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Sometimes, what ripped you from your sleep in the early hours of the morning, while the sun hung below the tree, wasn’t the kind of paralyzing, heart-wrenching scream that could tear through you like a knife. It wasn’t always sprinting down the hall at two in the morning or violent shaking, evading swinging fists and broken table lamps.
Sometimes, it was restless movements while he slept; tossing and turning, mumbling under his breath, words that would shatter your heart with every broken ache in his voice. Sometimes, it was clinging to you in his sleep, tears wet on his cheeks, sweat dampening the sheets under him. It was the kind of fear that left a lingering, unsettled feeling long beyond he opened his eyes.
You woke to the dark overcast of shadows draped over the room. Rubbing at your eyes, you reached over for your phone sitting on the bedside table, squinting as an image of Bucky tossing a smile over his shoulder from your vacation in Vienna illuminated the screen.
2:48am.
You sighed, leaning back against the pillow and tugged the sheets further up to your chest. The bed dipped next to you as Bucky turned from his stomach to his back and his metal arm bumped against your hip. It was shockingly cool to the touch for someone who ran as hot as a furnace in his sleep.
You narrowed your eyes, trying to adjust to the lack of light in the room as you watched him. His lips were moving, mumbling something under his breath, but you couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.
“Bucky?” you asked groggily, sitting up as you clicked on the soft hue of the lamp at your bedside.
The yellow light touched over the ripple of his muscles, reflecting in the silver of his arm, revealing the way his hands bunched in the fabric of the sheets so tightly his knuckles had become ghostly white. It exposed the sweat beaded on his forehead, dripping down his brow and dampening the sheets. His head jerked side to side, his breaths labored in pace.
“Bucky,” you called carefully, familiarly, “you’re safe, honey. I need you to wake up for me.”
He clenched his jaw, his whole face scrunching as if a jolt of electricity rushed through his body. His eyes were still shut, trapped. A steady hand reached out to him, having woken him from his nightmares enough to be cautious in your movements, though when you finally put together what he had been mumbling under his breath, you froze in your tracks, hand outstretched before you could touch him.
“No, please,” he murmured, his voice breaking with each syllable, small like a child’s. “N-no more, please. I can’t– I can’t take it.”
Sometimes, you preferred the nights when he screamed.
You swallowed thickly, glancing towards the door and wondering if you should grab Steve. At least when Bucky was pulled from his nightmares with an agonizing scream before he was able to recognize his surroundings again, it was predictable. He’d fight anyone who tried to calm him down, convinced that he was still locked in whatever horrors he saw in his sleep. It was how he gave you a black eye and nearly suffocated you four months into your relationship.
You were a Shield agent, exceptionally qualified, but still human. You didn’t stand a chance against Bucky when he was like that. It took until FRIDAY had alerted Steve for him to pry Bucky’s grip from around your throat.
He refused to let you sleep with him for nearly five weeks after that.
Over time, you’d learned when it was safe to touch him, when to talk him down, how to coax him back to sleep without waking him at all. It was a science. Trial and error that sometimes resulted in bodily injury. You’d gotten better with it, enough so that he hadn’t accidentally hurt you in his sleep for nearly eight months. It had been longer since you needed to call for Steve. You’d found a way to handle the nights he woke up screaming on your own.
But this… this was less predictable.
Swinging your legs off the side of the bed, you quickly rushed around to Bucky’s side. Leaning over him, you brushed the dampened hair from his eyes, tucking it behind his ear. He usually began to relax at that, started to lean into your touch more, let his hands lose their grip on the sheets and still his movements. You sat on the edge of the bed, tracing your fingers down the side of his face, and his breathing only seemed to get worse.
“Sweetheart, it’s alright,” you cooed. “You’re safe here. You’re okay.”
Bucky gritted his teeth, tears slipping past his long black lashes and mixing with the sweat dripping down his face. He shook his head rapidly, unable to pull himself from his dreams.
“Please… no more,” he begged again, each break in his voice tearing at your heart.
You sighed, leaning forward to kiss his forehead before you stood slowly and moved towards the bathroom to grab a cool cloth to attend to his feverish skin. With your back turned, you heard a swift rustling of the sheets and a squeak in the springs of the bed frame.
As you turned around, you were surprised to find Bucky sitting on the side of the bed, gripping at the edge of the mattress. His legs were draped over the side, feet planted on the hardwood.
You froze, watching him as he stilled his upper body, willing his breaths to come in at even pace. His focus held on the baseboard of the wall as his chest rose and fell with every labored breath.
“Bucky?” you called cautiously, taking a steady step towards him. He didn’t move. “Baby? Are you awake?”
Slowly, he looked in your direction, though there was a kind of apprehension, a near hesitancy, to his movement that startled you. His hair obstructed his eyes, but even through the curtain of brunette waves, you could tell his eyes were glued to your feet; his breathing picked up in pace again the longer he looked towards you.
You licked your lips. “Are you okay?”
Only one step forward in his direction and suddenly, he was throwing himself to the floor, scrambling onto his knees. He pressed his forehead down to the hardwood floor by your feet and you gasped as his hands scraped at the panels, trembling. You never imagined a man of his stature appearing so small.
“Please, I can’t take anymore,” he whispered through shaky breaths. He lifted his head, daring to meet your stunned eyes for only a moment before he tore it away; an almost shamefulness lingering behind the shades of blue that made your heart cave in.
“I- I can’t go back to the chair, please,” he begged, his flesh hand touching your feet before he recoiled it away as if he had burned himself. “Please, don’t make me. I’ll do anything. Anything you want. I’m beggin’ ya. Don’t let them take me back there.”
A coopery substance pooled in your mouth and you realized that you had bitten down on your tongue. Bucky pulled his arms under him to stop the shaking, though he wouldn’t risk looking at you again.
It was with a sharp, agonizing pain in your chest as you realized that while Bucky was awake, he was too disoriented to remember who he was or where he was at. The nightmares had blurred the lines between dream and reality.
“Please miss,” Bucky shook his head, sniffling back tears. “I can’t… I can’t…”
You swallowed back the blood in your mouth and slowly knelt down in front of him. You’d only seen him like this once before, when he’d woken up in the middle of the night to a window slamming from the wind of the thunderstorm outside. He’d been as still as stone, frozen, awaiting orders from a Hydra handler when you found him standing in the corner of the room. There was no convincing him of who he was or that he was safe when you found him like that.
The leftover remnants of Hydra’s brainwashing left his personality in pieces; coming out in broken memories in the middle of the night. You only needed to get him to morning. Once he woke again, he’d be himself. It was almost like a reset. Dr. Cho had told you it was all you could do; go along with it, try to help him relax, become whatever character he assigned for you. Challenging him in this state would only confuse him and it would serve no purpose other than prolonging the eventual sleep that would help bring back the man you knew.
It was the worst role you ever had to play.
“No one is going to hurt you, soldier,” you said carefully with a sternness in your voice enough for him to recognize you as his handler. You placed your hand gingerly on his shoulder and he flinched violently at the touch, as if he was expecting something far worse. You drew back your hand immediately.
After a moment of heavy, labored breaths, Bucky lifted his head slowly and you were met with wide, ocean blue eyes swarming with a panic and fear you had never seen in him before. It made your stomach weak.
Bucky clenched at his jaw, considering your words though he was unwilling to move from his knees. He dropped his eyes back to the floor.
“B-But, Zola said-“
“Zola’s not here,” you soothed, trying to ignore the screaming in the back of your head that wondered when Hydra had trained him to kneel before his handlers like this, to bow and avoid eye contact. When had they broken him into obedience? When did they take him apart from the inside out and mutilate his mind until he was an empty shell of his former self?
Judging by the shaking in his shoulders and the desperation etched in his features, this was not the winter soldier. Too emotive. Too afraid.
“Do you know who you are?”
Bucky kept his head down and nodded. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. 32557038.”
His serial number.
You recognized it from the dog tags he kept in the box on top of his dresser after Steve had all but threatened the Smithsonian when they tried to withhold it from him.
Reciting a military serial number was someone prisoners of war did. This version of Bucky, the memory he was trapped in, was from before the brainwashing took effect, from when he was still young and afraid, soon after he’d been taken from the ravine.
This was Bucky before Hydra broke him.
You brushed at your eyes, ridding the tears that had begun to swell before he could see. His hair was still drenched in sweat, his skin flushed and feverish. Even his t-shirt was damp from the remnants of his dreams. There had to be something more you could do for him. You certainly wouldn’t be able to get him back to sleep in this state. Slowly, you stood to your feet.
“Come with me,” you requested, stepping back to give him space to stand. He glanced up at your apprehensively before he lugged himself up on unsteady legs. They trembled beneath him as he stood and you wondered if it was part of the memory or if the adrenaline in the moment was making him weak.
You took a deep breath, trying to steady your own racing heart as you led him to the bathroom. The soft patter of his footsteps behind you served as another reminder of the innocence the used to carry. The Bucky you knew was careful with each step, complete silence as he walked as if hunting prey. He did it when he was alone. It was a second nature to him. He didn’t even have to think about it.
In the forties, Bucky was a Sergeant of the United States Army; someone his men looked to for leadership, for guidance. He was a highly skilled sniper, able to meet his mark from hundreds of feet away even with the technology of his time. Above everything, he was incredibly brave for the cruel world his government threw him into.
But even the strong can be torn to pieces, into shattered memories of who they once were. Pain was a weapon unlike any other.
You closed the lid of the toilet seat, nodded for him to sit and he did so without a second thought. As you learned over him and reached for the faucet of the bath, he sucked in a harsh breath, flinching as your hand came closer. You pulled back sharply, studying the tension in his muscles as he slowly met your eye.
He was preparing for you to hit him.
You had almost forgotten how conditioned Bucky was to pain when you first met him, how he cowered away from any form of touch, even when you’d try to hold his hand or run your fingers over his back. He had only known beatings and pain for so long, he didn’t know how to handle the gentle touch and kindness you approached him with, unable to convince his body of the difference.
The man in front of you was Bucky at the beginning. When he was first learning to expect pain.
“I’m going to run a bath for you, alright?” you told him, gaging his reaction. He stared at you suspiciously, his breaths still coming in more labored than they should. “Reach in and tell me if the water gets too hot.”
As the water filled the tub, you poured a stream of lavender bubble bath under the faucet. White bubbles began to float up to the surface and spread over the top of the water. The sweet smell of the candle Bucky bought you on your third anniversary filled the room. He had bought the matching bubble bath for you a few months later because he loved the smell so much. It was warm, comforting.
Sometimes you’d find him waiting patiently for you through the early hours of the morning, burning the lavender candle, and reading to pass the time before you returned home from a mission. When he was gone, you’d find yourself using lavender body wash and lotion, surrounding yourself in the scent, because it reminded you of him, of late nights and curling against his chest.
You hoped, in some far-off corner of his memory, it would remind him of you, too.
You nodded to him and Bucky slipped his flesh hand into the water, sighing reflexively at the feeling. You smiled softly, relieved to grant him even an ounce of indulgence in this state. You stood to your feet and stored the lavender soap in the cabinet.
“Why don’t you go ahead and undress while I–“
You moved to turn your back to him, giving this version of Bucky some privacy, the one who didn’t know you as his girlfriend of the last three years, when he started to strip before you could turn around. He folded the clothes neatly into a pile and set them on the sink.
A numb expression etched on his face as he stood naked before you. It became painstakingly clear it was familiar to him. Others had asked– no, ordered—him to do that before; to strip in front of them. Enough so that he didn’t question it, didn’t fight it, or ask to leave on even the thin layer of his undergarments. His cheeks were flushed, his gaze by your feet. A rage boiled in your stomach, hand clenching into a fist, imagining the Hydra soldiers laughing at him, humiliating him.
When you noticed his eyes falling on your closed fist and the slight clench of his jaw muscle in reaction, you immediately released your grip. A prickling feeling left behind in your palm from where your nails had dug into the skin. You offered him an encouraging smile.
“Go on, get in,” you said gently, nodding to the tub.
Bucky swallowed, turning to face the porcelain bath. It was one you had spent countless hours in together after grueling assignments, massaging the tender muscles and washing the grime of the mission from one another; one where you’d read contently under the cover of lavender bubbles while Bucky sat on the floor next to you, humming along to a playlist Sam had put together for him.
Bucky stepped into the water and slowly let himself sink down until he sat, his legs stretched out, arms resting on the rim. He tried to suppress the relief that washed over his features, hiding from you that he felt even an ounce of reprieve, aware that it could be taken away at any moment. Even when he relaxed, the stolen glances in your direction as you gathered his shampoo and conditioner didn’t slip your notice. There was clearly something he wanted to say, but he was biting his tongue; something he must have learned to do quickly when Hydra first took him.
“Are you okay?” you asked carefully, raising an eyebrow as you knelt down by the tub and placed the bottles next to you. Bucky narrowed his eyes, almost confused by the question.
“You can speak freely, Sergeant Barnes.”
A moment of pause as you turned the faucet off and a silence took over. Steam radiated up from the water, fogging the mirrors over the sink and bringing out goosebumps in your skin. You breathed in the warm air, closing your eyes for a moment and reveling in the sweet, floral scent.
“Why are you doing this?”
His voice was so small, so fragile, it nearly broke you as you opened your eyes to look at him. Your lips parted in a loss, unable to find an answer for his question. When you didn’t respond, he continued, nodding to himself, finding a confidence in his newfound ability to speak his mind.
“The others… They don’t care if I’m covered in filth,” he continued, words picking up in pace as if someone else could walk in at any moment and he’d lose his chance to speak. “They treat me like I’m something other than human. Won’t even say my name. They just call me ‘soldier’ or… ‘asset,’ as if that’s supposed to mean something to me. They barely take the time to feed me between dragging me off to Zola for testing or to that goddamn chair that makes my whole body feel like it’s on fire, let alone ask me if I’m okay or help clean me up. It doesn’t make any sense. You don’t make any sense and I don’t… I don’t understand what you want from me.”
He let out a heavy exhale, breathing heavy now. You could only stare at him; words caught far back in your throat. This man, who had known nothing but pain and darkness since he fell from that train, who was so confused and bewildered at the idea of anyone treating him with even a semblance of kindness, that he had no choice but to believe that you had some form of cruel, ulterior intentions. It was all he came to expect in Hydra.
In your moment of hesitation, his eyes began to widen in realization of what he said, shoulders slumping shamefully as he dropped his gaze to the bubbled surface of the water.
“I’m s-sorry,” he stuttered quickly, the water splashing up to the edges of the bath as he twisted his hands nervously in his lap. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Please, don’t– don’t tell them I said that. I’ll keep quiet. Forgive me.”
“You don’t have to apologize, honey,” you soothed, the pet name slipping out reflexively. His eyes met yours, perplexed to be called such an affectionate name, before he let them fall away again.
“I’m going to wash your hair for you. Is that okay?” you asked and the look of shock on his face didn’t slip your notice. It had been a long time since anyone asked his permission for anything. He nodded carefully.
With a deep breath, you grabbed the empty cup next to you and dipped it into the tub. You gestured for him to tilt his head back and he did so willingly. The water cascaded down his hair as you tipped the cup over his scalp, shielding his eyes. He hummed at the feeling.
“What you say here will always be between us,” you told him, letting your fingers weave through his hair. “You’re safe when you’re with me.”
Bucky swallowed, pulling his head back up after you set the cup down at your side. He looked so much younger with it slicked back from his eyes; or, perhaps it was just the innocence he carried from the man he was in the forties. You rubbed some of his shampoo between your hands.
“Try to relax for me,” you said as the sweet floral scent wafted from your fingertips.
He nodded slowly, apprehensively, as you began to massage the shampoo into his hair and his eyes fluttered shut at the feeling. You took a little longer than you needed to work it into his roots, studying the way the tension began to melt from his shoulders the longer you worked. You washed away the shampoo and as you squeezed a glob of the conditioner onto your palm, you reminded him again exactly what your intentions were before you touched him.
As you ran your fingers through his hair, you found your eyes scanning over his body, searching for fresh scars. He had been on a few missions with Steve in Russia, taking out Hydra bases and burning them to the ground, while you and Sam were on a month-long reconnaissance OP in Bratislava. You had only gotten home a few hours prior to find Bucky already asleep in the bed, lying on his stomach, hangs tucked up under the pillow as the glow of the moonlight touched over the muscles on his back. He always looked so peaceful when he slept, when he was void of the nightmares. It gave him back an innocence he had lost decades ago.
The marring on his left shoulder remained unchanged, along with several long scars his back and his abdomen; some from his time in Hydra, some from previous missions with the Avengers. The only new marking you could find was a dark red line along the inside of his bicep; looked like a scrape from a knife, one he hasn’t been able to dodge in time. As you worked the conditioner through the ends of his hair, you found yourself studying the scar, wondering when along the last month he got it. He never mentioned getting hurt on any of the phone calls you made to him over the secured line while you had been away. It looked like it had time to heal at least.
“Can I…” Bucky started nervously, his timid voice drawing you from your daze. He took a deep breath. “Can I ask you a question?”
You continued running your fingers through his hair and offered him a smile. “Of course.”
“Why are you being so kind to me?”
A burning ache tugged at your chest and you withdrew your hands, sitting back on your heels. He struggled to meet your eye, gaze darting at the fading bubbles in the water, to the floor mat by the bath, to the colorful stripes of your sleep shorts, and then finally to your eyes.
“Something doesn’t feel right. Like I’m dreaming, maybe,” he continued as tears started to well behind the shades of blue. “No one in Hydra is kind to me.”
You took a deep breath, offering him a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. You dipped your hands into the water, ridding your palms of the conditioner and drying them on your towel, before your reached forward and cupped the side of Bucky’s face. You brushed your thumb over his cheekbone and he sighed contently. His eyes fluttered shut, leaning into the touch.
“You have a long road ahead of you, sweetheart,” you said sadly, tears brimming in your eyes, “but I promise, there’s an end to this tunnel. You’ll come out the other side. You’ll find light and love and family again. You just have to get through this part first, okay? I promise, we’re waiting for you.”
He nodded slowly, almost as if in a trance, and his lids were falling heavy. It was something you had thought about often; the words you wished you could have said to him when he was with Hydra, to the younger version of the man you loved who had decades of pain awaiting him before he found his way home.
Bucky yawned then and you reached for the cup to wash the conditioner from his hair. You ran your fingers against his scalp, scratching delicately as the water washed over him. His eyes drifted closed as you worked, his need for sleep starting to pull him under.
Once you were finished, you removed the stopper from the drain and grabbed Bucky a fresh towel. You instructed him to dry off and handed him a fresh set of pajamas as you went back to the bedroom to change the sheets. It only took a few minutes but when you came back to the bathroom to retrieve Bucky, a pang burned in your chest to find him standing rigid by the tub, patiently waiting for his next orders.
“Come on, darling,” you said as you slipped your hand into his, his exhaustion overriding the part of his consciousness clinging to the man he was in the forties that would have questioned it.
You led him back to his side of the bed and nodded for him to lay down. As he struggled to get comfortable atop a mattress he likely found far too soft for the memory he was used to, you pulled the thin layer of clean sheets up to his waist.
He yawned again, eye lids falling heavy as he turned to his right side. You bent down and kissed the crown of his head gently before pulling away.
You walked over to your side of the bed, flicked the switch to the lamp off and allowed the room to cover in darkness again. Bucky sighed contently as you slipped under the sheets next to him.
“You’re safe here, sweetheart. Go to sleep. I’ll be here in the morning,” you whispered, tracing careful lines in the metal plates of his left arm. He hummed, allowing his eyes to close as he curled up against you.
The moment you were shielded from his view, you brushed a tear from the bridge of your nose you hadn’t realized slipped past. Then, you held your breath until you heard the soft, gentle vibration of his snores filling the otherwise silence of the room.
The tension in your chest broke and relief rushed through you enough that you had to choke back a sob before it could wake him. You gripped your hand over your mouth to muffle the sound as it came, brushing your eyes over the pillow case enough to leave behind marks.
Once you were able to catch your breath again, you inched yourself closer, pressing your forehead to his chest, desperate to feel him against you. Bucky’s arms snaked around your waist, tugging you closer to him reflexively in his sleep. You listened carefully for the steady beat of his heart.
Then, you waited for morning.
***
You woke a few hours later to a gentle light seeping through the window and a breeze rustling the ends of the curtains, prickling goosebumps on your arms. A soft, tingling sensation drew circles along your back as you let your eyes flutter open to find Bucky watching you. Blue eyes met yours for only a moment, offering you an attempt of a smile that didn’t quite reach above his lips. The soothing motion of Bucky’s fingers over your spine slipped away as he pulled his hand from you.
You watched him carefully as his gaze flickered to the sheets, away from your face and the concerned look in your eyes. It was in that moment you knew your Bucky was lying next to you again. Always so cautious, eyes filled with a sweet kind of adoration and a guilt that never seemed to ease. You pulled yourself closer to him, moving to kiss his shoulder when he sat up in the bed, just out of your reach. With his back to you, knees pulling up towards his chest, he began raking his hands through his dampened hair.
“I’m so sorry, doll,” he muttered feebly, stealing a glance back at you.
You pushed yourself up next to him, hugging your arms around his right bicep and leaning into his shoulder. You didn’t say anything, not for a while, as you ran your fingers in steady lines up and down his arm; careful soothing motions reminiscent of the ones he woke you to along your back. It was something the two of you often did for one another when things got hard. It grounded you in a way little else could.
Once the tension began to melt from his muscles, you asked, “how much do you remember?”
Bucky sighed, a moment too long passing before he could find it in himself to answer. “Enough to know I scared you.”
“You didn’t hurt me, Buck.”
“I know.” He took a deep breath, shame littered in his voice enough to break your heart. “But I still scared you. Whatever I saw in my nightmare, it disoriented me enough to make me think I was back at Hydra in the early days. I hardly remember any of that myself but… it felt so real. Felt like I was really there; like it was happening for the first time all over again.”
He paused. Then, “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”
Sensing there was more he needed to say, you stayed silent, continuing to draw patterns on his arm to help ease him through it, to remind him that you were still there. Sometimes he just needed you to listen and you had grown used to reading his signs before he could realize them himself. He watched as your nails gently traced over his forearm and up over his elbow, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.
“You took care of me. Took care of him,” Bucky continued after a while. He had a habit of separating himself from his past enough to describe it almost being entirely different people. His lives were divided by Hydra into three; Bucky as he is today, the winter soldier, and who he was before they dove deep into his brain and tossed it to a blender.
Bucky brought his hand up to grab yours in his own, intertwining your fingers and squeezing it lightly. He lifted your hand to his lips and kissed at your knuckles, individually, purposefully, like you were made of something precious.
“After all this time, even when I can’t remember what they did to me, I remember the pain… and the fear. Maybe, when the nightmares take me back there, I’ll remember you, too. Even if you weren’t really there.”
You nodded, your free hand slipping up to cup the side of his face and bring his lips to yours. A wetness brushed against your cheek; tears you realized didn’t belong to you.
The kiss was chaste, gentle, filled with a kind of absolution he needed for the guilt he so tirelessly carried. You melded so perfectly together, lips brushing over one another, fingers curling into his hair and scratching gently at the nape of his neck. After some time, Bucky pulled back, breathless, resting his forehead against yours as you wiped the tear running down his cheek.
When he settled, you tugged him to lie back on the bed and curled up against his chest. He wrapped his arm around you, running his fingers in delicate patterns along your back. You stayed like that for a few content moments before he spoke again.
“I think I should call Shuri,” Bucky admitted sadly. “I can’t let them keep getting in my head like this. Even without the trigger words, they still have a hold on me and I… I can’t risk losing you over it.”
You raised an eyebrow as his last sentence trailed off in an almost whisper. “You’re not losing me for anything, Buck.”
Bucky sighed and you could feel the heavy rise and fall of his chest under your head. “I’m a mess, Y/n. I don’t always know who I am when I wake up and sometimes… I’m not always the man you know me to be. Sometimes I wonder if you really know what you got yourself into being with me.”
You propped yourself up on his chest, determined to meet his eye. You didn’t let up until you were met with shades of blue.
“I love you, James,” you pressed earnestly. “Every part of you. Every version of you, no matter who I wake up to. I knew about your past from the day we met. It didn’t scare me then and it doesn’t scare me now. What does scare me is the idea of you going through it alone.”
Bucky nodded slowly, though you knew it would take a while before he believed you. You kissed his cheek and settled back against his chest, hugging him tightly as you wrapped your arm around over his waist.
“I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you,” Bucky mumbled, so quiet under his breath you almost missed it. “You’re too good to me.”
You looked up at him, met with ocean blue eyes clouded over in shades of guilt. It was something he was working on, something he’d made a good amount of progress in, but there would always be nights that pulled him back a few steps. Recovery wasn’t a linear line. It was filled with twists and turns, highs and lows, and sometimes he needed reminding he wasn’t alone in it.
“You’re allowed good things, Bucky,” you urged, pressing a kiss to his jawline. “You’re allowed to be taken care of. You’re allowed to be loved and adored. You deserve that. After all the pain you’ve been through, you deserve love.”
You could see the contemplation over his features as he processed your words. It wasn’t easy for him to accept, not after what he had done in the decades before he knew you. After some time, he took a deep breath, the rise and fall of his chest drawing back to a steadier pattern, and pressed his lips to your forehead.
“Thank you for bringing me back,” he said against your hairline, the warmth of his breath brushing against your skin. You curled up against him, breathing in the comforting scent of his conditioner and the lavender wash upon his skin.
Something so gentle upon a man so lethal.
“Always.”