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The door clicks shut behind Bucky. Routine.
Steve doesn’t look up at first, he can’t, he always gives it a few seconds, long enough for the hallway camera to stop recording its timestamp.
“I think you’re the only student I see more outside class than in it,” Steve mutters, voice perfectly neutral.
Bucky drops into the chair like he owns the place. “Maybe your lectures just don’t do it for me.”
Steve finally looks up.
And there it is, that flash of heat behind Bucky’s smile, that thing they never say out loud in this room, not with paper-thin walls and with the admin office downstairs and the security feed that records every time someone opens a door in this wing.
“You can’t keep showing up late, Buck.”
“Thought you liked when I kept you waiting.” A smirk, dangerous, reckless.
Steve sighs, pushes his chair back, stands slowly. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
Steve crosses the small space between them but stops short, just out of reach, enough to make it hurt.
“You know what.”
They stare at each other, no words, only the hum of the heater kicking on and the soft shuffle of Steve’s shoe tapping the floor like he wants to move closer and can’t.
“Do you ever get tired of pretending?” Bucky asks quietly.
“Every damn day.”
Steve’s hand brushes Bucky’s barely, accidentally-on-purpose, not enough to be caught, just enough to feel.
Bucky’s voice softens. “I miss touching you without thinking about who’s watching.”
“You were touching me this morning.” Steve’s tone is all gravel and memory. “In our bed, at 5:42 a.m., if I recall.”
“That doesn’t count. That was before the masks go back on.”
Steve looks at him, something flickering in his expression. “You want to stop hiding?”
Bucky doesn’t answer right away, his fingers tap the edge of the desk and his eyes don’t move from Steve’s.
“I want to stop being afraid.”
There it is, the truth, naked and quiet between them.
Footsteps echo down the hall.
Steve steps back, slightly, just enough.
“We should talk about this later,” he says, voice suddenly professor-smooth. “Send me your latest draft tonight, I’ll take a look.”
And just like that, the masks are back on.
Bucky nods, casual, bored. “Sure thing, Professor.”
He walks to the door, pauses.
And then without turning around, in a voice too low for the hallway mics to catch he says,
“I’ll see you at home.”
The door clicks shut again, another timestamp, another secret sealed in silence.
And Steve leans back against the desk, eyes on the door, heart pounding like he’s still twenty and falling in love for the first time.
Steve has exactly eleven seconds to exhale after Bucky slips out the door with a quiet, “See you at home.”
The door doesn’t even have time to finish swinging shut before it opens again, brisk, confident, and completely unwelcome.
“Knock knock,” Natasha says, already halfway into his office, a folder under one arm and iced coffee in the other.
Steve straightens like he’s just been caught doing something he shouldn’t, which is exactly what Natasha notices first.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Fine,” Steve says quickly, too quickly. “What’s up?”
“Department meeting got moved tomorrow, I figured I’d tell you before someone spams your inbox about it tonight.” She tosses the folder on his desk. “Also, we need to finalize the exam schedule before next week, you still good for Tuesday?”
He nods, flipping open the folder to avoid her eyes. “Yeah, that works.”
Natasha leans against the door, sipping her coffee while watching him.
“So.”
Steve pauses. “So?”
“That was James Barnes who just walked out, wasn’t it?”
Steve freezes just for a second, then: “Yeah, office hours.”
“He’s in your class?”
“Independent study, thesis supervision.”
“Ah,” Natasha says, another sip. “That explains why he’s in here so often.”
Steve doesn’t respond.
She tilts her head, unreadable. “I didn’t realize thesis students got... personalized office hours after ten p.m. last Thursday.”
He looks up, finally. “You were here Thursday?”
“I was walking past, I forgot my tablet, and I saw him leaving.”
She lets that hang in the air, Steve swallows hard.
“He’s working hard,” Steve says. “Struggling with structure, we’ve been doing extra sessions.”
Natasha hums. “Structure, right.”
Her eyes are narrowed just slightly, sharp, she doesn’t say what she’s thinking but Steve’s known her long enough to know that she knows.
“You’re good at keeping things professional,” she adds lightly.
“Always,” Steve says, it’s supposed to come out firm but it sounded defensive.
Natasha pushes off the doorframe, walking toward his desk, lowering her voice just a little. “You know I don’t care who you’re seeing, right?”
Steve’s throat tightens.
She leans in, voice soft but pointed:
“But if you are seeing a student? Even a grad student? You better be damn careful.”
Steve meets her eyes. “It’s not like that.”
She raises a perfectly skeptical brow.
“You sure?” she says.
Silence.
Then, almost gently: “Because you look at him like you’re not pretending.”
Steve doesn’t answer.
Natasha straightens, tosses her empty coffee cup into the bin, and grabs the folder off his desk.
“I’ll handle the exam spreadsheet,” she says. “You’ve got enough on your plate.”
She’s halfway out the door before she adds
“Oh, and Steve?”
He looks up.
“Tell Barnes next time to leave through the side stairwell. The security cam in the east hall just got upgraded.”
And then she’s gone.
Steve slams the front door harder than necessary.
Bucky, already in a t-shirt and pajama pants, looks up from the couch where he’s been waiting, there’s an untouched cup of coffee on the table with a half open laptop and tons of papers, a book open in his lap, but he’s clearly read none of it.
Steve doesn’t speak, just walks into the room like a storm that hasn’t hit yet.
Bucky watches him, cautious. “You okay?”
Steve scoffs softly. “You could say that.”
Bucky closes the book, sets it aside. “Meeting went badly?”
Steve sits, not next to him, across from him, like he needs a second of space to breathe. “Natasha was fine. But a couple of the others…” He trails off, runs a hand over his face.
Bucky leans forward, voice low. “What did they say?”
Steve doesn’t repeat the words, he doesn’t have to.
Bucky sees it in the tightness of his jaw, the red at the tips of his ears, the way he can’t look at him.
Something sharp twists in Bucky’s chest. “Shit, Steve, I didn’t mean-”
“I don’t care what they said.” Steve cuts him off, finally meeting his eyes. “What I care about is that you got caught in the middle of it and that maybe we’ve been too careless.”
There’s silence, that awful kind that settles between two people who care too much.
Bucky looks down. “I’ll be more careful.”
“Buck-”
“No, really.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to put you in that position, I should’ve left through the stairwell, should’ve kept my distance on campus, we only have a few months left, I’ll graduate, and then we can figure everything out, but until then... I’ll stay out of your office, it’s not worth your job.”
Steve stares at him, chest tight, eyes unreadable.
And then, slowly: “If you wanted me to come clean, I would.”
Bucky freezes.
Steve stands, crosses the room, kneels in front of him. “I’d do it tomorrow, hell, tonight, I’d go to the dean, say I broke policy, tell them I drop myself out from your supervision, and if they fire me, fine, I’ll find something else.”
Bucky just stares. “You’d quit your job?”
“I’d walk out the door without a second thought.” Steve’s voice is soft but steady. “Because you? You’re the love of my life.”
Bucky’s throat goes tight. “Steve... don’t say that like it’s easy.”
“It’s not, but it’s true.”
A beat. Bucky blinks fast, once, twice. Then:
“I won’t let you do that.”
Steve tilts his head. “Why not?”
“Because you love your job, you’re good at it, you’ve built something here and I’m not going to let you throw it away for me, just a few more months, then we can be whatever we want, wherever we want.”
Steve watches him, quiet for a moment.
Then he cups Bucky’s face, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones.
“I don’t care where we are,” he says. “I just want it to be with you.”
Bucky leans forward until their foreheads touch.
“I’ll be more careful,” he whispers. “For both of us.”
“I know,” Steve murmurs. “Me too.”
They stay like that for a moment, breathing each other in, grounding each other.
Then Bucky kisses him, soft, slow, like the world outside doesn’t exist, and Steve melts into it like it’s the only thing keeping him standing.
The kiss deepens, not rushed, not frantic, just full, full of things they’ve said, things they can’t yet say, and everything they know is waiting once time stops being the enemy.
They don’t need to go further, they don’t need to speak.
Because in that moment, wrapped in each other’s arms, it’s clear:
They’re not just surviving the secrecy, they’re fighting for the future.
Together.