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evanstarff · 5 years

Text

Sensible Heart

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 4950 – sorry.

Summary: Bucky Barnes is enough – more than enough, except when he thinks he isn’t.

Warnings: Mostly angst, some fluff, mild swearing, a smidge of smut if you squint. And a dog.

A/N: This is for the #angstember Challenge hosted by the gloriously evil @fangirlfiction and her old mate @phoenixwintersolo. Thank you for hosting, loves – I do love a good angst 😂 This fic shifts between past and present. My dialogue prompt was ‘11. “I think we're done here.”’ which is bold and italics below. The title is from this song.

Masterlist here, lovers.

---------

She came into your lives when the leaves began to fall.

Bucky wasn’t expecting anyone that day. Morning broke the same as it always had; the cool air receding like the fog from a gentle sea and the sun seeping warmth through the spaces he called a home. North of the old home. Astoria, in a meagre back-of-the-house kind of space owned by the old Greek fellow from the local deli. Not too far, not too close, not too scarce – easy for him to blend in and blend out when he needed to.

It was too late for Steve to come knocking and way too early for Sam to come crowing, so it was with a steady shock when he opened his door to find you there.

You in all your splendour and calm, and those eyes shining bright in the way he used to love. The morning sun curving its gentle light around your cheeks, your nose, shimmering through your hair and lighting your breath from the morning chill – just as he remembered from many other mornings before; the ones spent between the sheets, adoring you, worshipping you. It was easy before it all became significantly less so, as things often do when it all gets too complicated and too hard.

“Hi.”

“Hey Bucky.”

Two voices weighted in time and brimming with residual affection. It was hard to say, like everything else did when it all got too much.

Bucky took a moment, maybe three, before his eyes rested to the panting creature beside you. Her eyes were blue just like his. Mussed locks of chestnut brown, furs and whiskers soft and comforting in the way you used to adore. Three paws instead of four yet sturdy all the same. Everything about her was gentle, warm – so sweet with ears folded like pretty napkins. Handsome too, as most dogs like her often were.

“What’s her name?”

You watched him crouch, his broad form eased forward and gentle, and taking her sweet face in those hands – one of skin, one of metal – both you adored once before. His fingers threaded through her soft mane and you felt your heart sting just a touch as he scrunched his pretty nose at her tongue licking his cheek, her kiss earnest and enthusiasm shaking through her entire body as her tail wagged left and right, so tight – so happy.

“Don’t know,” you replied, forcing your heart back down in your throat. “I couldn’t find a tag.”

The silence was pleasant. Thoughtful and ladened with things unsaid.

“Where did you find her?” Bucky asked at last, surveying the street as if expecting her owner to materialise by some miraculous chance.

“A few blocks from here,” you replied. “Figured you could use a friend.” The smallest of smiles pressed through your pretty face and Bucky felt it stretch the hope of something through his chest. “At least until I can track down the owner.”

He glanced quickly to you, searching for that little part he refused to owe, almost tender through that soft grey in his blue eyes. Then just as quickly as it came, it was gone.

“I can keep her for now,” he said finally, accepting this small new part into his life. A pause, then he spoke again. “Do you want to come in?”

You felt the echo of your name in his mouth simmer through your chest; soft and revered, like a prayer he was born to crave.

“No, it’s alright,” you shook your head, breathing the lie into the atmosphere and tried to ignore his gaze as you turned to leave. “Gotta get to work.”

Face finally pokered, you smiled again, taking in his exquisite face. How the morning shadowed and shone on the curl and curve of his cheeks, that jaw. His eyes. Framed so sweet by those chestnut strands you loved so much. “I’ll call you if I find anything.”

Bucky watched you jog down the pathway to the street as he had so many times before.

It wasn’t always like this.

---

It was cold the day he decided to leave the house. A different kind of cold to the kind he once felt, the one that shocked through skin and teeth and screaming in every shade of his caged form. This one felt real. Comforting almost and as easy as the golden leaves that drifted from their brown stemmed home.

Bucky had decided today would be a good day as any to venture out. Find a coffee, feel the sun. Find and feel a way to drown the racket in his head with something that sounded more human and less him for once. Maybe sit outside with people who were not the combined company of blonde and blue or a poor man’s ornithologist.

Coffee. Just one.

He could do this.

Feet brushed across the threshold of the cafe, gloved hands stuffed nervous and worried in his coat, his scarf of chestnut brown and wool wrapped about a jaw, and neck steeled in determination. People brushed past him through the cacophony of caffeine, stories mulled in their little universes and faces drawn downwards to devices in their hands, glancing everywhere that mattered in their fragile hands.

Bucky was anonymous and the breath of relief settled in his chest.

Then he saw you.

Curled into the cushioned chair in the far corner of the coffee shop, red brick walls reaching high above you. Warm light, pretty and soft around your face and features, and something about the way your fingers curled around the warmth of the mug, cradled close against your sweater and eyes down on the tome in your lap. The bustling hum of the cafe appeared to slow right down and the lights seemed to dim, until he saw only you.

You felt his presence and glanced up, eyes curious on his own. An indescribable pull he could only place once in his long and arduous life as a perpetual child protecting another perpetually dumb child of blonde and blue. Tapestries of tales told everything behind his eyes, stories lined by a secret fear cottoned up in the blue-lined grey and curiosity pulling the corners of his lips.

God, he was so handsome.

He was so goddamn handsome and you were goddamn staring.

Shit.

SHIT.

Bucky almost laughed as he watched your eyes widen, then dart back to your book, your body forcibly unmoving as if trying to make your presence less obvious in the most obvious way. Feet folded tighter beneath your form, it also folding smaller into the chair by way of trying to make yourself less seen.

It wasn’t working and you knew it.

Minutes ticked by, seconds feeling just as agonising when you decided you were a lost cause. Determined to look everywhere but up should you chance another awkward staring contest with a former super assassin, you gathered up your things. You shoved your book into the old leather bag slung with a flourish over your shoulder, hair gathered out from snagging under the strap and scarf wrapped around to ward against the chill.

Your next mistake was keeping your eyes on the floor instead of where you were going. In any other universe, you might’ve chanced that Henley shirt to anyone – anywhere – if not for the warm, intense recognition of one Bucky Barnes losing his coffee all over you.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry–”

“Miss, are you–”

“I’m fine!” Words thrown out in a hurry and a little higher pitch than you would've liked. Hands reached for napkins pressing them to your scarf with one hand and unfurling the fabric with the other as you rushed out the doorway.

Brisk, cold air whipped through the skin of your cheeks as you emerged from the coffee shop, Bucky’s boot-clad feet scuffing the steps as he followed, watching you fold up your sweetened and caffeinated scarf.

“Hey, I’m sorry about the–” he gestured lamely and you laughed, blistering joy through your eyes and cheeks.

Bucky liked the sound. He liked it more than he expected to.

“It’s okay,” you replied, grinning through the nerves you were sure prickled all over your face. “I can keep a secret.”

Bucky looked at his feet before braving a glance to you. Did you know who he was?

“It’ll cost you a coffee though.”

You watched comprehension sweeten through those eyes, that face and you knew you were gone and done for.

“Sure, I can do that.”

If only you knew in that moment, he was also just as gone for you.

---

Bucky woke to whimpered cries in the depth of night. Eyes flew open and he leapt soundlessly from the bed, skin prickling and alert. Where was it coming from? Why was it so close?

He quickly located the source of the sound with a pang in his chest – one desperate dog with legs trembling in sleep, and low growls punctuated by cries in the corner of his room.

Familiarity coursed through his body with the force of a freight train on a cold winter’s day. Bucky sighed, crouching to try and calm the creature with his presence.

“Hey darlin’ – it’s alright.”

He knew better than to touch her. Touching her was often the opposite of what they taught people to do with night terrors. In fact, humans weren’t much different from animals when it came down to it. Actions were processed the same, memories bled and molded through life the same way; they all ate, slept, drank, cried, and fucked all the same – the only difference was that animals were simpler than most humans. Kinder.

Bucky folded himself down beside the creature, fingers itching to touch her. He didn’t want to soothe her with words that often said too much and always meant too little.

After a few moments, she began to settle. Legs trembling to stillness as her breathing steadied. It was only now that he allowed himself to touch her, stroking her furs and watching the chestnut strands run between his fingers, like water easing through a stream.

She hadn’t run away in the two long days she’d stayed with him. It was nice being in her presence – her light, he began to call it. She was well-behaved, knew where to go bathroom, allowed herself to be led on walks around the neighbourhood and she ate pretty much anything without any qualm.

The days were easy it seemed, though the nights grew less so.

“What’s your name, hm?” he whispered to her sleeping form, fingers brushing gently behind her ears.

Bucky wondered what brought her here, what strange alignment of the universe led her to you. To him.

---

It was coming. Deep in the darkness of night and horror, he felt it.

He felt it in his skin, his muscle, his bones. His heart. It weighed his soul down with something that he couldn't quite place, a scratching cough in the back of his throat that could not be loosened. Something didn't quite fit in the hidden pockets of a growing cloud and yet it grew. And grew and grew and anxiety prickled through his body, waking him with wide-eyed gasps and a fear seizing in his chest.

Bucky counted the beats in his heart. One. Two. Three. Four too many, then it became unsteady and he was taking deep breaths to try and force down the fear and panic tearing its way into his throat and splintering through his chest.

Branded by the panic of the twilight, eternities stretched slow. It became one, two. Three. Again. And again. Fear. Panic. Panic, panic, panic.

“Bucky.”

Your voice found him through the haze and Bucky felt your breath, soft and so real against the shell of his ear. Chest warm against his back and your lips brushed skin so light to his neck. Gentle hands cupped his face, thumbed his cheeks turning his heavy, comforting form to face you. Those blue-burned eyes you adored were shadowed grey in the light of the evening now, startled and afraid like a child seized and immobile in the darkness.

“Bucky.” A coaxing whisper and lips brushed upon his brow, cheek. “Look at me, lover.” Words slowed and softened as his eyes swam desperately to yours. “Come back to me.”

He heard you, saw you, goddammit – he felt you. Your lips on his skin, your skin on his brow, your brow brushed against his neck and your face sketched in his mind and it wasn’t enough. The warm days of long walks in the park to the sweet nights between the sheets – it all splintered apart when the night came.

It broke your heart to see him like this. Clammy against the covers and so far away you could barely reach him.

So you held him and held him and held him, fingers combing through his sweaty strands of hair, his grief-stricken face pressed hot and tight, beard scratching softly against your neck. You held him, skin to skin, heart to frightened heart, until the dawn drew warm sheets of light across the floor and the bare walls of his room, and he was asleep in your arms, breath steady and quiet at last.

Peaceful. Loved.

Bucky woke sometime later in the morning, warm with your touch, and smelling of sleep and sweetness and the ache of heavy feeling, like he'd emerged from the thick fog of harsh dispossession and now he could finally breathe.

You were so beautiful in the morning light, your warmth settling in his full and adoring heart. Fingers of metal curled a stray hair away from your tired, sleeping eyes, thumbing the emerging bags on your skin from the night before. He was always sorry for your lack of sleep with him being the way he was.

Palms touched your cheeks, lips pressed gentle to yours and Bucky felt your smile on his lips as you awoke.

“Morning lover.”

“I’m sorry for waking you,” he replied, kissing you again. You welcomed him fully, breathing in his scent of skin and sheets and the fire of something familiar and sweet all at once.

“You can wake me up anytime,” you told him, kissing him. Deeply. Languidly. “Any. Time.”

Bucky smirked, eyes shining sly as he pushed himself closer to you and it was just like the summer of the first time. He kissed you, worshipped you like a man trying to forget. There were no sheets to speak of now that his legs parted yours and everything became hazy and sweet.

Hands touched skin in the way he knew best and then you were on him, or he was on you – arms coming around you or him, it was hard to tell when everything felt so pretty and hot and god, so good as lips drew fire on skin, mouths, muscle.

It was hard to say anything when he devoured you.

---

“Heard anything?”

“Nothing.” He watched you shake your still-so-pretty head, hair brushed about your face just so. “I swear, the owner’s a ghost or something – I put flyers everywhere, posted it all on the usual social media sites.”

“So nothing?”

“Did I stutter?” You laughed and Bucky loved how familiar it tasted in his heart.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

You waved. No dramas. “I didn’t take it like that, it’s alright.” You brightened, scuffing your feet across the floorboards of his small home and missed the way it felt once before. You swallowed, ignoring the creeping ache in your chest. “So where’s our friend? She doing okay?”

“Always,” Bucky smiled and then he whistled. The big, chocolate bear came bounding to you, feet rumbling across the floorboards, eyes bright and blue and face the epitome of joy.

“Should we take her to vet?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “Probably.”

An hour later, the three of you were expelled from the tiny vet clinic on Steinway. The first Steinway, they’d sent you away – we’re booked out, try the other one – and after some begging at the second one across the street and a listen buddy, I just need a few minutes followed by a flash of silver from a certain former assassin, the big, brown, and beautiful creature was checked in and checked out in good health with a wave of disapproval.

“At least she’s healthy,” you said, voice brimming with affection over the animal you followed down towards Athens Square; a place familiar and full with long walks after midnight, tucked under each other’s arms with only breathless lips to keep you warm in the shade of winter.

Right now, it was too easy with him. Easy in the way that wasn’t before. It was different this time, open and more…

You shook your head, ignoring the longing in your heart and asked him. “Do you think we’ll find her parents?”

“Don’t know,” Bucky replied, shoving his hands into his pockets to keep them from wanting to touch you.

“Who lets a dog out without a dog tag anyway? They probably don’t deserve her – she’s so beautiful.”

“Probably.” Bucky’s voice sounded far away and you stopped walking and turned to him, fixed your eyes on his own in the way that he remembered.

“Hey, don’t be like that.” You pressed a hand to his shoulder, the one he was afraid of most. “Please. Just for now.”

The way he looked at you had you rewriting the entire future of your universe – not that it ever needed changing. At least when it came to him.

---

The mission was hard. Too many agents, not enough intel.

Sam barely got out by the skin of his teeth with the ambush that was waiting for the three of them. And Bucky? Always stuck with the less desirable parts of the job – the kind of parts that needed finishing, at least until he had to haul out his big, dumb, patriotic psycho of a blonde brother and throw him into the quinjet with a few familiar insults from the war.

He’d just gotten back, aching and lurching after the hot shower, leaving droplets across the bathroom floor. Steve had asked him back to compound, but Bucky refused – chose instead to retreat to his familiar, scarce space where only two of his nearest and dearest knew about.

Well, three – but he was still mulling over the third one, until he heard the knock on his door.

Bucky was almost knocked backwards as you launched into his arms.

“Thank god!” you pressed your face into his chest, breathing in his scent, damp and deliciously revered. “I saw the news and didn’t hear from you or Steve and I thought–”

“I’m okay, see? Nothing to worry about.” He combed through your hair with fingers that didn’t feel like they belonged to him. “You didn’t have to come all this way.” The words sound foreign in his mouth and he knew it.

You knew it, and it made you pull back and regard him with troubled eyes, then a flash of anger and disappointment through your face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bucky was cornered. Fine. It was coming anyway.

“I always end up like this – I can’t…” he trailed off, words losing their meaning. “I can’t do this okay?”

His words hit you like a sledgehammer, its weight echoing through your skin as you tried to compose your face, your body, your heart – any way to keep from falling apart.

“Do what?” your voice held a tone he hadn’t heard before and yet he welcomed it. It made it easier. “Call to tell me you’re okay before I find out via some online newsfeed?”

“Listen,” Bucky ran his foreign fingers through his hair by way of habit. They always had to be touching something, even in the tightest, most suffocating moments. “I can’t do this – go out on missions, knowing you’re worrying about me–”

“That’s my job, idiot.” Your words spat fire. “That’s what people do when they care about each other.” You fixed your eyes on him and watched his own darken, closing himself off. Again. “They worry.”

“Look, I don’t want you to keep having to check on me and worry about me–”

“Too bad, it’s part of the deal.”

“I don’t want–”

“Bucky–”

“Deal’s off!”

And Bucky knew he’d said too much.

The silence between you stretched thin, like cling wrap spread too far over a bowl before tearing at the least expected point.

Your face was cold as steel, masking the anxiety and pain that threatened to spill from your body as Bucky watched the prickle of emotion flash then disappear behind those eyes he still thought pretty.

“Then I think we’re done here,” you said at last, voice small and determined.

Bucky said nothing. Hands continued to rush through his damp hair, until he settled them in his pockets. He looked everywhere but your face, trying to ignore the unravelling thread of affection that stretched too tight to hold you both together.

He wouldn’t look at you and that just made you angrier.

Fine. So be it.

Your footsteps striding away finally pulled his gaze back up, watching your determined self back away from his home. And then you stopped, turned, fixing your eyes on him one last time.

“You think you don’t deserve love, but you do,” you said in the quietest voice, but he heard every hardened word deep in his mind. “You just forget sometimes.”

And then you were gone, taking with you the dying light of the summer.

---

It was fifteen past four in the afternoon when she began barking at the front door.

Big, throaty barks that echoed through the small space of his home and Bucky was grateful the Greek fellow from the local deli had rostered himself on a double-shift today.

“Jesus Christ, darlin’,” you’d taken to calling her by Bucky’s moniker. It suited her, you decided, as you got up from the couch. “What’s gotten into you?”

It’d been a week, then two, then six, when you’d first found her. You and Bucky had grown together by some bizarre sense of co-parenting partnership over this big, brown, beautiful dog.

Some days, you took her – those were the days where he was off on some mission and came back battered and bruised yet utterly adored all the same by her affectionately infectious demeanour as he came through that door.

Most days, he took her. Took her three determined paws for long walks, long chats, to the vet and back again. Then when the night terrors swelled and smothered the small space in his home, you always came by in the quiet hours to help calm them both down with your words, your voice – your light.

Those days were the ones where you woke up on Bucky’s couch with a makeshift bed and blanket of his jacket and those familiar hardened thighs pillowed to your cheek. He’d taken to watching you most nights, resting your pretty, sleepy head on his lap as Darlin’ rested by his feet – watching you and watching the light grow squares on his floorboards as the morning crept toward a new day.

Today was one of those days.

He’d unfolded himself from your sleeping form this time, taking the dog he’d grown too fond of out the back for the morning bathroom break.

When he’d returned, she’d careened to the front of the house, barks filling the small space with her presence as you pulled open the door.

A little lady and an even littler lady stood on the stoop of Bucky’s space. She of seven, the other of what must have been seventy.

“Hello – sorry to interrupt your morning,” the older lady began, eyes nervous and kind at you and Bucky who had come to stand behind you. “We saw the ad at the local deli and had to come.”

“Milkshake!”

And Darlin’ came bounding to the little girl, paws jerking with excitement across the floorboards as the girl struggled to contain the dog.

Milkshake? The look on Bucky’s bewildered face had you giggling. “I take it this creature belongs to you?”

The lady laughed, eyes bright. “Sure does,” and then she pulled out her phone, motioning you to come look. Photo after photo of Darlin’ – sorry, Milkshake – was littered through slide after slide on the screen. Three legs at birth, three legs again as she got older with the girl’s arms wrapped tight around her, again and again, until the photos and videos showed her as big as she was barking excitement before you right now.

“I’m sorry – we should have called beforehand, but we were overseas and only found out the other day she’d gone missing,” the lady shook her head apologetically. “She must’ve gotten out.”

“Don’t you guys have dog-sitters or boarding or–?”

“Bucky,” you told him gently, feeling his growing anger and frustration that this could have even happened. “It’s okay.”

“Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath, hands drawing back through his hair again as they tended to do. “She has night terrors – what if we hadn’t found her? Huh?”

“Bucky–”

“She doesn’t know any better – she’s just a dog!”

The girl was getting a little afraid now and Bucky regretted his tone immediately. He took a breath. Closed his eyes. Stopped fidgeting, then opened them again.

“Hey darlin’,” he motioned to the dog and she came to him easily. “You’re going to go home, yeah? And you’re going to be good.”

He glanced up at the little girl, expression softening through his youthful face and it was like his whole demeanour changed. You saw the man who always helped those smaller than him – it was written in every gesture as he took the girl’s hand in his own.

“Milkshake,” he paused, feeling the name foreign on his tongue. “Is a really awesome dog, okay? Please look after her. She deserves all the love.”

Unshed tears threatened in the corners of your eyes and you felt your chest grow tight. You fixed your face just so as the girl nodded at his words. You didn’t realise how hard it would be to say goodbye to someone you’d only known a handful of weeks.

The next few minutes passed by in a blur of gestures and words of care and promises to keep in touch and please send photos and goodbye darlin’ as dream-like as the night before. The space felt a lot smaller now without her presence.

You felt a lot smaller without her and Bucky sensed it too. This was it – the beautiful, loving, pure thing that held you together in some strange, circumstantial way was gone and with it, whatever it was that you’d both thrown together to mask some capacity to care.

“I guess this is it.”

And you instantly hated him when he said it.

“No, this is not it – whatever this is, this is not it.”

“Listen,” Bucky took a breath, feeling the regret already settling in his heart and the self-doubt crawling webs over the light. “She was wonderful, beautiful and now she’s gone back to her real family, okay?”

“Are you listening to yourself, Bucky?” You could feel the frustration clawing at your throat, wishing with every fibre of your being that he saw himself how you saw him.

Gentle.

Warm.

Sweet.

Brave and strong.

Sensible, so kind, and so deserving of love.

You could have thrown a sonnet of ways you adored him if he’d only taken the time to open that volume.

“Bucky, why are you doing this to yourself?’

You watched him press the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb; another familiar habit of his that you remembered and adored. He was as silent as the night before when he looked to you at last. Eyes greyer in this lighter than blue and a simmering sadness that he tried to contain yet it tasted bitterly evident in his voice.

“Why would you want to be with me?” he asked you, truly asked you and with every burning part of his soul.

You sighed the hardest of sighs and pulled him to you, arms wrapped tight around his broad and steady form, his waist, trying to press into him all the parts of you that adored and wanted about him by some way of stemming the loneliness he tried to keep covered up and hidden away.

Bucky pulled you closer to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world, nosing your hair and inhaling the familiar scent of you and let himself wonder for a second or two what it would feel like if you chose to stay just a little longer.

“You’re just going to find something you hate and then I’ll push you away again,” he chose to say at last.

“So you’ll push me away again,” you shot back, drawing away to look at him in all his splendour. The way his hair grew a little long around the ears and to the neck that he’d begun keeping a hair-tie on his wrist. How the daylight painted that infinitely special glow in his face as if Darlin’ had been here the entire time. “It’s fine.”

“You’ll find something later,” he replied softly.

“Then I’ll find something later,” you told him, more firmly this time. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

And he realised with a start that he missed you.

So he kissed you and it was like the beginning all over again when the trees were just beginning to green.

---

Masterlist here if you like my trash.

#angstember #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes x reader angst #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes x reader fluff

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