Truth is, the sky has never entirely recovered since you were gone. It's never truly dark-- a faint navy blue or even azure in the days leading up to the anniversary.
He's seen people puzzle over it-- call it the newest effects of light pollution or climate change. There is no reasonable answer, but the one that exists is that you left and you took the constellations with you.
Still, evening always comes faster and he can't quite stand being out at that time, when there is a void where he used to feel you the most. Instead he stays asleep for as long as he can. He makes use of the brief time he has to fix himself some food, and bare minimum upkeep.
He gathers the last of the flowers he can see around, some leaves that hadn't entirely been lost and makes his way to the lake.
"Forgive me, sweetheart. Season's changin' and I don't got a lot of options," he says lowly and to the hut that's managed to stay up.
Bucky looks at the sparse flowers in his hands and thinks that he'll make the godforsaken trip into civilisation to get you better ones. Ones you really liked, colourful and dynamic.
For now, he tries tying them together with a blade of grass to make it look less pathetic. It breaks every single time-- he's never been very good at being delicate.
Something around his wrist catches his attention. Some days he forgets it isn't a part of him.
His hair whips rather majestically around his head. He’s used to the sting when it strikes his skin, only reflexively reaching up to tuck it behind his ear.
“Hair tie?”
His eyes snap to yours in surprise. You've never really talked to him before, just brief nods and smiles along the way. Bucky wasn't exactly the patron saint for socialising either. He's always thought something about you was otherworldly. He didn't consider himself significant enough to be going out of your way to talk to either.
“Would you like a hair tie?” you repeat. “It’s rather bad out there.”
“Uh, yeah,” he replies, though he’s never considered that as a solution. “Sure, if you’ve got one.”
“We’ve learnt to carry them around when you fight alongside the likes of Thor and Volstagg.” You smile, reaching into the compartment of your belt. “Long hair looks good. Doesn’t always work that way.”
Bucky gives you a tight smile, feeling slightly embarrassed but a voice in him compels him to accept the kindness you’re offering.
He quickly secures his hair into a lower bun, giving more show to cheeks dusted pink.
“I’ll give it back after the mission,” he promises.
“Don’t.” You pause, giving him a once-over. “It suits you.”
Most days he remembers it's one of the only things he's still got of you. Still, he ties the flowers together with your hair tie-- and they stay this time.
"See you next week," he says, and a wind blows past him. Pathetically, he dares to hope it's a sign from you.
___________
Two sharp knocks on the door, but his eyes are open before the second one. It wasn’t like he was getting much sleep anyway.
When his arm doesn’t keep him up, it’s the ache in the rest of his body to be near you. Trailing kisses up your arm and watching wildfire heat spread through his neck when fingers tip up his chin. Lips trying to catch each other until panting breaths matched.
He flips over to the other side. Both sides of the pillow are drenched with his sweat. Christ, if this was how it was going to be in the days leading up to the anniversary, he can't imagine what would happen the day of.
Someone rapps intently at the door, only picking up pace when Bucky chooses to ignore it. By all means, he’s retired. That alone should entitle him to some fucking peace, but no.
He curses as he drags himself out of bed and pulls on a shirt, shuffling to the door. When he pulls it open, his eyes are probably murderous, but there is no one to catch the daggers. There is a simple brown cardboard box, labelled with his name.
Bucky, with a narrowed gaze, takes a step away from the box and instead heads into the open air. But there is not a soul, even as he stalks around the cabin and really stops to listen.
He comes back to the threshold and eyes the box. Using his foot, he swiftly kicks the lid off it and braces for an impact that doesn’t come.
There are shirts. And a mug. He frowns, kneeling down to shuffle through the contents, only to find bits and pieces of things he just…left behind when he left the compound.
Pictures he never really got framed. Socks with torn toes. Sweatpants. Laptop.
And there’s a tiny box. His chest twists the second he lays eyes on it so much that he thinks he’s been injured.
There’s a ring in there. Not really even an engagement ring, since you were gone before he had a chance.
Just a ring. But it’s enough to make him suddenly feel the weight of the air around him and he’s forced to take a seat right there on the steps. There’s nothing else in there of you, just old mission reports that mention your active involvement. Maybe if the smell of cardboard hadn’t permeated through the fabric of his shirts, he’d have traces of your scent.
Fragmented parts of his life, like snapshots of his history, running through his mind like an old film. It makes him question, for a second, if death was finally catching up to him.
Well, it was late. He’d been kept waiting for years.
_____________
The day itself is grey and sullen. In crackles of electricity, he can almost feel Thor’s state of mind. He tries not to think that in a few years, you’d be gone for longer than he knew you.
He rounds up leaves as orange as mandarins and ties them together with the hairtie. He clears up the last bunch he’d left and takes a seat on the shore of the lake. Cloudless and barren. Chill.
He can sense the end of the battle is near– he sees Sam a lot less overhead, even his gun didn’t require as many re-stocks. His pace slows to match the few that are left around him, and he’s already wondering how he can finish this quicker to get to help with search and rescue.
But Bucky didn’t even have to be told. Mid-punch, something in the air shifts and a deep shiver runs up the curve of his spine.
Before he even straightens up the sky explodes from the early azure of dawn to a blinding white to a blood-curdling crimson. His body reacts faster than he does, because the speed at which his stomach drops is only rivalled by how fast he was sprinting to your last known location.
He yells names through open comms-- yours, Thor's, Sam's-- turning the corner and immediately feeling the full force of a blast shove him onto his back.
With a groan and the force of his left hand, he presses into his ears to stop the excruciating ringing. He feels someone pull him up– blue, red and white kevlar against bruised skin and he’s already pushing away.
“Sam, where–” he blinks furiously, trying to read what word’s Sam’s got on his mouth because his head is still spinning. “She–”
He hears something about Thor and building and searching and forces himself to look at the force of a multistory highrise that’s collapsed into rubble on the street.
Something about impaled and sacrificed and he feels like vomiting violently, shoving Sam aside to stumble through the dust and smoke, teeth clamping down on his heart in his mouth.
Thoughts of you waiting under rocks, choking while fly ash turned your lungs to rock, suffocating. Every second of his incompetence is a second you spend wasting away where he couldn't find you.
It takes hours for Thor to give up searching through the rubble. It takes Bucky days.
It took a few seconds for the sky to turn red. It took weeks to turn from crimson to the ghost of blue it still remains.
God of the Night Sky and A Man Too Slow.
Your body is never found, and Bucky never forgives himself. It takes a whole month to be able to look at the night. Some days he hides his face from the moon, afraid of wrath.
____________
When Bucky gets the call, he isn’t exactly sure how to respond. One, because he didn’t even know you had his number memorised and two, he’s not sure how you’ve allowed yourself to get arrested. But it’s 2am and he’s on his motorcycle, on the way to the police station, still entirely confused about what exactly was going on.
“That’s him.” You point, jumping up from behind the bars.
You look lovely– someone’s gotten you out of the battle armour he usually sees you in, and into something that passes as authentically Earth-like.
He makes a mental comment to tell you, but to still be discreet about it. He's not really sure where the both of you stand these days. You've got him agreeing to braids in his hair like a viking, and sitting next to him during team nights. He's got you reading the entirety of Lord of the Rings and going to museums with him to steal back his belongings. But he's not really sure.
Bucky’s eyebrow twitches at the fact that they’ve got you locked up, but you look entirely unfazed like it’s a new restaurant or escape room you’re checking out. Excited, even.
"Hey,” he says calmly to whoever wants to listen, “what the fuck?”
The grin you give him is sheepish and he already kinda wants to laugh, but he fights back a smile.
“Broke two tables at the bar two blocks down,” the officer replies. “Looks like she was going for a third.”
“I promise, I did not mean to,” you swear to him. “I did not realise your furniture would be so weak.”
Bucky looks at the officer wearily. “Had t’lock her up for that?”
Whatever the officer was expecting, it was not Bucky's lack of respect for the law or private property.
“Well– superpowers– we’re not really sure–” he stammers.
You watch the man curiously, while Bucky's eyes flicker over to you. He knows you could bend the bars of the jail cell and walk right out, so indulging them was clearly a choice.
“I’m an Avenger, I’ll take it from here,” he interrupts, making his way over to you.
“I’m gonna need to see some ID–”
“Google it,” he bites back, before turning to you. “Y’okay?”
“I’m great,” you reply, full of life as if it wasn’t the middle of the fucking night. “It was a lot of fun.”
“How’d you know my number?” He mentions for the guard to unlock the gate, ignoring the swelling in his stupid chest.
“We are friends, are we not?” you ask, a bit confused.
Bucky can't figure out if he's surprised or disappointed- a good mix of both, perhaps. He's glad you consider him a friend, but something in him aches dully. He positively despises it and how often it's been creeping up on him whenever he sees you around the compound. He was a 100 years old, not some lovesick fuckin' teenager.
“Yeah. We are,” he agrees, turning to glare at the officer who was holding up his phone, eyes darting between it and Bucky’s face. “Could y’move faster? It’s late.”
The guy hurriedly unlocks it and you step out, stretching your arms over your head before waving goodbye to the guy and sauntering off. He watches you go for a second before pressing back a small smile.
“The bar-”
“Tell them to get stronger tables,” Bucky calls from over his shoulder, not even waiting for a reaction. “Send the paperwork to the Avengers office, and put the bail on the tab.”
He finds you outside, arms crossed over your chest while you wait for him.
“Thank you.” You give him a smile. “I forgot that it would be late for you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he waves off. “Wild night, huh?”
He had heard that some of the agents who had shifted here recently were checking out the hubs around town, but he had no idea that you’d be with them. It made sense in hindsight. More often than not, you were seeking recommendations and guides on how to learn what it was like here.
“I’ve seen worse.” Your eyes shine, and for a second he thinks that they even glimmer like starlight. “I did not realise breaking tables would be such an issue.”
“Yeah, we tend to be possessive over stuff,” he scratches his neck, almost embarrassed for his kind. “Coulda kept the cops out of it, don’t know why they had to go through all this.”
“I will have them replaced. Ours will not break, they’re made for Asgardian parties after victories in battle.”
He nods slowly and wonders if a crane would be enough to lift the table into the joint. It was nearly 3am, and he was out here with you in front of a police station, and he can't stop his stomach from fluttering. He wants to punch himself.
“Are you hungry?” you ask suddenly.
Bucky’s head tilts. He definitely had dinner….maybe. Half a leftover burrito and an apple.
“I’m starving,” you add. “I saw this place along the way here–”
Not to rub it in, but Bucky Barnes, smooth player and charmer extraordinaire, blanks. He's about sixty years off his game, and sure, he thinks you’re real pretty and that maybe he’s always wanted to know what it’d be like to buy you dinner and maybe hold your hand? If you were good with that? Maybe even–
“Like a date?” he blurts out and immediately wrings his fingers.
You falter and he wishes he was never born. “A date?”
“Like– getting dinner together,” he tries to remedy. “Breakfast. What time is it?”
“Yes, that is what I asked.” Your head cocks to the side to match his in confusion.
“No, like– like different. Not just dinner– yeah, dinner, but more–” Christ alive, he wishes he could run into traffic, but the road was deserted.
You wait for him to explain a little better where he was trying to get at. He can feel his ears burning bright.
He just shuts up instead.
“Dinner-breakfast, but more,” you test slowly.
“...more romantic?” he tries finally, defeated. “A date. Romantic date– I’m tryin' to ask you out here.”
"Oh.”
The world is very still. He thinks he will hand in his resignation tomorrow and disappear.
He had done his part, embarrassed his mother and every internet poll that deemed him the most suave and mysterious Avenger, and could now die in peace.
“A date it is, then. Breakfast-dinner, but more,” you reply.
Oh. He thinks he’s probably going to combust but you lean over to press a small kiss to his cheek, and now he’s sure he’s going to combust.
“Humans think too much,” you say simply.
"Think I'm more of an exception than the norm,” he mumbles.
"Aren't I lucky," you tease, and tap on the helmet. “Don’t suppose you’ve got an extra?”
Bucky’s eyes fly open, and the blankets get kicked off in a frenzy. His chest heaves as he sits up, rubbing furiously at his eyes.
He knew it was going to be bad, but he didn’t think it would be this fucking insidious.
He moves to wipe the sweat from his brow but comes back dry. The air is still cold even though he keeps the window shut, and he turns to it to see a thunderstorm taking place outside.
He watches the drops pelt against the window and trees shake violently for a moment, forcing himself to breathe as he rakes his hand through his hair.
Before it clicks, and his stomach drops.
“Fuck,” he hisses, not even bothering to throw on a jacket before bolting outside.
The path that he’s trodden a thousand times before looks entirely unknown, and had he not been reliant on his muscle memory he would have had no clue where he was heading. Inky blue trees, harsh and sharp, and he's sure he's gotten a few scratches on his face already as he sprints through the forest to the lake.
The boulder is there, the carving of your name remains but the hut of sticks and leaves-- it lays strewn across the land.
And the hair tie. The fucking hair tie.
He crawls miserably on his arms and knees, relying on the light from a clouded moon to guide him through every inch of grass. Eyes burning red, he continues to scour until morning breaks with twilight.
6 years he’s kept it with him. 6 years, and it’s gone with the rain.
He lets out a cry, fist driving into the earth, barely met with any resistance.
God of the Night, and Devil of Misery.
_______
The flowers had dried up and left him to rot with them. The lake was troubled on more days than not. He had a ring that was neither entirely yours, neither entirely his and no more than the traces of your skin in his memory.
So this time when the idea appears to him like a snake, crawling and inching up his back to tell him that he deserves it, you deserve it. It would solve everything.
He is no stronger than Eve. He had fallen from grace a long time ago. He shudders just as he did the first time, but now it felt like more reprieve.
_____________
“James,” it greets, hollow like a windchime.
His voice comes out more gruffer than he expects from months of unuse, “Got a minute?”
The light retreats further into the house, away from him. He watches it fade as it travels, unsure of what to do until it pauses, hovering in one spot.
It waits for him, he realises. He slips the beanie off his head and into his pocket, before hesitantly taking a step into the cabin. The floorboards creak under the weight of him the way his own used to months ago. Now they were well-worn and all the corners that made the most noise were identified and memorised. The house and its resident both stayed silent.
Bucky finds Wanda with her eyes closed, palms pressed into her knees as she sits midair, body levitating like she was held up by a marionette.
The room is lit dimly, the only light enough to see Wanda and he understands that the woman he met years ago and the one in front of him now were not the same. Even without his serum, he has a feeling the hair on his body would be standing up, adrenaline replacing desperation and fingers bound tightly into a fist. But even with his senses on high alert, Bucky finds it hard to find a reason to care.
“You found me.”
They gave him back his laptop. He knew the Avengers had eyes on her– but only because she was allowing them.
“What brings you here?” she asks, eyes still closed.
“I need a favour,” Bucky replies, voice unnaturally strong.
“Most do,” she hums, bones cracking when her head creaks to the side. “What is it that you want, James?”
“Got a feeling you already know,” he replies.
“Humour me.”
Bucky’s eyes burn the more he continues to stare. He feels sweat trickle down his back in a clean line. The room felt like it was closing in on him with every pulse of light, crawling into his skin and scraping up and down his bones until–
“I want to bring her back from the dead.”
Wanda’s eyes stay shut but a sick, twisted sort of smile works at the corner of her mouth. “Who?”
“You know who,” he swallows thickly.
Wanda straightens her head till she is sitting pin straight again, eerily firm as if her spine had been replaced with a rod.
“It has been months. Nature would not have been kind to her.”
“But it’s possible,” he says– asks, really.
“Anything is,” Wanda tuts. “But all that time would have eroded away at her.”
“We never found the body." He hates how his voice quivers for a second. “And she’s not from this Earth. That’s gotta count for something.”
“Depends.”
“Can you do it?”
“I can.”
Bucky feels relief flood into his system, an ecstatic sort of euphoria that has his heart lead–
“But I won't.”
And it goes back to how it was. Cold. Bitter. Was this some sick fucking joke?
“Why?” His voice drops an octave.
“Time will heal you. Getting in the way of that is only harmful to you.”
Real fuckin’ rich coming from you, he wants to scream.
“I tell you this because I know from experience.” It’s almost as if she reads his mind. Probably does. “Bringing someone back from the dead is not what you think it is.”
“I’ll handle it. Whatever it is.”
“Can you?”
Bucky wavers, brows furrowing. “Yes.”
Wanda hums, the same smile from before returning to her face. “Your spirit is admirable. But I’m afraid I can’t grant you this wish.”
Bucky feels white hot inside, and like his world crumbles into a dark heaving mess. “Wanda–”
“It’s for your own good, James.” If he wasn’t so full of rage he’d maybe hear the fondness that hid behind a few of her words.
“How would you know?” he snaps. “Vision wasn’t human–”
Wanda’s eyes snap open. Bucky is forcefully shoved a step back, arm jumping up in front of him in a second. For the first time he notices that the light wasn’t shining on Wanda– it was coming from her. Crimson red and pulsating as fast as the blood raced through her veins.
“You think Vision was the first time I’ve lost someone?” Her voice is cold. “You met him, James. You knew his name.”
Bucky’s grown to carry guilt on his back like Atlas. A little bit more is hardly a burden. “This– it’s going to be different,” he says. “She’s not a mutant, she’s a God, Wanda–”
“So you think you can match up to that by playing one?” Wanda’s voice raises. “You don’t get to pick who stays dead. You don’t get to choose. I didn’t. None of us did.”
“I wasn’t there when she died. If I was, then maybe–”
“That doesn’t mean anything. I cannot give you this favour.”
“Then consider it repayment. Of a debt,” he finally exclaims. “You said it. You owed me one. I’m cashin’ it in.”
Days of starvation just so that the kids could eat. If his handlers knew, they’d make him kill them with his bare hands. He gladly accepts fifteen more broken bones just so that the twins are kept together, and even when he goes back under, the sight of their big eyes, too big for their faces, staring at him haunts him in his nightmare.
“I just want another chance.” Bucky’s stare is strong, voice steady. “I’m tired of praying. I’m sick of it. I’ve been begging my whole life for a second chance at everything. You think I want to be here? That I get to be the one that’s still alive?”
The glow around Wanda looks like it should burn her. All consuming and vicious, like blood splattered on a wall.
“Please,” his voice reduces to the strength of a child. “Just try. That’s all I’m askin’.”
Bucky watches as the light slowly dims to a silhouette, leaving him blinking back the burn on his iris. He loosens his fist, knowing later that his fingernails probably broke through the skin of his palm.
Wanda’s chest rises and falls.
She closes her eyes. “Leave.”
He wordlessly turns on his heel. It was stupid of him to hope, he supposes.
______________
Autumn dies for December to grow, and he starts staying inside more than he already does. Snowfall covers the roof and the treetops. He swaps eggs for soup and makes batches large enough to last the whole day. The ground freezes over, and he looks for ways to keep his self-sustaining system going, but trips to town become more frequent.
Sam visits once more, and brings some more things with him this time. Books, a journal, some old box sets of shows. Bucky nods along to the conversation, asks after his family and when the time comes, rejects another offer to come to spend Christmas at the compound.
He accepts Sam’s flowers with more grace than the last time. The door closes, and he leaves it by the couch.
__________
He attempts to rebuild it. Pulls together some stronger branches and heavier stones. A new memorial lays together half-heartedly. Dejected. A little miserable looking.
He stares at it a little too long before one swoop of his arm cracks it in half and leaves it strewn across the grass.
Bucky doesn't try again.
__________
“Did you come up with the constellations?”
It's a stupid question, but he's always curious about you.
“Hm,” you reply at first. “Not in the sense that you’d think.”
Bucky turns away from looking into the abyss and towards you. His flesh hand continues to trace shapes into your skin as your neck rests on his bicep.
“I didn’t place them in a way that was meant to be drawn,” you reply. “My mother used to tell me when I was a child that the spirits of those I cherished would live on through parts of our creations. For others, it would be through groves of orchards, or rain that corrode caves into mountains.”
Bucky watches the fingers of your free hand dance nimbly, while the other stays tucked between the both of you.
“I was young when I realised that certain lights were brighter when I felt too much for someone. Pain, joy, rage,” you continue, fingertips pointing upwards, “Those stars, satellites– whatever you wanted to call them– they were the ties I had to those I loved. So sometimes, I would move them with me so that every time I looked up, I would see that I had company.”
He tears his eyes away from you and towards where you were gesturing. It’s subtle at first, but then he sees– stars moving faster than they should, darting all around the canvas of the night like runaway splotches.
“Over time, those on earth noticed patterns and called them constellations. I’ve always seen it as my family,” you say, gently dragging a barely lit star from the corner of his eye towards the centre.
“That’s for Thor. Sif.” You take turns to point. “Loki. Fandrall. Hogun. My parents.”
Each seems to glow a little brighter as you call out their name. “There’s one for you, as well.” Your finger drops, finding its way back to comfort on his chest.
Bucky’s eyebrows raise.
“You’ll have to see for yourself which one it is.” You leave a kiss on his jawline, and he instinctively tugs you a bit closer. “It won’t be any fun if I tell you.”
He doesn’t need to ask. There’s one slightly to your left, that’s glowing a little brighter tonight than the rest. His chest swells, and there's a profound sort of speechlessness that engulfs him. He never really knows what to say around you anyway.
“Really fuckin’ love you, you know that?” he mumbles into your the skin of your temples.
“I’ve got a clue or two.” You laugh and along with you, so does the sky.
___________
Bucky eyes fly open, fingers digging deep into the pillow. Not because of the way his brain was choosing to torture him again.
But the fact that the fucking person from before was back at his door, even though it was the middle of the fucking night.
He lets the first three knocks go unanswered but by the fifth one, he’s ready to unleash the force of the shitty month he’s had into whoever was here to drop off the next box of fucking whatever.
He doesn’t even bother pulling on shoes or straightening out his clothes. Hair wild and untamed and fury in his eyes, he marches down the steps of the cabin with a select choice of words for SHIELD and their stupid protocols.
With enough force to pull the door from its hinges, he yanks the door open, eyes ablaze and mouth set in a scowl.
And the earth stops spinning.
The absolute wind gets knocked out of him and he’s scared to even blink because this has happened to him before. It’s happened, and his eyes have closed and it’s left and he can’t afford that again–
He freezes when a hand reaches out to touch his bicep. Because that has never happened before. He’s always woken up before this.
At the threshold of the cabin, he falls to his knees. His joints ache the same way they did in church all that time ago when his fury was masked with tears.
“Oh,” he whispers, kneeling before the essence of a God he thought abandoned him.
“Bucky?” you ask, confused and soft, hand reaching out to cup his cheek before lowering yourself to his height.
Bucky makes somewhere between a strangled noise and a strange laugh, head reeling.
“You’re back.” His hands fall at your waist lightly like he’s afraid to disrupt still water.
“What’s–” your sentence is interrupted when your eyes roll back into your head.
Moments later it goes limp, and his reflexes move faster than he can comprehend as he grabs you, body springing into action when his mind gives up on him.
He lets out a sigh of relief loud enough to be a sob, fervently holding up the dead weight and a rhythm returns to the stillness of the night, one he’d forgotten the sound of. If he was even the slightest bit aware, more than grateful, he would see the signs from then. His vibranium doesn’t warm when it meets the sliver of skin as he bunches up your shirt in his grip. It feels like he’s breathing in Antarctic air, not spring drafts.
“Thank you,” he whispers against your shoulder to whoever is listening. “Fuck– God, thank you.”
_______
"It's been a month."
"A week, and that's pushing it."
"You're pushing it," you mumble, tightening the straps of your armour, "I do not know how you live like this. Do you always just stare at the ceiling when you're bored?"
"Sometimes I like to switch it up. Look at the floor," Bucky adds gruffly, to a roll of your eyes. "Maybe the door on the days I'm feelin' real fancy."
"You will just let your TV lay that way? With half the screen missing?"
He shrugs half-heartedly. "Sports season's done. Got nothin' to watch."
"Hmm," you pause a second. "'No' to your offer then. You may take that as my formal reply."
"'No' to Thai takeout later?" Bucky squints out into the twilight through the window of the ammunition room. "Lebanese then?"
You raise your eyebrows, tightening the leather around your wrists. "Goodbye, Barnes."
"Bye," he replies, checking to see if his knives sat securely in his old tactical pants.
You send him a nod before you start striding towards the door. The jet had landed a while ago, still onloading agents and recruits from the compound.
Bucky's arm jets out to grab your elbow, pulling you back into him. He's well aware it's only because you let him.
"I'm kiddin'," Bucky laughs at the matching smile on your face. "I'll get it fixed. I'll fix it myself. Just marry me, please. I'm growin' old here, sweetheart. All this questioning's not good for my heart."
"You're already old. And we will talk about it when we get back," your fingers press gently into his chest, and he can feel your touch even through the bulletproof vest. "Your laws-"
"There's no law out there that says ex-enemies of the state and Gods can't marry. Even if there is, it'll be just another one I have to break."
Your eyes twinkle when you laugh. Bucky sees remnants of old cosmos in there, as he always has.
"We'll talk about it when we get back," you promise. "Be safe."
"Can't guarantee that."
"Try not to die, then."
"Always."
He can't remember a time when he wasn't the last one on the jet, owing to goodbyes like this. You never opted to join them, reaching the same way Thor does.
The night was uncharacteristically calm, especially since he knew that miles away you were about to step into another battle. But it's good. The night means you will be at your strongest, and that is what he hopes for.
Bucky allows a few seconds of silence to take you in, skin glowing even against harsh fluorescent lighting and a cool air of confidence around you. You raise an eyebrow at him, because this is far from the first time he has done this. He would never divulge why.
He takes a chance to press a quick kiss to your lips, humming. "I'll get the TV fixed when we're back."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, Barnes." You smile, thumb swiping across the dent in his nose, an imperfection in a sea of many. "Thai for dinner?"
"Lemme check my calendar." Bucky takes a step back, feeling his heart constrict in a way that he's gotten used to craving. "I may have an opening."
"Please, don't try too hard."
"I'll have my secretary get back to you."
You roll your eyes, fighting a smile. "I love you."
"So, that's a yes then?"
"Get on the plane, Bucky." You sigh. "You already know the answer."
"Love you more." He grins at you, bright and like he's never known sadness. "Catch you later."
____________
In the days that pass, he doesn’t know how to be.
His body leaves him no choice– staying up all night, waiting for Wanda to show up at the door, fingers burning to take it all back. He keeps the doors locked and windows shut, as if ageing wood would provide any sort of a barrier when it came to her will.
Bucky walks around in a trance, eyes glossy and body stiff like he isn’t sure how much of what he’s seeing is real.
Your body, housed in his old clothes, looks three seconds away from death. He keeps a bucket by the bed from when you cough up dust, the last remainder of old organs. He massages leg spasms, and muscle cramps from your neck.
He keeps a towel close by for the nausea and anything in between as your body fights off the shock of a rebirth. Allopathy is useless when you're a God either way, so he resorts to herbs and roots to alleviate as much as he can.
Your lungs struggle for air at night. He’s already awake, propping you up to make sure you’re breathing better. He rubs at your back in circles the same way he used to do for Steve and finally takes a breath when the wheezing subsidies.
He fervently tells you he loves you every time you slip back under, and wipes at your forehead with a wet cloth to ease the warmth. He’s met with coughing fits and clenched eyes.
Exactly one week from your return, a trip downstairs to gather more firewood for the room and Bucky falters to a stop near the kitchen.
There's a note pinned to the dining table with no indication as to how it got there.
The debt is repaid. This was by your will. Whatever happens next will be by hers.
Every hour, he watches rotting flesh, dissolved muscles and clotted blood crawl out of your mouth. He forces himself to watch. It was his choice after all.
Bringing you back from the dead was never going to be easy.
_________
A week later, the remains of your old body stop exhuming itself. Perspiration beads line your forehead, and he thinks the salt of sweat is your first act of creation.
Your breath steadies. Nights go smoother. He learns he can live off of two hours of sleep.
He toys with the idea of telling someone. Sam. Thor, even. But your lips are bluer than he’s ever seen, even more than when he’d introduced you to blueberry juice pops when the heat beat down on you both in July, and you’d kissed his red-stained ones.
The longer he stares at you, he dismisses the idea. Something in him says that beyond being something they could accept, they could actively bring a stop to what he was doing right now.
He couldn’t afford that. Not now, not ever; not when he’s let you down once before already. It’s a secret for now, then. For as long as it needs to be.
__________
In the days later your nervous system seems to be rewiring itself. The first time he sees you with your eyes open, the plates he’s holding clatter to the floor.
“Hey,” he whispers, fingers clutching the side of the bed, “Hey, honey. Can you hear me?”
But your eyes never meet his. He slowly follows your gaze to the closed window, eyes glassy and surrounded by strings of red.
He sees you mouth something, and desperate as he is, he never truly understands what it is before you’re gone again.
His exhale leaves staggering, head dipping to your arm as he clenches his eyes tight till he sees spots.
_____________
Bucky starts leaving the windows open. The ones in your room, at least, and only when he's there to keep watch.
It becomes a mission then. The next time you opened your eyes couldn’t be to the desolation he lived in for months. He looks for flowers. Vines. Anything to make the place look less dreary and miserable. He cleans the blinds, and dusts the paintings in the room.
The cells in your body seem to be working overtime– every day there is a little bit less that reminds him of where you came from. Scabs fall away faster than they grow, leaving unbroken skin.
He notices it late. There is only one wound that remains-- a red, jagged scar along your stomach. It looks angry. Heals slower than the rest of them. It is the only place Bucky sees specks of gold instead of bronze when you exert yourself too much.
__________
It takes a good amount of time. He should have anticipated it— the next time you awake, and the next few times after that are only when the sun chases beyond the horizon.
He drops to your side with questions of “can you hear me?” or “does something hurt?” but each time, something outside the widow holds your attention dear to its chest and unwilling to share.
The moon rays become an elixir more powerful than anything from this Earth. Light almost surrounds you like a cloak, sinking into your skin and drowning in your bones.
He stays up at night, massaging your arms and your temples, but you are still so cold to the touch he isn’t sure the blood is circulating at all. So he gets more firewood. Makes sure the house is warm all the fucking time.
Stagnant. Still. Some nights he thinks he can see you looking at him from the corner of your eye.
The second he turns, you lay unmoving as before.
________
He stands labouring over the stove. There's a batch of rich tomato soup, with bread toasting in a skillet nearby. He alternates between wiping down the bowl to serve you in, though you still haven’t eaten, and stirring the soup to stop it from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
He makes note that he still has to get more gauze from the town, and proper tools to sand down the chairs before he can even think of--
But something interrupts his to-do list. It's so soft, he thinks for a second he's imagining it. But the ladle he's holding clangs against the pot, and he abandons the bowls with such hurry that he wouldn't be surprised if it's in shards.
He races up the stairs, three at a time, his heart is thumping louder than the floorboards creaking.
It’s silent. He can hear his own arm whirring quietly.
He lets out a breath when he sees you haven’t changed positions since he last saw you, and wordlessly turns to head back downstairs to an over-bubbling cauldron of soup.
"Bucky?"
It’s almost like eternity whooshes past his ears when he realises that he wasn't imagining it.
“Hey.” He drops without a second thought to your bedside, knees scraping against the wood. “Hey. Hi sweetheart. What do you need?”
“Water,” your voice is hoarse and just above a whisper, but you’re looking at him.
You’re fucking looking at him, and your eyes are a share darker than he remembers them being.
He makes a grab for the jug by your bed and holds a full glass to your lips carefully, watching as water treacles in through chapped lips.
"How are you feelin’?" He hates how shaky his voice sounds, as if he wasn't prepared. As if he hadn’t been waiting.
It takes a second for you to form the word. "Tired."
His fingers brush against your cheek. "What can I do for you?"
You don’t respond, and he watches your chest rise and fall heavily again. You were asleep again.
He bites into his lower lip so hard he can taste the rust of his blood. Moonlight filters in through your curtain and he runs his thumb over the corner of your eye, placing a kiss on your forehead.
It was a start.
___________
Bucky grew up with siblings he outlasted and an absolute wildfire of a friend. It was safe to say the man had more patience than most.
The same conversation repeats three more times over the next few days, and he answers each time with as much tender refrain as the first, begging to know where he can help and what he can do.
“Tired” turns to “I’m tired” turns to “I’m just tired”, and with each he is as proud and hopeful as he was when you talked the first time.
You begin to eat finally, and he hopes his skills aren’t bad enough to send you to the other side again. Spoonfuls of soup. Bites of bread. A glass of water, and then two.
“Buck,” you rasp.
And he’s as ready as he was the previous day, with a gentle, “Tell me, sweetheart.”
You’ve already gotten a slice of bread into you today, and you’ve slept through the night. He’s considering this one of the best days you’ve had so far, and that alone is triumph enough to ease the anxiety that pervades him.
“I was dead.” But this was new.
Bucky blinks, not sure if he heard you right. Your eyebrows knitted together tells him he did.
“You were,” he confirms, not daring to breathe.
“But now…” you trail off, as if you were expecting to wake up that minute.
His Adam’s apple shifts up and down. “Things changed.”
“How?” you ask, eyebrows pulling together even tighter, and he worries it takes energy that could be used elsewhere.
The muscles in his jaw tighten anxiously. The floorboards press into his knees.
"You did something?" your voice comes back quietly.
His silence is enough of an answer.
"How long was I gone?"
"It’s been a while, honey," he replies, eyes never leaving yours.
Your head turns to face the ceiling, a deep exhale working its way through you. Bucky's eyes drift to the scar on your stomach, hidden under the fabric. Thorny and broken.
"Who knows?"
His gaze shifts back to your face, but you aren't looking at him.
"Only me," he says, voice unwittingly dropping before adding, "and Wanda."
"Wanda," you repeat quietly. "It was magic."
Something familiar sets into Bucky's chest. Heavy, pressing down on his throat and making the bile rise.
"I'll get you more water," he says, pausing briefly to look at you, but you continue to stare at the roof. "I'll be right back."
You don’t have a response for him. As he makes his way to the door, it follows like a shadow. He pauses by the frame to look at you once again, but your eyes have closed.
Bucky watches for a second, swallowing thickly. It feels all too similar to guilt.
__________
Bucky dedicates himself even more vigorously to the house. He finally takes out the cutlery, cleans it up the best he can and wipes down the table every single day. He spends the day collecting fruits for juices and vegetables for broth. Firewood. Making sure everything is sharp enough to use, and the traps he set up in his initial time here were still functional.
He checks to see if the trees can take the weight of the swing he’s hoping to fashion out of bark. How fast it would take to polish the porch chairs and flooring, and what exactly it would take to do that.
No matter how much he cleans, it isn’t enough to wipe the look on your face from where it was seared into his brain like hot iron.
A week later he's in the garden, digging up the ground to plant seeds. It's January, and it's still fucking freezing, but he's gonna fucking try anyway.
He's got a hold of seeds of poppy, marigold, daisies and who knows what else, and plenty of fucking time.
"You garden now?"
He looks up in surprise. You lean against the backdoor, no winter coat on even though it's freezing. It flashes in his mind that you look paler than you used to, and he wonders if that will go in time.
“I’ve always gardened,” Bucky defends weakly, and tries to keep his tone normal. “Just– not well.”
Arms crossed over your chest, you ask, “Has that changed?"
“Can’t say it has, sweetheart." He looks at the mess he's created on the ground. "'M tryin', though.”
The corner of your lip upturns into a faint smile. His stomach twists painfully.
"You're up," he says, a little too late. It came faster than he thought it would. Then again, you weren’t human. You didn’t always listen to the laws of nature.
"Y'feeling cold?" he adds quickly.
You shrug, pushing off from the door to slowly take a seat. Your legs dangle off the ledge of the porch, barefoot. Bucky waits for you to swing your legs like you always have but you stay still.
He dusts his hands on his jeans and stands, tugging his jacket off his shoulders and holding it out to you. "Can I?"
"Go on," you allow, and he drapes it around your shoulders, making sure it isn't likely to slip off before stepping back.
A draft blows past you both without either of you saying a word. Discarding the little shovel on the ground, Bucky chooses to take a seat beside you instead.
"You will feel cold, won't you?"
"I'll be fine, don't worry 'bout me," he reassures.
"Seems like you have it covered already," you say, making a motion to imitate the shape of his beard. "Mighty fine mane you've got there, James. You could give Odin a run for his money."
He gives a short chuckle, threading his hands through his hair that reaches down to his shoulders.
He’s finding it hard to formulate words. He couldn’t even tell if his mind was racing or entirely blank.
"You've got grey in your beard now," you observe. It sounds wistful. Sad even, and all of a sudden he’s left realising that he doesn't know how long it has been for you.
"Been a while since I got a haircut."
Christ, he was drier than a brick. His conversational skills and charm had deserted him along with the rest of his luck.
You lift your eyes from his beard to his face, scanning from his hairline down to his chin. "You look as handsome as you always have," you say and his heart jumps. "Just a bit..."
Sadder. Tired. Mistrusting.
"Older," you settle on.
He'd grown more wrinkles than he could count, and his skin didn't bounce back as much as it used to.
Beyond that, he smiled a lot less. He spent more time thinking than verbalising.
“You need help?” He hears you ask faintly, head gesturing to the patch of dug-up mud.
“You need to get rest,” Bucky shakes himself out of it. “I’ll get you some–”
“I’ve rested long enough, Buck,” you say assertively.
He wonders if you did. Bucky remembers what you told him of Asgardian funerals. How your body is set floating along a river, and your soul lifts towards the sky to rest. You never got to have that. He doesn’t even know if they sent an empty log along a cold river.
"Tomorrow?" he delays.
You look at him briefly before nodding.The ground stays untouched and the sky still greys. Bucky sees you take a few deep breaths, shuddering when a draft of wind blows by. He silently shrugs off his scarf too, and wraps it around your neck loosely.
You simply let him. Minutes pass in silence, and neither of you make any motion to move.
You bump your shoulder into his. "I see you haven't fixed the TV yet."
A swift exhale leaves him in the form of a laugh. He turns away so that you don't see how his eyes begin to burn.
"Sorry, honey," he croaks out, "I've been distracted."
The smile you give him is melancholic, and that's enough to dissolve his red eyes from a warning into tears.
_________
Bucky buys every single streaming platform available, and every channel available on cable.
That night he takes apart every single component of the television, wipes it down and puts it back together better than before. He only rests when it's 2am and the sound of late night commercials softly flood the living room.
__________
Bucky takes the guest bedroom, initially, a floor away from you to give you the space you need.
He then realises it's too far, it's too risky. Sheepishly, he shifts to the same room as you, but makes himself a place to sleep on the floor with blankets and a pillow.
You voice your protest, and even though he’s spent three years curled up beside your sleeping frame, he says his back could use the hard surface now.
He gets you clothes from town. Sweaters and socks, scarves. Things he knew you used to like and things he always promised he'd get if he had another chance. You take them with a small smile and a thanks. He sees you wear them around the house, and while they're exactly the size they should be, and the colours he knows you love.
There's a nagging feeling in him that they don't sit right. They don't look right. Still, you wear them on the days you can leave the bed. He shows you around the house. The good parts, at least, and pretends like that’s how he’s always lived even though he can tell you see right through his facade.
He’s there when you thrash around at night. Bucky's up before the minute is even over, at your side and gently calling your name till you jolt awake. He hands you glass after glass of chilled water, rubbing your back in circles till the wave passes. It’s entirely too reminiscent of what you used to do for him, and he hopes the familiarity would do you good.
Sometimes you tell him what you saw. Darkness enveloping you for hours, holding you close and sliding its vines over you, binding your limbs like rope before you're shoved into blinding light.
“Last I remember was the fight," you say one night, as he wipes the sweat from your forehead. "I cannot tell how much of it was real, it's--"
And you pause and struggle, and he's at a loss for words because you never have been. You've always known what to say. You've always had a thought you wanted to share.
"Thor told me a little bit," he offers quietly. "If you'd want, I'd tell ya."
You look at him, conflict raging behind drained irises. "I was fighting. I heard them say something about-- there was a building with civilians hiding."
"Yeah, there was," he confirms, voice tight.
"They wanted to-- do something to it." You close your eyes, brows furrowing in concentration. "I told Thor I would get them out before anything happens. We had done it so many times before."
"He said there was an explosion."
The sky explodes from the early azure of dawn to a blinding white to a blood-curdling crimson.
And Bucky was too slow to get you out.
"I don't remember that," you say and his eyebrows furrow. "I remember--"
Bucky watches you hesitate for a second before your hands nimbly move the fabric of your shirt slightly to reveal the outline of the scar, inhaling sharply.
"I wasn't careful enough. There were civilians I was getting out and someone from behind--"
It dawns in a slow realisation the reason why the scar hadn’t healed yet. Why it stood out from the others that littered your skin. Bucky had thought for this long that you'd died in a blaze, trapped under bricks and mortar. That you had been left suffocating because he hadn't been fast enough, that he wasn't good enough.
"I knew I would not be awake for long. I just wanted to get rid of as many of them as I could."
"The building came down." He swallows the rock in his throat. "We spent days searching through it."
"I think I was gone before the explosion happened."
It makes sense-- the sky shifted all too quickly that day. You were gone before he even had the chance. Your fate had already been sealed.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I should have been there.”
“I’m glad you weren’t. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”
"That's not–" his words come out in a rush, stumbling over each other, insistent. "If I was there--"
"There is no point in punishing yourself," you interrupt his spiral. "It was a choice I made. I would do it again. It was what had to be done."
He swallows thickly when he knows the conversation ends there.
__________
Some nights Bucky settles on pressing a kiss to your knuckles, and lingers there for a second longer than he should.
You turn to face him from your place on the bed, looking at him like you've known him for centuries. Some nights it feels like you have.
_________
Bucky builds you a swing. It's a little ridiculous, and it takes a whole week to do it.
But your face breaks into the biggest smile he's seen since you got here, and he can taste the sun on his tongue. The strange feeling in his stomach is alleviated for a moment, and replaced with something closer to pride.
You spend hours on it while he works on parts of the house. He makes sure you've got a blanket with you at all times, even though you’ve never once told him you feel cold.
You ask him questions about everything. Him, the world; like you’re trying to relearn what you’ve lost.
"How long ago did you buy this place?"
"Nearly two years ago," he replies, paintbrush in hand as he swipes up and down the deck. "Owners hadn't come here in a while and they wanted it off their hands quick, so I made an offer."
You hum, using the balls of your feet to swing yourself higher. "I have always wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this."
Bucky’s painting halts for a second as he fights a smile, but he doesn't respond. The squeaking of the swing stops. He looks over to you, only to find you already looking at him.
"Is this why you bought it?" you accuse.
Bucky returns to painting the wood, face turned away.
"You are far more of a hopeless romantic than I ever remember you being."
He scoffs out a laugh. "You'd'a run away."
"I wouldn’t have." You narrow your eyes. "I have had suitors in the past who've done far worse. You are far from the most embarrassing."
"You laughed when we kissed for the first time," he points out, amused.
Your jaw drops. "That was because I wasn't expecting it. You'd been courting me for months, I thought you were never going to move beyond that."
"I was tryin' t'be a gentleman," he defends. "I didn't know how they do it in Asgard."
"Well, for starters, they don't kiss someone after dropping tiramisu all over them."
He cringes, but it doesn't escape him that memories of the both of you feel like they're accompanied by a light this time, instead of dread. "Could you blame a fella for bein' nervous?"
"I do not know why, you had no reason to be."
He wants to ask if you've seen yourself before. He was damn near pissing himself whenever you got too close to him. The tiramisu was just collateral damage from when you chose to wipe cream smudged at the corner of his lip that night.
When he lifts his head to look at you, you're back to swinging. Back to your own world. A new one you seem to have constructed for yourself since you came back. Back then he was privy to all your thoughts, no matter how mundane they were.
Right before he goes back to painting the deck, his brain makes a small connection. It's a small detail, but one that holds a lot more weight the more he begins to notice.
Your back curves in on itself ever so slightly. No longer pin-straight. His grip on the brush grows a little tighter.
__________
February rolls around. Bucky's only managed to work up the courage to hold your hand occasionally when you go for walks.
Fingers laced in yours, he shows you parts of the woods he's discovered that stray from the main path. The shrubs that look like they're alight when the sunset catches them. The trees that have a hole right through the centre, like they've taken a bullet.
You keep him out longer and longer, and by now he’s run out of things to show you. He ends up repeating a lot, but you look glad each time, like you’re learning something new about him each day even though he’s dredged you through the same mud path at least thrice now.
He wants to think that it’s because you like having longer to hold his hand.
You listen intently, asking questions whenever you could. You let him know what parts you like better, and parts you’re glad he’s left behind, even if it was recent.
Bucky blushes from head to toe when you pick a flower and tuck it into his hair, and you smile it away with a swing of your hand.
"You get visitors?" Your mouth moves in tandem with your fingers that weave together a crown from stray leaves and blades of grass. You tell him, even though he remembers, that it was something you learnt from Sif growing up.
"Sam drops by every now 'n then."
"Do you visit them?" you ask, hands twisting deftly and with skill of someone who’s done this all too many times. "How has everyone been?"
Should he tell you he's been sequestered? That he dropped everything and disappeared overnight because the questions of 'are you fine?' and 'do you want to talk?' became as suffocating as a thick cloud of smoke.
"Last I heard, they were doin' alright." He hopes it's enough.
"I tried talking to Thor," you tell him casually, but it feels like a cold fist clamps down on his chest.
“And?”
“I couldn’t hear him,” you tell him, just as normally and he’s disgusted that he feels even the tiniest bit of relief. “I couldn’t hear Heimdall either. I know he’d respond if he could hear me, so I can only assume he hasn’t.”
“You’re sayin’ you’re not able to talk to them?” His voice sounds small.
“I believe I lost the ability to communicate with them,” you tell him, tying the last bit of grass together. “I don’t think there is precedence for when someone comes back from the dead.”
You hand him the crown, and Bucky doesn't dare to meet your eyes. It’s too small for him. It’s closer to the size for a child.
"'M sorry, honey," he mumbles. It returns to his stomach. The sick, gnawing feeling that he’s tried to obtain salvation for.
"I still have you,” you tell him, “But you were here for this long without anyone. It must have been lonely.”
Truth be told, he never really noticed. It almost seems like he’s forgotten how it felt.
"Hasn't been for a while, now." He squeezes your hand.
"I don't like the idea of you staying here alone.” Your eyes scan his face. "You deserve to be around others."
Bucky doesn't know what it is about the way you say it-- like you're not entirely sure you're here either. Like you aren't real.
He calls your name, unsure, scared even. You answer with a hum.
"Are you okay with being here?" It’s too late to be asking this.
Your face pulls together thoughtfully, but he can't decipher what you're thinking.
"I like spending time with you. Always."
Your head leans on his shoulder, and you resume the tune you’re humming. Bucky tries not to think about the fact that you haven't quite answered his question.
_________
He wakes up on the ground again, not to your muffled groans or bed sheets being thrown to the ground.
You're not in bed. The window is open. There's scattering downstairs, and it's followed by a strange scent, and for a second he panics.
He scrambles down the stairs, mind already conjuring pictures and images so vile and ghastly--
But all he sees is you in his biggest shirt, one that you yourself once got him as a joke for a punchline he can’t really remember right now.
And you're surrounded by broken pans, bent forks and an entirely indiscernible charred mass on the bottom of a skillet.
"I tried to cook," you admit, "like on TLC."
"And you broke the pan?" he asks, a little stunned, a lot more in love.
"I did not realise your cookware would be so weak." You try so desperately to hide a smile. "Tried to scrape it off using the fork."
He looks at the misshapen piece of cutlery.
"And what's that?" He slowly makes his way into the kitchen towards you.
"The remnants of a frittata." You hold it out to him.
Bucky takes the handleless skillet from you and looks at the ashes.
"What do you think?" you ask.
Bucky holds it back out to you. "Could use a few more minutes on the stove."
The smile you try to hold back breaks into laughter and his face lights up in surprise. It's the first time since you've gotten here, and the first time in years since he's been graced with the sound.
He bites his lip when you take it back from him, all while still giggling, like he doesn't quite believe his ears.
"I do believe I would fare better at toas-- oof."
Bucky pulls you into his chest, arms wrapping around you like a weighted blanket. The pan drops to the counter as his head falls to your shoulders.
"I missed you so fuckin' much," he utters desperately into your neck, clenching his eyes closed so tight it hurts.
"I missed you too," you say softly, arms circling his waist, pulling him closer.
___________
The days start to get warmer. Your skin still stays cool to the touch. It's something he's getting used to. For years he was used to waking up at night to turn down the thermostat, just so that he could stay under the covers with you without burning up.
But while good days increase, there are the ones you spend too feverish to get out of bed. You sleep the whole day, only waking when he brings you food.
March fades the dark circles around your eyes as much as it can, but they never truly go. The scar on your stomach doesn't heal beyond a certain point, and is always ready to turn garish and violent on days you can't get your head to lift.
Bucky wonders if you’ll ever get better.
Fevers break when the mornings do. You tell him you dream of the same thing over and over. Darkness, holding onto you with the same tenacity as a mother stops a child from running into a flame.
You walk with your shoulders drooped, and always some sleep in your smile. Sometimes he hears you call for your parents, who he knows haven't been around for a few hundred years. He hears Thor's name, and Loki's during nights that are more peaceful.
On days that are good, you spend time helping with the garden and for once, the flowers start growing. Tree bark he can't break into two, you manage with one hand. You watch shows together on the couch, and he massages your head when it's in his lap.
And finally, Bucky shows you the lake when it thaws over. Crystal clear waters let you peer at the little plants growing on the bottom, and the sunlight glows in the ripples.
You notice the engraving on the boulder before he has the chance to divert your attention. When you ask, he tells you about the little memorial and the rain and the loss of the hair tie.
Your hand squeezes his a bit tighter. He thinks no memorial can hold a candle to that.
You look at your reflection in the water a lot. Bucky sits beside you, skipping stones to see how far it can go, like he did in the harbour as a kid. Steve always used to win, no matter how much Bucky tried.
"There was a lake by my school when I was child," you tell him. "When I was mad, I used to skip class to go sit there for hours."
“What made you mad?” He chuckles.
“A lot of things. I had too much energy to just sit there, and that was ‘unbecoming of a future leader of Asgard’.” Your face pulls into one of distaste. “I always thought there was more to learn about the world than what their books contained.”
Bucky collects a few pebbles from around him. "Did the lake make you feel better?"
"Always." You take a stone from him to skip across the surface. "Sometimes my friends used to join. Our elders said the water had the ability to remember. Loki used to make faces, and it would always linger for a few seconds before it disappeared. Even after we thought he was gone, I'd see his face there."
Bucky stays quiet, nodding at points to let you know he was listening.
"I used to see younger versions of myself sometimes," you continue, voice distant. "It always surprised me. I thought I used to know what I looked like. It was different each time."
You inch towards the shoreline, leaning forward on your knees. The clear water looks like an open sky underneath you. "I look different now, too," you say. "But I can't remember what I used to look like."
Bucky discards his stones to come join you, leaning down to where you were. The face staring back at him pulls a sick, twisted feeling in his gut. Deep in him, he knows what you're talking about extends beyond immediate impressions. Centuries of being intertwined with the universe had always given you lines and traces that transcended your physical appearance.
You have always felt like the God of the Night.
Now you have been to the other side and returned, seen things others haven't and still kept intact. While he doesn't have the courage to admit it, he knows in his blood what you feel like.
He's scheduled an appointment with him many times, but always just missed it.
Now, you feel closer to the God of Death.
"You've always been beautiful. Still are." It's a band aid on a gaping, festering wound.
Even still, you look at him with a smile. "So are you."
Bucky makes the mistake of looking at his visage in the water, and immediately recoils.
"Christ," he grunts at the difference between the both of you. "What a fuckin' mess."
"Oh, it isn't that bad," you laugh, watching him contort his face.
"Easy for you to say, you look stunning." He points to your reflection. "I look like I was raised by wolves."
"You just need a shave," you hum.
"I need a new face."
You leave aside his last comment to propose something entirely new instead, "I could do that for you."
"What? Give me a new face?" he asks and you give him a pointed look. "Oh. Shave my beard?"
"Same thing, no?"
He supposes so. "Alright," he agrees, with a certainty reserved for no one else.
A small smile appears on your face, even though you aren't really looking at him.
Bucky watches you lean forward. Your fingers dip into the water, disturbing the reflection.
_____
Late evening finds you settled on the counter, armed and ready. "Lot of trust you're putting in me."
"I'd trust you with anything," he says, looking in the mirror to check once again that foam covers every inch of hair on his jaw. "You know this."
"Still," you note, watching him tilt his chin up. "I could do this with a dagger, if you'd like."
"This works fine, thanks."
You let out a laugh, and he finally steps in front of you, satisfied with his part. You swish the razor into water once again just in case, before leaning forward.
The first swipe goes agonisingly slow. Bucky watches your face screw up in concentration as you scrape down his left cheek.
You pull back and make a face. He raises his eyebrow in question.
"You are too far away," you declare, wrapping an arm around his bicep and tugging him closer.
Your legs wrap around his waist to keep him in place, locking behind his back. His breath hitches in his throat the proximity but you appear entirely unfazed, washing the razor again.
"Are you okay?" you ask, keeping one hand on his neck for balance as you get a much better go at his face.
"Yep," he thinks he says. It may just have been a sound.
You could have spent hours there for all he cares. He's too focused on the pressure of your legs on the small of his back and the way he's basically melted into your hand.
"Your eyes have always been my favourite feature," you tell him, blade carefully running down the curve of his jaw. "When you smile hard, there are these lines in the corner. It's like you can't handle being that happy."
He can't tear his sight from you, and from the fact that this is the closest you’ve been in years. You may as well have been telling him utter nonsense, and he'd still find it hard to control his breathing.
"But I have a soft spot for this." You lightly tap the bridge of his nose. He knows immediately what you're talking about. "I will never forget how stupid you were. Throwing yourself in front of danger like that."
"Couldn't let that guy touch you," his voice comes out an octave lower than what it was. "I'd gladly take a few more punches."
"That's why they stopped pairing us up on missions." The corner of your lip upturns, and you swish the razor around in water again. "You were being reckless."
"I'd do it again."
"One scar is enough." You tilt his jaw to see if you'd gotten everything. "I don't enjoy you getting hurt on my account."
Bucky exhales deeply when you get started on the other side. His hands itch to hold your waist, pull you closer like it’s been carved into the strands of his being, but they stay by his side.
"I tried for so long after you were gone," he tells you instead, to gain a sense of control. "I went to the therapist. I tried talkin' about it. No one got it. It was the same thing over, and over."
How do you explain that it wasn't simply a person. He thought that that was where it ended-- everything in his life had finally culminated. And that was taken too.
"Went back to the roof a month after everything happened," he continues, studying your reaction. "It was s'ppsed to be a clear night. There was nothing in the sky. I couldn't see the constellations. I couldn't see your family-- I couldn't see you."
You listen intently, but never stop working at him. The longer you spent there, the more of his old face revealed itself to you. Worn, and aged a thousand years in a few months, but it was still the still face you swore to love and cherish for aeons.
"They took all your stuff. Said it belonged to Asgard, they couldn't keep it here. Thor went off grid. All I had was pictures of us and the hair tie you gave me."
You clean the razor off in water, eyebrows furrowing at the information.
"It felt like you were never here. Like I'd just made you up all those years." You can hear the faint trembling in his voice. "But I had memories of you in all these places-- and I couldn't stay. It was easier to move here and start again."
Looking back at him, you realise you've already finished. There was nothing left on his face to clear.
"Was it hard?" you ask finally, letting go of the razor in the water.
He looks at you, and you know he's struggling to form the right words. He looked like he wanted to scream, rip the hair out of his scalp, punch a hole through the mirror.
"More than anything.” His voice comes out raw and peeling.
Bucky watches you look at him for a long moment, and he wonders if he’s said too much too soon.
But instead you kiss him.
His arms find its way back home around your waist, and he feels you sigh against his mouth before your body relaxes, tilting your head to deepen it.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there,” you breathe, forehead leaning against his.
"Don't," he begs.
You search his eyes for any kind of a message.
He kisses you harder, pulling you flush against him.
__________
Bucky moves into your bed after you threaten him well and good, and he knows you intend to keep your promises.
For the first time since he can remember, he keeps the windows open throughout the night and throughout the day.
It’s foolish, to think he was invincible. That what you had had finally cemented itself as final.
You both stay in as long as you want. There is no hurry, nothing to get to. You talk a lot more. You begin to tell him sometimes at night that you see glimpses of what seemed like beyond the end.
Gold. Blood of ichor. Warriors fallen in battle go to Valhalla. Trees that kissed the skies, and valleys so green it hurt. Sometimes, in the corner of your eyes, you could see those you'd lost over the years waiting for you, hand outstretched.
No matter how hard he tries, Bucky doesn’t seem to get it. Every time he thought he was dead, there was only jet black silence and crushing pain. Then again, he never truly died.
But he isn’t ignorant. Fevers and fatigue that initially lasted a day, now knock you out for a week. There are times you throw up more than you've eaten, and the dark circles look like abysses.
He worries to the point of his stomach churning. You look like you don't have the energy to be here, even though you kiss him like you do.
Bucky runs his hands over your scalp and tells you stories of his childhood. What he felt when you moved in with him, how anxiety made space for comfort. He reads you tales from other mythologies and marks the similarities in the stories you've told him over the years.
Each time you come around your smile gets more tired. Your shoulders grow heavier and your skin loses colour.
You still cook breakfast together. You still watch TLC together to figure out the culture on earth because even after all this while, you still maintain that's the best way to do it.
Things could still be good. But more often than not, Bucky wonders if he’s unknowingly surrendered you to a life you do not wish to live.
_______
"Sweetheart?"
You continue to drag your finger through the water, oblivious to what he's saying.
He calls your name, and there's still no response. April sees this happening more often, and Bucky's learnt that no matter what he does, it only seems to worsen.
He touches your shoulder lightly and you almost jump.
"It's getting late. Wanna head back?" he asks, because you’ve skipped out on lunch to stay by the shore the whole day. It seems like it’s the only place you want to be.
"Yeah." You give him a small smile, wiping your hands on your pants.
"Want a hand?" he asks, holding out his.
You grab it, and pull yourself up, giving him a small peck on the lips along the way.
It feels comically normal. He wants to pretend that it is.
"Pasta tonight?" you ask breezily, slipping your hand into his.
Your fingers are ice cold to the touch. He forces back a shudder.
"Anything you want," he promises.
__________
He catches you humming as you water the plants, when you walk with him, while you read from the end of the bed.
It's the song of my people, you tell him. They used to sing it when everyone was together.
He listens to the tune and tries to commit it to memory, but it changes far too often.
May catches you staring a lot more often. At walls. The trees. The lake is the worst.
On what would have been the fifth anniversary of the both of you being together, he brings you a cake. The both of you share it over a glass of wine, even though it clashes terribly and leaves an aftertaste.
You laugh harder than you have in the last few weeks and he gets to feel triumphant for an evening.
You chase the frosting on his lips with a searing kiss, and that's that.
“What do you suppose it means?” you ask later that night, arm wrapped around his middle.
“What?” he mumbles, drowsy from a full stomach and good time.
“That I got a second chance and others didn’t?” your voice sounds distant.
Bucky is suddenly very awake.
“It couldn’t be that they weren’t as loved," you continue. "So then what made me different?"
He doesn’t have an answer.
He rolls over to look at you. But you are staring at the ceiling once again.
_________
His unwavering faith that he can learn to live with it feels like it’s eroding.
Death changes everyone. He knows that before Steve left a few years ago, he wasn't the same Brooklyn-born spitfire. Steve's died a dozen or so times. He was reborn into a different soul each time.
Spring bounds towards you with warmth and life. The grass is greener, and Bucky's learnt there's more to life than just casseroles and toast.
You bring him more flowers to tuck into his hair. He wears them dutifully, and then learns to press them in between pages of books you both buy from old bookshops.
You give him wider smiles. You talk a lot less.
Bucky learns that silence doesn't have to be filled. He's loved you in the winter, and he loves you in spring.
But there is always a tension simmering under the surface, just out of reach, like the sky reflecting in the lake.
Sometimes you say things that he can't quite make sense of. Sometimes it's a lot more obvious, and the same feeling of guilt returns to his chest and flowers under his ribs.
So he asks you one day. You're on the couch, head in his lap while he reads a book you've annotated the week before. The only disturbances are when he stops occasionally to ask you why you liked a line, or why you drew a heart next to another.
You're humming the tune he can’t catch.
There's nothing really wrong, but he knows. He can feel it in his marrow.
“Sweetheart," he calls gently.
You look up at him.
"Are you– are you happy?” And he leaves his heart, raw and unprotected on the line.
You don’t look surprised. Not entirely knowing either.
A beat passes before you open your mouth to speak.
“I like being here with you. I love you, I always have, and I will always love being here with you,” you choose your words carefully. “But I don’t know if I can feel that anymore. Happiness, I mean. Or sadness.”
Bucky keeps the book down. You don't lift your head from his lap.
“I feel like there’s a void where my body should be,” you continue in a chance to explain, “I feel like I'm made of air.”
“Are you feeling under the weather?” Bucky tries to find a rationalisation. Anything, that he can fix. That he can control.
You slight him a smile. “Not since the last bout.”
He doesn't know. He doesn't want to get it. He’s always felt that he was selfish, that that was ultimately what led to his punishments. This was a whole new level.
“I was born on Asgard. I have always felt like I was a part of the mud and the riverbed. They were a part of me as much as I was, them. I don’t know if that’s still…”
You pause, and Bucky feels time come to a standstill around him.
“I’ve been reborn here,” you continue. “I don’t feel like anything is mine. I don’t feel like… I am a part of something. Even the night.”
He knew. Though he knows in his dreams he can still feel traces of Brooklyn carved into his bones, it had jaded over time, been eroded by years of waking up in places he couldn't place.
You sit up to look at him. Your eyes have an intensity to it that even the universe couldn't mask.
“Do you really like who I am now?” you ask finally.
“I love all of you. Every one.” Ever changing, transient.
“How?” you ask softly. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
He swallows thickly and wills himself to ignore the chill creeping into his body. In truth there is so much he wants to say. He doesn't think that as a war-fractured man from the thirties who grew up in bloodshed will really have the sufficient words.
“I just do. Can’t help it.”
Even if you aren’t satisfied with his answer, he will never know it. He has known for a while now that he's been letting you down since the day he walked into Wanda's cabin.
You give him a slight smile. Lay your head back down on his lap. His book remains unread.
It felt like the beginning of the end.
It's a simple decision then. It would have been, for anyone who wasn’t born with a soul as corrupt as his.
One more week that is hard for you to get up from bed, turns into two. One more week that your face morphs into something he can’t quite recognise. He's never wanted to harm someone he loves, but he seems to do a fine job at it.
It's a simple decision, really. But simple didn't mean easy-- God knows he is anything but a saint.
When you see it finally, the fruits of a labour that took far too less time to manifest than justified the time he spent putting it off, the smile that appears on your face is blinding, he wonders how the sun even has the gall to shine.
“Thor,” you breathe out, only seconds before being engulfed in the most bone-crushing hug you’ve ever received.
Bucky watches from the sidelines, fingers wringing and entirely ready to be smithed to ashes.
“I came as soon as I heard,” he breathes into your shoulder. "I cannot believe this."
You pull back, and standing next to Thor gives Bucky a new frame of reference. One that isn't dependent on how you looked the week prior. He doesn't know how it slipped past him, how he hadn't noticed that you looked so different.
“You look wonderful." You grin at the behemoth of a man. "Your hair has grown out once more."
"They can try cutting it off my dead body," he replies defiantly, arms clasping at your shoulders to keep enough distance to study you from head to toe. "You'll have to give me a second. I didn't think this would be true, when Heimdall gave me James' message."
You look over at Bucky whose lips pull together in a tight line.
He looks embarrassed. Unsure. Afraid. Guilty, and prepared to be berated for how long it took him.
"It's true," you reply instead, giving him a smile. "Here, in the flesh."
Thor squeezes your shoulder once more, and laughs the same laugh he's always had around you. Loud, boisterous and entirely free.
"The others will be thrilled. Sif, Hogun-- you have no idea how the past two years have been. There is so much to catch you up on."
Bucky knows. The fact that you're standing there today is living proof that he knows so well.
“I cannot wait to meet them." The corner of your lips upturn wider at his enthusiasm. "I've missed them terribly."
"We did not get to give you a proper farewell. Your welcome back will be a thousand times better," Thor says brightly. "We can return as soon as you say the word."
You look to Bucky, not for permission, but as a question he's known has been awaiting him a long time.
"Ready?" you ask softly.
He knows you didn't have to ask. That if you'd left him there and never returned, he'd deserve it and worse.
But you're you-- patient and kind. And he thinks that he can try to start redeeming himself.
__________
Turns out he wasn't wrong. Asgard really is too grand for a fella like him.
It is opulence-- gold and towering heights that bleed the love of its citizens and a history richer than words can contain.
Thor is smart. Aside from Heimdall, who greets you with the hug a father gives a child who's been away for too long, no one knows of your appearance until you are ready.
You get a few days in the tower to yourself, to breathe in the air that grew your lungs and touch the marble you've split your head open against in the past. The help are sworn to secrecy, and no one knows who Bucky is anyway except as the man who has been specifically allotted to the same room as you upon your request.
It doesn't take long for your face to pick up. Your skin comes alive with a vibrancy he didn't think he'd see again. You sleep sounder at night, and you eat more than you've had the appetite for in the last few months.
He trails behind you and Thor initially, not wanting to eavesdrop into conversations he has no place being a part of.
But you grab his hand, lace your fingers in his and tug him along as if to say that this is his home too.
He sees what you mean when you say that you are connected to the land. Clothes on Earth have never fit you right. Silks from Asgard decorate you like you are one in the same, like it flows from you.
_________
Reunions are a tearful affair. Lots of hugs are exchanged, punches to the shoulder, and kisses to various parts of your face.
“You have been alive for months, and we are just now learning of it,” Sif holds your hands in hers.
“It took me a while to recover.” You give her a small smile.
“We would have come as soon as you called,” she continues. “You did not have to heal alone.”
“I wasn’t alone.”
Eyes turn over to Bucky, and he’s suddenly very aware that the clothes he’s been given are too rich for him, too grand. He feels small, like they drown him out.
Despite what he’s saying, he feels as though he has deprived you. He knows that he has, and he has no one else to blame but himself.
“Thank you,” Sif says instead, taking him by surprise. “We will remember this.”
“Don’t mention it,” he replies weakly.
__________
It takes days to meet the closest of your friends, until they decide they had their fill. Bucky is slowly introduced to all of them. Boisterous and loud, most greet him with a wide appreciation. Others are less quick to warm, and he gives himself no room to blame them either.
Upon insistence, he joins you for your welcome back dinner, and gets a seat right beside you.
Your hand holds his the entire night, squeezing tighter when something makes you laugh, or when someone is particularly embarrassing.
When there is a lull in the conversation after hours, sly grins are exchanged.
"So, this is the one you raved on and on about."
His eyebrows quirk in amusement.
"I did not rave," you huff. "I simply informed you--"
"For hours. Days even,” they drag on. “A great warrior from earth with eyes that could rival storms--"
Bucky chokes on his wine. You award your friends with several curses and glares.
"Long hair past his shoulders. Oh, and arms to die for--"
You take in the way his face has gone red, all the way up to his ears. You laugh and grip his hand tightly with an unabashed shrug.
"I am only glad that that's all you remember," you joke.
He thinks he should be buried in the garden for his sanity.
_________
Walks around the castle become increasingly common at night. You are mostly left undisturbed, and you take the opportunity to show him everything you've ached to.
Where you've learnt, where you first scraped your knee. The first arrow you shot. Where your parents met. The first and last time you cried over a friend gone astray.
He can't fathom why he ever thought he wouldn't be ready to know this. As if knowing more about you would cement the fact that he was lesser than.
“You look ethereal,” Bucky tells you one night, honest and true.
You look at him, a bit taken aback. There was nothing particularly different about you this evening. In fact, you’d chosen to stay away from festivities today to lie around the gardens with him, citing a headache.
“I should have said yes earlier,” he continues. “You belong here. It shows.”
A laugh leaves you as an exhale. “It feels different.” You run your fingers through his hair. “I don’t know if it would be the same if I brought you here years ago.”
“Different how?” Bucky closes his eyes and revels in the feeling of your touch.
“I don’t know,” you tell him. “I am not sure it is what I remember it to be.”
You don’t say anymore. Bucky doesn’t ask.
He lays with you under a clear night sky, and your fingers deftly move the faint lights in the sky to mimic shapes of fishes and hunters.
He notices the sky here, too, has taken the same fate as it has on earth. Not as full as it could be, always just a little less bright.
He assumed it would change when you came back. He assumed it would change when you came to Asgard.
The sinking feeling in his stomach reminds him of what he already knows is going to come.
_____________
There are nights you are dragged off by your friends for things that don't include him.
You shoot him a sorry smile and he tells you to just go with steady reassurance.
Bucky takes to exploring. He's been given robes to blend in. They always fit in a way that's too soft.
He looks at statues erected, memorials in place for those who've given up their lives for a bigger cause. He spots your name in there as well, as if they've not yet entirely sure that you're back. He spends hours at the library, reading up on things he couldn't find on Earth. Where heroes slain in battle actually go, what it's like over there. Stories of when they are brought back. None of them end well.
Thor finds him, and introduces Bucky to Asgardian mead that he swears got Steve tipsy. Bucky’s had a rough couple of years. He’s in no place to turn down a drink.
He remembers what it's like to be 21 and drunk again and like nothing bad can ever happen. When you choose to join in with them, Bucky finds he’s a lot braver and a lot smoother with liquor flowing through his veins.
Stumbling through tower hallways, giggling and stealing open-mouthed kisses in the shadows like a bunch of teenagers until he has your back pressed up against the bedroom door.
“Eager?” you breathe out when he nips at your neck, hands scouring every inch of you he can find.
“What gave it away?” he mutters, pulling away to look you.
Wild eyes and equally untamed hair, and there is a light in his eyes that outshines supernovae.
“I love you,” you tell him, and it’s a startling moment of clarity in the middle of a juvenile hour. “I hope that always remains with you.”
Before he can respond, you thread your hands behind his neck and steer him towards the bed, mouth never once leaving his.
________
Another solitary night, and it's by pure accident that he ends up retracing his steps to the first place he was introduced to in Asgard. He wonders how much of it was intentional, his conscience forcing him to a reckoning long awaiting him.
Heimdall is there as always, standing tall with a grace that is still threatening. Bucky is not a fool-- he knows he can sense his presence.
Still, he looks only for a moment before making leave.
"I hear it was magic that brought her back," Heimdall voices.
Bucky pauses in his tracks.
"Yes," he says, like he’s forced to respond.
"Are you aware of what it takes to bring a body back from the dead?" Heimdall asks, tone still. "Cells are broken and reattached if they do not malfunction. The brain is attacked with sensation after being dormant for months. The heart pumps degraded blood through vessels that have collapsed."
Bucky feels bile rise to his mouth at a memory that seems so far away. Enough has happened since.
Heimdall looks at him, steel cut eyes boring into his. “Our ancestors have tried this for centuries,” he says slowly. “It has always ended the same way.”
Bucky keeps silent. Wonders if the God can hear him swallow the lump in his throat– probably can.
“Tempering with fate has never fared well.”
“I’m not trying to play with fate,” Bucky finds himself moving on its own accord. “If this wasn’t supposed to happen, it wouldn’t have. I am not a God.”
Heimdall stares into his soul and Bucky feels suffocatingly exposed. “The separation between divinity and mortals is thinner than you may imagine.”
“I have no interest in crossing it.”
“Haven’t you?” Heimdall’s eyes flicker over to the direction you were last going in. “When your will supersedes reality– what else do you call it?”
“Luck.” His voice comes back stonily.
Heimdall gives him a wry smile. “No such thing.”
Bucky’s palms feel clammy, his stomach twisting into knots.
“Your grief is natural. But do not let it overpower your love,” Heimdall adds. “I am sorry you had to go through this. I'm afraid sooner or later you will have to see that you cannot disrupt the natural order of things.”
"Why?" His voice cracks and he curses himself.
Heimdall's eyes soften. "There comes a point where your love for someone becomes indistinguishable from hurting them. Your intentions are noble, but you already know where you stand."
Bucky quietly turns on his heel and leaves, but the conversation remains heavy on his mind for days to come.
_________
The first time you fall sick, really sick, like you used to be on Earth, Bucky watches from the sidelines as various people tend to you. Those with divinity at their fingertips, those with herbs and concoctions he’d never heard of, others with tools and prayers and everything.
They try everything. It takes you a full week to recover.
Bucky sits, emotionless by your bedside, and feeds you from a spoon, food that your friends swore you grew up loving.
Asgard was supposed to work. Being here was supposed to work. No one knows what to do, except to wait it out. As your fever quells and Bucky watches you open your eyes for the first time in a few days, everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he says quietly from your bedside. “How can I help?”
The smile you give him is tired. He gives you a small one in return, and leaves a kiss on your forehead.
It feels all too familiar.
God of the Night and the Devil of Cursed Fates.
_________
Thor teaches him the song, the one he caught you humming for months. It sounds different to what he remembers you singing.
He watches you thumb through titles in the Asgardian library, looking for a book of wildlife to show him. It only takes a few seconds for you to hum under your breath again, but Bucky is quick to ask this time.
“Oh.” You blink. “I may have remembered it wrong.”
He tilts his head at you, but you go back to browsing through library books.
___________
Nights in bed, he spends tracing up and down your arm. He's full from a feast, and he's watched you dance around a courtyard with spirit and joy, and for the first time in years he feels like he can breathe.
You drag him along with you, and while he may have been quick on his feet in the thirties, Bucky was significantly older. You don't seem to care. You laugh like nothing has ever worried you before, and he finds it infectious.
"D'you s'ppose we'd have been married by now?" he asks, breaking the quiet.
"I remember turning down your offer," you say, the corners of your mouth pulling upwards. "So, who's to say?"
Bucky's face breaks into a smile, one that looks particularly incredible in the moonlight. "You said I knew what the answer was already. Looks like that leaves the ball in my court."
You look at him, a little endearingly, and as he's come to expect, a little sad.
"I think we would have," you hum. "But you wouldn't have survived wedding festivities here."
He scoffs, rolling onto his back and feels his stomach ache dully. "Barely holdin' on now as it is."
You pull closer to him, fingers dancing across his chest. "Why didn't you try to find someone else?"
He exhales, sharper than he intends. "Didn't wan'to," he mumbles.
"I'd hate to think you didn't try to find others who loved you," you tell him, brows pulled together, "You have so much of it to give. It'd be a shame."
"Didn't see the point." Bucky hopes he doesn't sound as sharp as he does in his head.
"If something were to happen tomorrow, and I am no longer here," you begin and he wants to beg you to stop talking about this, "It would break my heart if you didn't go on with life as you were meant to live it."
"This is how I'm meant to live." He sounds pathetic-- obsessed, and entirely dependent but he isn't sure you know. "This is it. This is the best it's ever gonna get for me."
You look at him, eyebrows knitted. Your thumb caresses his jaw, running across the sharp curve.
"You deserve more," you say gently. "You do. Life has been unkind, but you will always deserve more."
You’re doing it again. Preparing him. For the inevitable he knows is looming on the horizon. The one he saw in Heimdall's eyes.
Still, you notice that it is too much for him, and you break the tension with a smile.
Outside the window, the sounds of a party continue on. You would be out there too, if he hadn't noticed the slow in your movements and the dip in your energy. He instead gave his lack of stamania as a reason and asked if you would join him in the room, for which you shot him a grateful look.
"You never gave me a ring," you remind instead, voice teasing.
Bucky looks at you wearily before silently getting up from the bed.
You sit up in confusion, watching him trail across to the wardrobe and pull out the clothes he was wearing on his first day here.
He shuffles back into bed and turns to you, holding out his hand in a request.
It takes a second but you give him yours, and he silently slides a ring onto your finger. Even in the darkness it glitters like it’s made of light.
"I've had it for ages," he tells you. "Woulda given it to you quicker if you'd just said yes the first time."
You laugh loudly, and hold his face in yours before kissing him hard to the sounds of a fading party.
__________
The effect wears off gradually. It goes the same as it does in the cabin.
You begin to space out visits. Stay in for a day or two, which increases as time passes. Though the castle help are ever gracious and at your beck and call, you send them away in exchange for quiet nights in.
Bucky wipes your forehead with cool cloth. Feeds you nectar by hand and tells you of everything he's learnt since the time you've arrived there.
You begin to look sick again, and miserably, he does not know what to do. You've been attended to by the best of medicine that the nine realms have to offer. You've spent nights with your friends, drinking in joy and embodying love.
But you are dying. You have been since you came back, and he can no longer choose to look past it in hopes for a remedy.
He looks at you like you've given the world the light it bathes in, and wipes your perspiration with his thumb.
You smile back at him in your sleep, and he lets that slow the march towards the end.
_________
One of the good days, you lead him to the lake. The one where water remembers. You point out faces. He discerns them to be some of your friends a couple of hundred years ago.
He follows as you walk along the banks, letting you show him yourself through the years. Some streaked with tears, others with joy so infectious it has his stomach doing flips.
"That is the last time I came here," you point at the last one. "Two months before it happened."
He remembers the trip. He thought he remembered how you were back then, that he'd etched into the crevices of your mind.
When he looks down, he sees a different person. Your face is light. The weight of circumstance does not weigh you down.
You were right when you said you did not recognise the person you were.
That night in bed, he holds onto you tighter than he has, no longer afraid of causing more damage. He has already done the worst, and you've taken it without a word.
“Bucky,” you call.
He doesn’t trust his voice to answer, so he just makes a noise.
Your eyes meet his intently and he knows. You do not have to say a single word to him.
You’ve made a decision. It was your will, as Wanda had told him all those months ago.
“I'm sorry,” his voice cracks. “I'm so sorry. It was so selfish.”
“It's okay,” you press a palm against his cheek and shudders from the cold.
“I love you.” His eyes burn, but he forces himself to take more of you in. “I love you so much, I'm sorry. I just wanted a second chance.”
“I know.” You smile but your voice is sad. “I know. I understand.”
“I don't know how you aren’t angry at me." I don’t know why you stayed.
You look him in his eye, giving him no space to run. "I would have done the same. If I could, I would have done the very same thing."
He chooses to believe that, despite what Heimdall has told him. If he tries, he can find heat in the frigid veins.
"But we are simply delaying the inevitable, my love." You press a kiss to his forehead. "I no longer belong here. I am not who I was. I doubt I will ever be."
He loves every version of you. He already loved, and he will always learn to love whoever you change to be.
"I know it is hard, but I have to go," you tell him softly.
His eyes burn and his head stings.
"I grew up with friends I loved, and a family that loved me. My life was good," you tell him. "I didn't realise how much I wanted to give that forward until you happened. I will always love you for that."
Bucky kisses you till you can't breathe and his tears mix with yours.
Till the morning breaks and you have to tell everyone of your decision, he tells you over and over again a tale you already know. Everything he's ever felt. Everything that’s happened in the last few months– his revolving door of therapists and all the movies he’s watched and all the bakery foods he thought you'd like.
You listen, and you tell him stories he memorises to heart. You are still dying.
But this time he is there, and in that lies his true second chance.
________
A month later, and not a day before that.
You pass away quietly, surrounded by people instead of rubble. He holds your hand throughout, and for long after even once your chest stops rising.
The Asgardians let him stay for as long as he wants, still and quiet. No one says a word as he presses a kiss to the crown, leaning his forehead against yours for as long as the universe permits.
The funeral goes by in a haze. Everyone gathers, even after such short notice. No matter how much time he had to prepare, the air was thick, and he swallows down his discomfort.
A gentle breeze whispers through the columns of the great hall, carrying with it the soft, mournful melodies of Asgardian lyres and flutes.
In the center of the pyre, you lay, ethereal even in repose. Around you, night-blooming flowers bloom alongside, as if the sky itself was paying its respects.
Thor recites the ancient eulogies. With reverent hands, they guide the vessel into the river that flows through Asgard.
As the vessel drifts away, a hush falls over the assembly. Just before reaching the edge of the waterfall, arrows shoot fire onto the wood, letting the flames consume the casket. Bucky holds back a cry.
Thor hits the staff, and the casket continues onward instead of falling off the edge. Within a flash Bucky sees an orb rise above you and shoot off towards the sky.
Thousands of lights are let loose into the sky. He closes his eyes, says a few words no one will know except you, and lets go of the soul orb given to him.
And that was it.
________
Bucky looks at the last of his belongings, tied tightly together.
There were a few things he was allowed to take with him, things that belonged to you while you lived here. He's grateful more than anything, that he's not relegated to photos.
He was made to stay a few more days in Asgard while everything was completed. Though the people were lovely, and he's more than glad he came, he knows that this was where this ended.
He exhales, looking back at the place where he spent the better part of three months.
"You will be alright?" Thor asks, walking with him to the courtyard.
He shrugs. It was still fresh, but the utter despair he had felt the last time had been replaced with a quietness.
"You?" he asks in return.
Thor smiles, and claps his back and Bucky is forced to take a step forward.
"It will be an honour to remember her," he says, and for a moment, Bucky feels a sense of peace at his words. "You are always welcome here."
A small laugh leaves Bucky in the form of an exhale. "Don't be a stranger, Thor."
The God summons the Bifrost and the force is enough to make Bucky hold his hands up to his face.
"I'll see you around. Thanks for everything." His lips pull together in a tight smile.
Thor takes a second, but then says, “You will be alright, James.”
It’s reassuring, he thinks. Bucky nods and turns, taking a step towards the bridge.
"Wait," Thor calls loudly, "I almost forgot."
He turns to him in confusion, and a list of possibilities running through his head.
"She told me to give you this," he says, "She used to carry them around for us."
From around his wrist, he pulls off a hair tie and holds it out to him.
Bucky takes it, a little stunned.
________
Two months pass.
Bucky stands on the threshold of a door that is foreign to him.
His head falls, but his arms raise either way. Two swift knocks and he takes a step back. He looks around nervously, hands stuffing into his pocket. His car lays at the end of the long driveway, ready to leave at any given moment.
For a second, he thinks about making a run for it. But the door swings open and Bucky's eyes quickly dart up.
"Hey," he says, voice coarse. "You got space for one more?"
Sam looks at him in initial surprise, but it fades to softness when he notices the shape the man is in.
“C’mon, Buck,” Sam says softly. “We’ve got you.”
Bucky lets out a staggered breath, and leans over to pick up his backpack that Sam's already beaten him to.
He takes one good look at the sky. Dark, clear and finally returned to the way it had been for centuries.
But he swears that a single star in the corner of his eye shines a little brighter than the rest.
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‘Tis the Damn Season
Stark U #6
Summary: It’s Christmas Eve, you’re too drunk, you’ve basically avoided Bucky and Steve for six months and the last person you’d want to meet at this party just happens to be yelling in your face. The panic attack is inevitable, really.
Pairing: college!Steve Rogers x reader, college!Bucky Barnes x reader, college!Sam Wilson x reader, college!Natasha Romanoff x reader
Word count: 7.8k
Warnings: so much angst, past SA, alcohol, talk about violence, Christmas celebrations, things finally start to happen, kissing :)
A/N: Happy holidays to anyone who celebrates and to those who don’t, I hope you have a good few days anyways <3 This is the first I’ve posted since July which is awful of me so sorry
Series Masterlist
Main Masterlist
You didn't see them all summer. The day after your last exam was over, you bolted back to your hometown and spent the entire summer selectively ignoring messages from Bucky and Natasha and Steve and Sam asking what you were doing and how your summer was going and maybe you could all meet up and go somewhere and—
It's December now, and every goddamn day since June you have been trying to figure out if what Bucky said to you when you were sick was a fever-induced hallucination or if he really, actually, said that he wanted you to take his last name someday. It made you panic, because the entire spring term you tried to convince yourself that your feelings towards them were batshit crazy and any inkling to them feeling the same was a delusional reach, grasping for crumbs that in reality were just friendly gestures. And then he says that.
"She's just practicing her future last name, Stevie."
So, yeah...things have been weird. Three months have passed since classes started and none of you want to mention what happened right before summer break. Actually, with each day passing you feel more like maybe it was just a hallucination or a very vivid dream, because both Bucky and Steve act like it never even happened. Bucky even had his mouth latched onto some blonde sophomore at a dumb, stupid frat party on Halloween. You went home right after and cried for two hours. But it's not hard to conclude that even if there was some spark or connection or anything beyond friendship with either of them before summer, it has died out completely.
The subject will probably never be broached. You're too scared of confrontation and definitely too scared of revealing unreciprocated feelings for that to happen. The slightly tense atmosphere in the loft is entirely your fault—your lack of communication with anyone in the group during the summer has made them a little confused, you guess. You mostly spend time in your room, giving excuses of studying and talking with parents on the phone and 'I'm just tired, sorry'.
Spending too much time with Natasha scares you too, because she reads you so well and you don't want her to know how hurt and unhappily in love you are. She'll try to do something about it and then Steve and Bucky will catch on and then you will end up rejected and labeled as crazy, because who the fuck falls in love with two people?
That doesn't mean you've managed to avoid her. Living in the same apartment as her definitely makes that hard, but just the fact that she won't let you makes it impossible. Last week she even broke into your room when you had it locked, because apparently she knows how to pick a lock open in under ten seconds. She absolutely knows something is off, but so far she hasn't brought it up.
Natasha is the sole reason why you're now standing in the backyard of some rich kid's house just off campus, surrounded by smoke from cheap cigarettes and fairy lights hung up between the trees and one too many shots of vodka in your blood. It's December utterly and thoroughly—there's snow on the ground but people still haven't accepted the fact that wearing their short dresses and tank tops without jackets does not work anymore. Ice drops hangs from the tree where you stand, listening to Natasha talk with a drunken girl looking for her phone.
It's fun, sure. Not the worst party you've been to and not the best either. You talked to the girl you've been sitting next to in History class earlier for almost twenty minutes. Got free vodka. It's Friday and you don't have any exams to study for. None of that makes you forget that things aren't the same.
"Nat. Nat." You poke her shoulder repeatedly, obnoxiously probably, until she glances over her shoulder with a slight glare.
"What is it?"
"I'm gonna get 'nother drink. Inside," you tell her, pointing with your thumb towards a hedge even though it was meant to be the door. Natasha seems to understand anyway.
"Okay. Don't wander off too long. And come back here right after."
"Yes, ma'am." You give her a half-assed salute before turning around, swaying slightly in your step. It's the uneven and slippery surface of the snow-covered ground, you tell yourself.
There's a lot of people here, is what you note as you push yourself through the seemingly endless crowds of the living room. You kind of hate that they haven't played a single song you like and if Steve was here he would agree, because he doesn't listen to any music made after the internet was born. Bucky would then make fun of Steve and you would laugh and everything would be right in the world. Instead you're pressed to kitchen drawers of a dark kitchen, cheap vodka mixed with soda running down your throat.
The kitchen is crowded too, but either way it's a respite from whatever the hell's going on in the living room. Jumping up and down and calling it dancing (you were doing the same the hour before). You're too drunk to be miserable about everything happening in your life this entire term and much too drunk to feel the absolute atrocious taste of your drink.
In half an hour you will probably throw up and tomorrow will be spent nursing a horrible hangover, but those consequences seem insignificant right now. You just keep thinking about the image of Bucky shoving his tongue down someone's throat that wasn't yours. It was heartbreaking. That he's not here is a good thing, because you'd either witness the same thing again or actually bring it up to him, and that's much worse. God knows it's only a matter of time before Steve does the same thing.
Someone pushes into you, forcing the liquid from your cup to spill from the confines of the red plastic onto your dress. It's black, so it doesn't really matter, but the alcohol still seeps through the fabric until it reaches your skin.
"Shit, fuck—"
Your hand tries to somehow dry your dress by fanning the fabric, which obviously doesn't help very much, and the paper towels placed on the counter in front of you escape your drunken mind completely.
Fresh air and icy winter winds are the only options, so you push through and stumble into people on your way outside. It takes a lot longer than it should. You can't really see much considering the dizziness and darkness inside, but somehow, magically, you are eventually dragging your way towards Natasha who stands in the same place as before.
"Nat. Natty—I spilled. Look."
The black dress with the now wet patch is lifted towards her by your hands, highlighted for her to see. You sway as you tell her.
"Jesus, you can barely stand straight," Natasha answers with a stabling hand to your shoulder, shaking her head to herself instead of focusing on the very urgent fact that you spilled on yourself.
Natasha turns to the girl she's talking to, saying something you can't bother to decipher, before stepping aside with a guiding arm around you.
"We gotta get you home before you embarrass yourself for real," she mumbles underneath her breath.
"I heard that," you whisper, a loud hiccup following. Whoops.
She rolls her eyes, fishing her phone up from her pocket.
"Who—who you writing? To?" you ask, slightly aware that your sentences lack correct structure but not really caring. As long as the message comes across, right?
"I'm texting Steve. I can't drive and you sure as hell can't."
Even in your state, panic instantly sets in over the mention of his name even though you live in the same goddamn apartment.
"Nooo. No Steve."
Your hand grasps for her phone. Nat pulls it away from your reach much quicker than you can comprehend.
"Yes Steve. You're a mess and he's the only one with the patience to take care of this level of drunk. I don't care that you're avoiding them for some stupid goddamn reason," she tells you.
"Nat," you whine. "He can't see me. I spilled!"
She just glares at you. "I swear to god, Y/n...nobody cares that you spilled your drink. I can't even see it."
"I'm so drunk!"
"Yeah, I know. Just—just stay here, okay? I'm going to get you some water so you can sober up by the time your precious Steve comes for us."
Natasha is heading inside before you can process her words. Waiting in place for a few minutes turns into an eternity in your mind. She should know better than to leave you unattended and then expect you to stay—really, it's her own fault. You will accept no blame if Nat gets mad at you for going inside again. It's cold and you need to go to the bathroom. Also, you're mad at her. Telling Steve to come get you? That's just...embarrassing.
Once again you're shouldering your way past people on about the same level of intoxication as you. There's a bad remix of a Christmas song playing loudly. Makes you wanna punch whoever's phone is connected to the speaker. The bathroom is so, so far away. It's something the architect of this house should've thought of before he put it at the very end of this long hallway you're currently making your way through, but clearly he didn't have you in mind.
"Fuck! Watch where you're going, asshole," some girl seethes at you as your shoulder nudges against hers. A nudge is an exaggeration—you brushed against it at most. She's probably an aggressive drunk, that's all.
You don't answer, instead fumbling for the door handle to what you believe might be the bathroom. Some couple is making out in here, the girl with her ass planted on the edge of the bathtub and the guy nearly devouring her face. Doesn't look very pleasant, if you're honest.
"Out. I need to pee."
Your hands find their way to their shoulders, ushering the lovesick pair out of the room without much protest from either of them. They're still making out as they walk out.
Despite your less than sober state, you manage to remember to lock the door after they leave. Some of the mascara that previously inhabited your lashes has moved down to rest under your eyes. You rub it away, smudging it slightly, but it just makes you look a little more like one of those cool girls you always see on campus. It will do.
You kind of want to throw up, but decide against it. That hasn't happened since you were a freshman, and you'd like to keep it that way. Staring at yourself in the mirror occupies your time in the bathroom instead, swaying slightly with your hands placed on the cold sink. If Steve saw you now he would be so disappointed. At least you imagine he would be—that fatherly look on his face as he tells you how you need to be more mindful with your alcohol consumption. Did you even watch who poured your drink? Never go anywhere alone at a party. Especially not a frat one. You know better than this, Y/n.
Steve's imaginary voice is interrupted by someone banging on the door, shouting for you to hurry the fuck up. It's been over ten minutes, but to you it just feels like three, and Natasha has been looking for you ever since she returned to the garden with a glass of water in her hand and no one to give it to. It's not her banging on the door, unfortunately, but instead a dickhead guy who has no patience. Can't a girl spend some time alone in the bathroom doing nothing anymore?
The guy glares at you as you push the door open, stumbling out into the crowded hallway while paying him no mind. It's dark save for the red LED-lights plastered on the walls, making it feel like a seedy dive bar instead of a seedy house. You don't see much.
"Hey! Hey, you—the girl with the black dress!"
Someone pushes their way past the people talking and making out and leaning against the walls, shoving through them as he searches for your attention. Of course, you don't really think it's you he's after. Half of the people at this party are wearing black dresses.
A clammy hand finds purchase on your shoulder, halting you in your less than gracious steps and turning you around with ease. Head tilted back, gaze running upwards until they settle on the face of a quite attractive guy. He doesn't look pretty happy to see you. You're not very happy to see him either.
The blood drains from your face, stealing away all that alcohol-induced heat within a second as his curly hair and green eyes look down at you with that same contempt he had when Sam dragged him away from the kitchen almost a year ago. You had hoped you never had to see him again. It was a naive thing to wish for.
"Y/n, right?" he asks bitterly. You don't answer, but he takes your silence as a yes. It was probably a rhetorical question anyway. His slightly crooked nose was perfectly straight the last time you saw him. His face is committed to your memory, burned in to taunt you on sleepless nights and everytime an unknown man walks a little too closely when you're out alone. "Your little boyfriend broke my fucking nose. You know that?"
Another rhetorical question. Definitely more threatening. Might be the tight grip he has on your arm too. Either way, his mere presence has apparently stripped away your ability to breathe normally. It feels like you've been running to the point of nausea, dark spots dancing before your eyes as he shakes you in attempt to get an answer.
"You ruined my fucking reputation. For what? I barely touched you. Such a sensitive fucking bitch, going around telling everyone that..." His voice trails off, ushering you into a quiet corner when he realizes people are staring. "Got nothing to say now, huh? Been so good at running your fucking mouth before, haven't you?"
"Let me go," you whisper, voice wavering. You don't sound assertive at all, instead weak and fearful. It's what you feel, as an upbeat, slightly bad cover rendition of "All I Want For Christmas" booms through the house. Girls shrieking in excitement over in the living room reaches your ears. You would have joined them if you weren't currently cornered by the guy who assaulted you in your own kitchen a year ago.
"No, we're going to fucking talk. What the fuck were you doing, going around saying shit like that about me to everyone?"
"I...I didn't..." Your lips part between words, breathing out shakily, trying to articulate sentences long enough to make sense. Why can't you speak? Why can't you even think?
"You didn't what?" he seethes. "You're such a fucking bitch, you know that? Acts all innocent and hides behind her friends. My nose is fucking crooked forever because of that fuckhead you sent after me."
Is it the alcohol that renders you this goddamn useless? There's just tears springing to your eyes, unable to say anything in defense of yourself. Can't even walk away.
He pushes you against the wall, knocking the breath out of you. To other people it probably looks like you're hooking up. At least that's what you hope they think, because otherwise you want to wonder why no one is intervening.
"Joshua, please let me go," you tell him again, even more pathetic this time. You're crying now, curled in on yourself in attempt to make yourself as small as possible.
"Fuck, you're so—"
"She told you to let her go."
The assertive, familiar tone booms through the hallway. It doesn't really, can probably only be heard by the people around you, but it feels like it when Steve's tall figure pushes through with hasty steps towards where you and Joshua stand, followed by a glaring Bucky with his jaw clenched so fucking tightly. A sob of relief is drawn from your lips, muffled by the back of your hand.
Joshua steps back instantly. Kind of funny to think that he's so scared of those two, and sad to think that he only respects a 'no' when it comes from men.
"Nice nose job," Bucky speaks up, pointing at his own nose as he stares at Joshua's crooked one, courtesy of the damn good punch he managed to land with his left fist all those months ago.
"Fuck you," Joshua growls, taking a step forward in attempt to appear more threatening or something. He doesn't really succeed—both Bucky and Steve towers over him in both length and build, unrelenting in their stance. As if they're stone walls keeping out the enemy.
Steve rolls his his eyes, shaking his head with a sigh. "Just get out of here. Don't go near her ever again, you hear me? Bucky's glad to fix your nose otherwise. Break it right back. Can't promise the result will be very good, though."
Bucky stands slightly behind Steve, raising an eyebrow in Joshua's direction that tells him there's not even a trace of a lie in the blonde giant's statement.
"You—fuck this." Joshua throws his hands in the air, aiming the most distasteful glare over his shoulder in your direction, before pushing past Steve and Bucky with a shove.
Your body instantly deflates, the tension melting off your limbs as you close your eyes and lean back against the wall. Gentle, firm hands instantly reach your cheeks, your arms, searching for any trace Joshua might have left behind on your body.
"Hey, hey. Y/n, are you okay? Did he touch you? Sweetheart, look at me."
Bucky's voice draws you out of the anxious, panicked state you slipped into, fluttering your eyelids open to see his worried frown and an equally worried Steve looming behind him. Wet cheeks and red-rimmed eyes greet them, pupils dilated from the alcohol.
"Y/n, are you hurt? How long have you two been talking?" Steve adds, looming over you in such a way that his large frame blocks out any of the colorful lights plastered on the walls.
They already know you're drunk—Natasha was the one to call them here to get you, after all. Maybe your silence and obvious intoxication makes it clear to them after a couple of seconds that an answer from you is a few minutes away, a few miles of distance from this foggy, packed house. Nothing more is said or requested from you. Instead your trembling form is led away and out into the biting cold by gentle hands belonging to your friends. Even your slight shock can't shield you from freezing your ass off as soon as you get out into the fresh air again, teeth beginning to chatter within the second step on tightly packed snow.
"What the—where the hell have you been? I swear to god, Y/n, I was gone for two minutes! I've been looking for you everywhere!" an angry Natasha yells, running perfectly towards the three of you down the slippery lawn to where Steve is currently helping you into the backseat of his car.
"Nat," Steve says, giving her a pleading look that silently tells her it's not the time for a scolding.
"What? I told her to stay put when I went to get her a glass of water and she just disappeared out of nowhere. Slippery motherfucker while drunk, I swear she'll be the death of me—"
"Nat," he repeats, sternly this time. In that tone only he masters, silencing even the most eager tongues with a single exhale. "She met Joshua. And she's not okay. So please, leave your yelling for tomorrow and get in the car."
Steve holds the passenger door open, gesturing for the seat beside Bucky. He's turning the key, letting the car warm up properly while he clutches the wheel tightly. Natasha's irritated frown turns into a concerned one, nodding silently before slipping inside. Steve closes the door shut behind her.
You lean your head against the frost-covered window, fogged up by your breath two inches away from it, and close your eyes. Steve leans over you, reaching for the belt and fastens it over your torso. You forgot. He never does.
It's no surprise, doesn't startle you despite your absentminded state, when his warm hand cups your cheek, turns your head to face him. Soft, blue gaze and ridiculously long lashes. It's nothing but contrasting against the clouds released from your mouths with each breath—warm, concerned...loving? Maybe.
"Are you okay?" he whispers, thumb rubbing over your cheek.
You nod. "Yes. I am now."
Bucky puts his foot on the gas, turns on the blinker, and pulls away from the curb, out onto the streets. It's nearly soundless. The usual rumble from wheels against road is cushioned by the snow.
"This was a mistake. Sorry, I can't—" Sam gags, moving his head out of the bathroom before returning his presence within a few seconds. "You're a real shitty guard, Nat. Why'd you let her drink this much?"
All four of your roommates are gathered in the bathroom, surrounding you as if you're a newly born lion cub in a zoo, while you puke your guts out into the toilet. Steve is kneeling on the floor beside you, a comforting hand rubbing your back, while Bucky sits a few feet away with a glass of water in hand, ready for whenever you need it.
"Fuck you. You weren't there—she was like a goddamn ghost, just slipping away everytime I blinked. Looked fucking everywhere for her. 'S not my fault," Nat answers, residing on the floor of the shower in lack of space.
"Not true," you murmur in answer, your voice echoing off the ceramic surrounding you.
You're pretty much done throwing up, it's just the exhaustion following that's keeping you slumped over on the bathroom tile. Your hand stretches out in Bucky's direction, reaching for the glass of water that's gulped down within a few seconds.
"Careful. Gonna get sick again if you do it this fast," Bucky says, unable to help himself from brushing away the stray drops of water running down your chin.
The gesture is nothing new from him. He did it when you were sick all those months ago too, and you haven't forgotten it at all. His thumb gently rubbing over your skin as if you're precious, something deserving of gentleness, is engraved into your mind. You're thankful for getting most of the alcohol out of your system, because you might not have remembered this moment in the morning if not. Fuck it if you forgot the way his pupils widen just slightly, as if he didn't mean to, as if he couldn't help himself.
"I'm fine," you whisper in answer, clearing your throat. "Got it all out."
"Good." Steve's hand moves up from your back to your head, stroking it for just a second before withdrawing his touch. "Let's get you to the couch."
"I don't wanna go to the couch. Wanna be in my bed." You're pouting. Maybe there is some trace of alcohol left in you.
"Steve and Buck will feel much less like creepy stalkers if they stare at you sleeping on the couch instead of hovering around your bedroom all night like a bunch of pervs," Natasha speaks up. A snort follows after, as if it was a joke and not a statement. Definitely tipsy too, despite unwilling to admit such a weakness.
Steve raises a reprimanding eyebrow Natasha's way, telling her to shut her mouth with just his gaze. She smirks in answer.
"Don't listen to her. A fucking liar," Bucky remarks, but there's still some form of amusement in his expression. He can't even deny the statement—he is going to watch over you. Doesn't really matter if it's in the living room or in your bedroom. "Now let's get you up. C'mon."
With a push from your arms against the cold tile, you're standing on two legs again. Steve is hovering his hand near your back, ready to support if the vodka decides to topple you over. But you're fine—just tired now.
For ten minutes it feels things are back to normal again. On the living room couch, nestled in between them, your head leaning on Steve's shoulder as a stupid Hallmark Christmas movie plays on the tv. Sam and Natasha are in their rooms sleeping, and for a few moments you forget why you kept your distance. Everything would have been good if this is how the night would end. If Steve didn't have to address the past six months.
"I've missed this. With us," Steve whispers as he strokes your shoulder absentmindedly, like it's second nature to him to have his hands on your skin. "You've been so distant lately. For months, Y/n."
The room instantly becomes tense enough to make you nauseous. A clearing of your throat, an attempt to sit up out of Steve's hold and away from this conversation that you'd much rather avoid is futile—it's instantly stopped by Bucky's hand on your chest that pushes you right back.
"No," he says sternly. "You're gonna sit right here, sweetheart, and tell us why you've barely let us see you since fall term started. 'Cause it's sure as fuck not something I take lightly. Why have you avoided us?"
You look away, shaking your head to yourself as you try to talk yourself down. You will not break. You will not confess a single thing. You are going to act like everything is fine and you are not currently freaking out being sandwiched between the only two men you would gladly be sandwiched between under different circumstances than this.
"What are you even talking about?" you answer meekly. It's clear as soon as the words come out of your mouth that no one is falling for your innocent act, not even sweet, naive Steve. Then again, you're doing a particularly bad job. "Both of you think I've been distant?"
"Cut the bullshit, Y/n. If we've done something wrong, just say so." Bucky bites his cheek, glancing down for just a second, but it's enough to let his vulnerability slip. He's hurt.
A wave of guilt instantly washes over your body, an unusual feeling. During all these months of avoiding any interaction with Bucky and Steve besides the necessary ones, you didn't think that they'd actually mind your absence that much. They might not be hopelessly in love with you like you are with them, but they're still your friends. Friends miss each other.
"Or if it's something personal, you can tell us, you know? Is it anxiety, or are you feeling generally low, or...?" Steve chips in, trying to drown out Bucky's accusatory tone.
"No, no...I'm not depressed, Steve. And none of you have done anything wrong, I promise," you say hastily, shutting down their concerns as quickly as possible while trying to buy yourself time to come up with an excuse. "I just...needed some alone time."
Bucky rolls his eyes, shaking his head. Sassy man. "Bullshit again. You've spent a bunch of time with Natasha. Sam, too. It's us you're avoiding." He points to himself and Steve with his hand. "It's been almost six months, Y/n. What the hell's your problem?" He pushes himself off the couch, standing up and blocking your view of the tv. It's as if his frustration is all contained while sitting down.
"Bucky," Steve scolds, glaring up at his friend. He's not appreciating the tone at all, that's for sure.
"There's no problem, Bucky," you tell him, shaking your head. Trying to dismiss this entire conversation before you reveal too much.
"No! Y/n, I'm going fucking crazy! This is the first time you've even let me touch you in half a year!" Bucky yells, a pleading tone in his voice that breaks your heart just a little. Because it's true. You have barely even hugged since June. You've barely talked for more than five minutes at a time.
"Don't yell at her, for god's sake, Bucky," Steve adds, his hands on your shoulders and ready to get up from the couch any second.
"What the hell's going on with you, huh?!" Bucky continues, ignoring Steve's statement. His eyes are solely focused on you, void of the usual softness. There's just anger. "Cause if you can't stand us, then tough fucking luck. I can have your fucking things moved out by tomorrow for all I care. Can move right into Walker's dorm. Bet he'd accept you with open fucking arms if you get to your knees and—“
The drop of your heart down to your stomach can almost be heard, an echoing, hollow sound. You're sure of it. Bucky shuts his mouth, as if he realizes what exactly was about to come out of it. What is not even a second of silence feels like a whole minute, before Steve shoots up from his seat beside you and grabs Bucky by the collar, rattling the whole room with the force in which he nearly tackles Bucky against the wall with. The tangy taste of iron starts to fill your mouth, your teeth biting down on your lip hard enough to draw blood. There's tears lingering in your eyes but you can't hold them back, not anymore.
"You don't fucking talk to her like that, you bast—"
"I love you! It’s ‘cause I fucking love you guys!” you yell, a pathetic sob marring the words. “So I’m fucking sorry that I’ve avoided you two but I’m trying to get over these goddamn—these feelings, but I can’t, okay! I can’t!”
The bitter delivery is punctuated by the sleeve of your sweater wiping away the tears furiously, cutting Steve off and drawing both of their wild eyes towards your figure now standing up, just a minute away from a complete breakdown. You don't even process the fact that Steve cursed. It would've been teased about endlessly in any other situation.
"I will go. I'll leave if that's what you want," you seethe with a voice so unsteady that it's almost unbearable to listen to. "But I don’t hate any of you. I don’t, and I get why you’re mad. But fuck you, Bucky. Fuck you for saying that.”
More tears fall. It's futile to wipe them away when they'll be replaced the second after. You want to say more, hit Bucky where it hurts, but you cannot get the goddamn words to form on your lips. Opening your mouth and closing it again, shaking your head, comes before hastily walking towards your room and locking yourself inside without giving them a chance to answer.
As soon as the door is slammed shut, your hand comes up to your mouth to muffle the sobs. Sinking down to the floor as if you’re in a movie, forehead resting against your knees. The rate of your heartbeats could be considered dangerously high, but you just blurted out a whole love confession for two of your roommates in the midst of a fight. How the hell could everything turn to shit so quickly? Half an hour ago all of you were joking around in the bathroom, and now you're not sure you have the courage to face any of them again.
It's a rash, impulsive decision fueled by anger and betrayal and shame, but you rush over to your closet and pull out an overnight bag that's soon filled to the brim with enough things to last you a few days. You're crying the entire time.
When you pass the living room again, Bucky isn't there anymore. But Steve is. Barely a glance his way is spared, with hasty steps heading towards the hallway. You remind yourself of a furious toddler when you angrily put on your jacket, stick your feet into your winter boots. The bag is slung over your shoulder, hand resting on the door handle.
"Don't go. Y/n, please don't leave."
Steve stands at the other side of the hallway, a broken down expression on his pretty face.
"Bucky went out of line, but he didn't mean it, I swear. He's just too prideful to admit it," he continues. You shake your head, biting down on your bottom lip. "Please, honey. It’s Christmas Eve. It won’t be the same if you’re not here tomorrow.”
"I just need some space," you whisper, brushing away a stray tear with the sleeve of your jacket. You’re so embarrassed and hurt that you can barely look him in the eye. "I can't be in the same apartment as him right now."
Steve sighs, looking about ready to just throw you over his shoulder to get you to stay. But he won't do that. That's not Steve. So instead he glances down to the floor, shaking his head to himself.
“Did you mean it?” he asks softly. “The thing about—you said you loved us. Did you mean it?”
It takes a few seconds before you nod tentatively, sniffling and keeping your gaze on a spot past Steve. He doesn’t say anything.
Steve gathers courage enough to walk up to where you stand by the door, grabbing your cheeks with his hands, thumb running over the tear-stained skin gently. For a few moments, he just looks at you. Loud thoughts running amok in that perfect head of his.
“Nothing I say right now will do my feelings any justice, so I’m gonna save any big speeches for tomorrow. But just…stay. It’s 2 am, it’s freezing out and you’re still drunk. I don’t want you out there on the streets alone. I need you to stay, even if it’s only for your own safety. Don’t have to talk to any of us if you don’t want to.”
His words makes you nod automatically. All it took was his hands on your skin and the flicker of hope his words ignite in your chest, and you conceded within a second. No hesitation left in that exhausted body of yours. He‘s not saying outright that your feelings are requited, but it doesn’t feel like a rejection either. He doesn’t seem disgusted by your confession, by the knowledge that you’re in love with both him and his best friend.
“Good girl. Let’s just—let’s get you to bed, okay?”Steve tells you, squeezing your shoulder gently. With your confirmation in form of another silent nod, he nestles the bag out of your grip and takes off the jacket from your torso.
The bed feels so soft and warm and comforting when you lie down. Steve tucks you in. It’s achingly sweet and you don’t really deserve it after avoiding him and Bucky like that for so long, but he looks out for you nonetheless.
“Steve,” you whisper, drawing his gaze up to meet yours. “I’m sorry. For being so distant.”
He shakes his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You were scared,” Steve answers. “Don’t worry about anything, okay? Get some sleep. You’ve had a tough night, Y/n.”
The softest of smiles grazes your lips, puppy eyes gazing up at Steve. Your wonderful, caring, perfect Steve.
“Are you alright? It must’ve been hard meeting Joshua again. And what Bucky said, it…it was far from okay.”
“I will be,” you whisper.
He nods, observes your face for a few seconds. Leans down to press a kiss to your forehead—what kind of college guy even does that? And then he leaves the room, turning the light off behind him.
You’re woken up by a red headed, crazy woman sitting on top of you over the sheets, shaking your shoulders.
“Wake up, fuckhead. You’re gonna open the presents I got you,” Natasha urges, grinning down at you as you blink your eyes open, groaning.
“Fuckhead?” you ask, a tired chuckle from your lips as Natasha climbs off the bed.
“Yes. Don’t like it, huh?” she teases. “C’mon. The guys are already waiting.”
With slow steps and a loud yawn, the slightest trace of a hangover plaguing your body, you drag yourself out into the living room. Around the ugly, little tree that Sam insisted on cutting down from the campus gardens last week (he almost got arrested by the security guards) the three boys sit. Your gaze falls to the floor, scratching the skin right above your lip nervously, once Bucky looks up at you. Can’t really read his expression, but you figure you’ll lay the fight aside for the day. It’s Christmas, after all.
“Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” Steve says, urging you to sit down next to him right there on the carpet. You offer a soft smile, and an even softer ‘Merry Christmas’ back. You’re still unsure about yesterday. Despite there being no rejection from either of them, the uncertainty is kind of killing you. A pit of anxiety rests in your stomach, an uneasy feeling corrupting every cell as you sit down on the floor next to Steve.
Not even ten minutes later, the living room is drowning in a sea of wrapping paper. Natasha went overboard with the gift shopping this year, it seems like, but her absent father is also some kind of Russian oligarch or something so she tends to use up as much of his money as she can. You’re not complaining.
The special edition of The Hobbit, signed by the director of the movie, that you managed to get on eBay and cost you a fucking fortune is received with a whispered ‘thank you’ from Bucky. He holds it in his hands tightly, staring down at the book without a word, and you don’t know if he’s happy for it. Maybe he’s not happy with anything touched by you at this moment. He hasn’t gotten you a gift, it seems like, or maybe he threw it in the trash and burned it yesterday.
Steve got you three books that he’d heard you say you wanted months ago, and a dainty silver necklace with a bee pendant hanging from it. “You know, uh, I usually call you ‘honey’ and I thought it was a little funny, maybe. But I can exchange it if you don’t like it. It’s no problem,” he had said, even though there were tears of gratitude in your eyes. Your arms were thrown around him a second later, hugging him tightly as you thanked him profusely for the most thoughtful gift.
Now you’re leaning your back against the couch, still on the floor, watching as Sam and Natasha are tinkering with his new Nintendo Switch that he got from her (overboard with the gifts, as previously mentioned). He’s so happy it almost makes you zoned out as you watch his childlike excitement. It’s nice to see the two of them so calm and sweet with each other too. Usually bickering and getting on each other’s nerves all the time otherwise.
“Y/n, can we talk?”
Your head tilts back, looking up at Bucky standing nervously in front of you, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. There’s a deep hesitation within you, a pride that wants to say no and remain in your angry state forever without confrontation. But it’s Bucky. You hate this animosity between the two of you, the tension. Despite being pissed off and hurt and afraid that he doesn’t want you, you can’t say no, so you nod and push yourself up to a stand.
Bucky closes the door to his room behind him gently, clearing his throat and looking at anything but you. A sigh comes out of his mouth, shaking his head, before he parts his lips to speak.
“I’m so sorry, Y/n. What I said was disgusting and unforgivable and so fucking out of line. You didn’t deserve that at all. So out of proportion to what I was mad at you for,” Bucky says, running the palm of his calloused hand over his face.
“It was,” you answer honestly. There’s no use in denying that what Bucky said was stupidly hurtful. He nods, looking away from your gaze.
“It made me angry thinking that you ignored me, because at first I didn’t know what I had done, you know? And then I thought for a few months that me and Steve had been too overbearing and that you tried to keep your distance because you thought we were annoying or something. But that’s not the case. I should’ve known better by now than to think that you would do anything to purposely hurt us.”
You gulp, nodding, looking down to the floor. “I’m sorry too,” you whisper. “I didn’t know that you guys thought I had something against you until last night. Obviously, you…you know now that’s not the case,” you tell him, embracing yourself with your arms. “But last night, Bucky, I…you hurt me. I know you were angry, but saying those kind of things isn’t okay.”
“I know that. God, I know, Y/n. I’m so sorry. It was fucking childish of me, retorting to saying that Jo—“ Bucky shakes his head, hands coming up to tug at the roots of his hair. “And it felt stupid giving you that present in front of everyone, so now you think I didn’t get you anything, too, and—“
“You got me a present?”
“Yes. Of course I did, Y/n. But I saw how much Natasha had bought and that necklace Steve gave you and my gift felt stupid in comparison to that. Just didn’t want to give it to you in front of everyone,” he says, a little awkwardly. A little boy giving his mother a drawing he made in kindergarten, he reminds you of.
“Bucky…that doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you have gotten me. I’ll like it no matter what if it’s from you.”
He shifts in his place, contemplating something, before picking up a sweater on his bed, revealing a wrapped present hidden underneath. Bucky took the gift from the pile without anyone noticing before, throwing it into his room so no one would see.
With a tentative hand, he reaches it out to you. Doesn’t watch as you unwrap it, instead biting on his thumbnail. You reprimand him for it, and the hand returns to his side.
“Is it a book?” You run your fingers over the cover, a hardcover with nothing on it. Blank.
“It’s a photo album. Shit, it’s stupid. I don’t know,” Bucky answers, looking about ready to snatch it back, but you open the first page up before he has a chance to.
A picture of you, Natasha, Sam and Steve on the first page. It was taken last year in November. You’re all running after one of Sam’s model planes, fall leaves singling down from the sky. It’s a beautiful picture.
“4 grown idiots running after a kid’s toy - November 12th, 2022”
“It’s just pics I’ve taken with my phone, so it’s nothing artsy or anything, but…uhm.” Bucky runs his hand through his short, brown hair.
You flip the page. You’re looking out through the kitchen window, the sun shining through and casting shadows over the room and your figure curled up on the chair.
“Angel in the sun - March 25th, 2023”
A soft chuckle is drawn from your lips, resisting the urge to run your finger over the photo, but you don’t want to smudge the blank paper. On the same page there’s another picture of you with your arms around Natasha’s shoulders, nearly wrestling her to the ground with the force of your hug. You look so happy.
Bucky looks nervous as you glance up from the photo album at him. “Know it’s not much, but…yeah.”
A loud huff of hair escapes Bucky as you throw your arms around him. It takes a second or two for him to hug you back, but he soon has his chin resting on top of your head, arms around your waist.
“I love it,” you whisper, holding onto him tightly enough to constrict his breathing.
“You do? I can take it back if you don’t like it.”
Your grip around him releases, arms coming down to your sides so you can take a step back and look him in the eyes. “This is everything, Bucky,” you say softly, feeling a lump in your throat that can turn into tears any second. “The fact that you took the time to make this for me is just…it’s the most thoughtful thing ever. And these pictures are so beautiful, Bucky, and just the thought of you sitting down and glueing them onto the page and writing captions and—“
His lips against yours. Oh god. Oh my god, Bucky has his lips pressed against yours. Gentle hands hold your jaw, his head leaning down to compensate for the height difference, and Bucky Barnes is kissing you with urgency and desperation.
The shock is enough to make you unable to return the kiss. He seems to take your surprise as rejection despite the fact that you literally yelled ‘I love you’ in his face last night. Bucky steps away and takes his hands off your skin, running his hand over his mouth, shaking his head.
“I’m so sorry, don’t know what the hell came over me, I—“
On your tiptoes, fingers grabbing his sweatshirt to pull him closer, and you nearly smash your lips against his to shut up any of that doubt he carries. It’s not a graceful or very romantic kiss, but by the sound akin to a very mild growl that comes from Bucky and his hands sliding down to your waist to pull you closer, you guess he likes it anyway.
It doesn’t last more than 20 seconds. A harsh knock on the door to Bucky’s room interrupts it, forcing you part from his lips and get down from your tiptoes again.
“What the hell are you doing in there? C’mon! I’ve made goddamn Christmas brunch!” Sam yells, drawing a soft chuckle from your lips as your forehead meets Bucky’s chest.
With a soft smile, nothing said, you back away from Bucky. Slipping out of his room and leaving him there all flustered and semi-hard from a 20 second make-out session. The first ever between you, though. He thinks it’s pretty understandable.
As Bucky follows you into the kitchen, sitting down at the table by Steve, he leans towards his best friend and whispers into his ear low enough to make anyone else unable to hear.
“I kissed her, Stevie,” Bucky says with a shit eating grin on his face. “I finally fucking kissed her.”
The blond man turns his head enough to look over at Bucky, the red flush of his cheeks and ears enough to tell anyone what’s been said.
“Are you serious?” Steve asks.
“I kissed her and she kissed me back, I swear. I gave her that photo album I’ve worked on for weeks. She said she loved it, Steve.”
“I guess it’s my turn then, isn’t it?” Steve answers, a shy smile on his lips as the two of them watch you sit down opposite of them at the table, glancing through the window out at the heavy snowfall. Natasha puts a newly toasted bagel on your plate.
“Go get our girl, Stevie.”
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