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Bucky notices the pattern long before he ever names it.
At first, it's the little things. Things he wouldn't notice if his soul wasn't tied to yours. Infinitesimal, but by no means something he could justly brush off once the pattern solidified.
It started with cancelled training sessions. And how could he fail to notice the way you continuously dodged the common floor as if it were set ablaze? You'd show up late to dinner when everyone had already finished, and some nights you wouldn't show at all.
On their own, they don't quite set up the alarms. Everybody has off days; everyone needs to take time for themselves—he'd know that better than anyone. But this is different.
When you are around the team, you move as if you're bracing for impact, shoulders hunched and eyes distant. You disappear into yourself like someone bracing for a storm they've survived time and time again, every instinct turned inward, conserving what little warmth you have left.
It happens every month, like clockwork. As if your brain were hardwired to self-destruct at the same time every month.
He tells himself it's not his place. What right does he have to barge into your life demanding answers? Because he could easily delude himself into thinking it's nothing. The others haven't noticed—but then again, none of them look the way he does.
He respects you, and he respects your privacy. If you want to talk, you will, and until then, he'll be right within reach. If you'd want help, you'd ask for it.
But you never do.
And he's never seen it this bad before.
He watches you slip out of common rooms, excuses clipped and practised. Watches you emerge from the bathroom with red-rimmed eyes and drenched sleeves, jaw tight and eyes ready to burst past the dam you’ve built up. He hears the way your voice wobbles when someone asks you how you’re doing. The way you excuse yourself with hardly a word as Walker makes an ill-timed joke, voice teetering on the edge of a full-on meltdown.
You are the furthest thing from okay.
And maybe, selfishly, part of him hates that you don’t come to him. Because he would be there in a heartbeat. Because he’s already there, standing on the fringes. Sniper eyes trained on your body language as if it were a mission imperative. He always makes himself available when he notices the pattern reemerge. Hell, half the nights he spends camped out on the common room couch in case you wander up like a ghost in search of soothing. The other half he spends with an ear to his bedroom door in case you emerge from your cavern.
He cares. Too much. Has for a while now.
So when you don't come out for supper, when the food has been packed away, and the lights turned off, and everyone has retired to their rooms, Bucky has decided he's had enough of waiting for you to come to him.
Bucky knocks at your door, soft and unobtrusive.
No answer.
He knocks again, a little firmer this time. "It's Bucky."
His hearing picks up the muffled sob that escapes your lips. Something ugly and violent twists hard in his chest.
He opens the door slowly, just enough to peek inside. The overhead lights are out; the only lighting is that of the city that never sleeps peeking through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the strung-up fairy lights he had helped you set up around the room. His eyes immediately land on the figure curled up underneath a mound of blankets. You’re shaking in an effort to stay silent; ugly sniffles and breaths of held sobs cut through the silence.
Any thought of waiting until you're ready dies right then and there.
“Hey,” he murmurs, not wanting to break the quiet of the room as he steps inside. “Hey, sweetheart.”
He can see the way you flinch at his words, hands coming up to furiously scrub the tears from your face.
“Sorry,” you can barely form the words over the sobs that beg to be released. “Sorry, just… could you maybe come back later? Right now’s not… not a good time.”
Bucky frowns. He shuts the door behind him to show you he’s not going anywhere. “Do you really want me to go?”
You sniffle, turning away from him and curling your legs up to your chest. “I want to be alone.”
“You’ve been alone all day.” Bucky leans against the door, arms crossed. He wants, no, needs to get to the bottom of this. Whatever has you feeling this way. He needs to bleed the life out of your suffering. To smother it and make sure it never haunts you again. Because you should never feel like this, never feel like you have to hide in the dark and cry yourself dry. "Ava made your favourite. Did you forget?"
He watches your shoulders tense, breath hitching violently. "Not hungry."
Guilt laces your tone, no doubt because you're aware she made it especially for you. Bucky frowns, hesitating in the cavernous space between your bed and the door. He feels as if he's walked into a minefield, one step away from destroying everything the two of you have built over the months you've come to know each other. But he won't walk away, not when you're muffling sobs into a blanket and refusing to eat.
"Wanna talk?" Bucky cringes as soon as the words leave his mouth. He sounds just like Steve when they had been on the run. He couldn't even count the number of times he had heard some iteration of that phrase from him. He meant the best, Bucky knows it with all his heart, but sometimes he just wanted to throttle Steve.
"I said you should leave," you snap, defences raising before immediately crumbling down; your foundations are so weak you can’t build any emotion that doesn’t come crashing back down. “Sorry… I don’t… just go, please.”
He watches you curl into yourself. Equal parts mortified and disgusted with yourself. Your emotions rise like the tide, pulling back too far, leaving everything exposed and aching in its wake.
“It’s okay,” he reassures you, pushing off of the door to come closer. “You’re obviously hurting right now. My ego can take it.”
"That's not-" you scoff, brows twisting up into the most, were it not for the tears in your eyes, adorably bewildered expression- "I'm not good company right now."
Bucky shrugs it off. "Who said I was looking for good company? Maybe I just wanted your company."
"I can't… I'm not going to… You shouldn't be here."
"Everyone has bad days," he isn't quite able to hide the affection in his voice when he says your name.
"It's not that… Well, it is but… You don’t understand, Bucky. I… I don’t even… I can’t explain why… I’m just-” your voice cracks- “I’m just broken, I guess.”
The words hang between you both, heavy like lead. He's never heard you this vulnerable. He wasn't expecting answers, not tonight. But what really gets to him is the finality in your voice. Your tone tries to leave no room for argument. As if you're stating fact rather than self-depreciation. And just looking at you in this moment tells him that you believe your poisoned-laced words without a shred of doubt.
Bucky’s throat tightens.
He ventures to sit on the bed beside you, careful not to get too close. “You’re not broken.” His voice is firm, leaving no room for argument.
The laugh that follows makes his stomach churn. It’s bitter like coffee that’s been brewed far too hot for far too long. Sharp like his best pair of knives. Filled with enough self-hatred to make a grown man weep. It's such a contrast to the laugh you usually share when someone tells a joke or when Walker does something stupid; the kind of laugh that Bucky's certain could light up the universe.
Bucky didn't think he would hear a laugh from you that he'd never want to hear again.
“You only think that because you only know the parts of me I let you see.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to know more.” Bucky hopes through the darkness you can’t see the way the tips of his ears flush. “If you’d let me, I’d love to get to know all of you.”
“You can’t–you can’t say that, Bucky. You don’t even know-”
“So tell me.”
You pause, blinking up at him, tears still shining on your waterline. “You’re going to run,” you challenge.
“What about me makes you think I’ll run, huh? There ain’t nothing you could do that would scare me. Do you know who I am? Who I was?”
“That’s different,” you dismiss him, fingers curling tight around the blanket; your last line of defence against his relentless pursuit.
“How?”
“Because. It’s… It can’t be explained. I… I can’t explain it; the doctors don’t care to explain it. There’s… there’s nothing anyone can do.”
The word doctors sends a chill through his body. He knew there was something wrong, but… if it was bad enough to have to reach out to doctors…
“What… what exactly is happening?” Bucky furrows his brows. Were you ill? Were you in pain? Why didn’t you tell anyone?
You bury your face in your hands, mumbling something that’s unintelligible against your skin. Bucky tries to be patient, but when forced to reckon with the fact that you could very well be suffering an affliction that could bring about your end faster than he could have ever predicted, he can only stay quiet for so long.
“Please, Sweetheart, talk to me.” He reaches up to take your hands from your face. Cradling them in his own, as if they were porcelain, he tries to meet your water-stained eyes. “I want to help you, but I can’t very well do that if ya keep everything to yourself.”
Tears begin to spill over your waterline, falling down your face in a sight that’s sure to haunt his nightmares to come. “I feel insane, Bucky. He tells me that it’s not a big deal, that—that I’m just being dramatic, but I… it feels like someone has… has ripped my heart like right out of my chest. And… and I was fine yesterday! That’s, I think, the worst part of it all. It’s—I fucking hate it! I can’t stop crying over the stupidest shit and—and I can’t think straight, and everything feels so… so pointless.”
A brick lodges in Bucky’s throat, rendering him speechless. He’s helpless, watching you fall apart right in front of his eyes. The first question on his lips is, Who? Who would dare make you feel as if your feelings weren’t real, as if your pain wasn’t real. But it gets trapped on his tongue, just like all the other pathetic excuses for comfort his brain brings forth.
You look away from him then, hands leaving his more cold and empty than he’s ever felt before. eyes find the textured blanket tangled on your lap. You trace the pattern with your finger. He almost brings his newly freed hands to wipe away the waterfall cascading down your face or to maybe bring your hands back into his. In the end, he just sits there, frozen and wondering how the hell he’s supposed to fix this.
“I just keep thinking,” you murmur, fingernail scratching one of the lines on your blanket, “that it wouldn’t matter if I just… wasn’t here anymore. That everyone would be better off if I just…”
You don’t need to finish the sentence.
Because he sees it.
The way he’d knock on your door after a too-long patch of radio silence. The way he’d call out the pet name he’d affectionately appointed you with. The way his heart would sink straight down to hell when he saw you lying on the ground. The way he’d clutch you to his body, every part of you so, so cold. He’d scream your name; he’d hold you to his chest and pray to a god he stopped believing in since the War. He’d cry and cry and cry, staining your clothes with his grief until someone tore him away from your lifeless body.
He wonders how many times that had come close to being a reality. How many times you had curled up in your bed thinking that was the only escape as he sat waiting for you. How many times you had to stitch yourself back together when there were people who loved you just steps away. How many times it had almost been the last.
“We wouldn’t,” he says, voice catching on the last syllable. Because even the thought of a world without your light was too much to bear. “Be better off, that is.”
A heavy silence settles over the two of you. Even the air feels thick and heavy; maybe that’s just because he’s having a hard time breathing around the ugly truth. To know that all of these months you have been drowning in your own mind with no help, to know that he did nothing to help pull you out of the depths of your despair, it cuts like a knife. He thought he was doing the right thing, thought his intrusion would be unwanted, and it would be better if he waited. He left you to suffer on your own.
And the worst part of it all is that he knows if the roles were reversed, you wouldn’t have hesitated. The proof is there from lingering memories of sitting together on the couch or in the training room, and in some rare cases his own room. The way you sat with him in silence. You knew exactly what he needed without even having to ask. You didn’t turn the TV on, you didn’t try to coax answers out of him, you just sat there with him, doing nothing but being a steady presence by his side. All this time, he was so scared to be pushed away that he never even bothered to try.
You probably felt the same that first night you had found him staring at the black screen of the television, his mind a thousand yards away. But regardless of the possibility that he wouldn’t be accepting of your company, you sat down with him anyway, the sleeves of your sweatshirt hanging over your hands as you cupped your favourite mug and cradled it to your chest. Bucky had hardly known you then, and you him. But you were still there, unabashed in your conviction to not leave him alone despite having only just joined the team.
“I almost relapsed.” The words are so quiet, he almost could’ve sworn he made them up. But when he looks at your face, he sees the way your face pinches, disgust warring with your features.
Bucky swallows around the brick lodged in his throat. “Relapsed?”
You tuck your head further down, shrinking in on yourself as if that would make you invisible. Shame heats your face as you open and close your mouth, trying to bring the words out into the open. “I used to um… I used to… god this is… so hard to say out loud.”
Bucky gives you the time you need. He doesn’t try to fill in the blanks, to try and voice what you so desperately need to get out in the open himself. His hand finds its way back to yours, the one that’s begun to dig into the flesh of your thigh through your thin pyjama pants.
You take a breath. “I used to hurt myself. I try not to anymore, but… it’s hard.”
Bucky’s stomach swirls. He’s seen the scars, of course he has. But they all looked so faded. Like a distant memory. Something that was to be left in the past to stay. He wonders if you would have taken metal to your skin once more if he hadn’t barged into your downward spiral. Wonders if he was just a few minutes later, if he would’ve opened your door to see glinting metal and bloody wrists.
Bucky reaches for you then. He pulls you into his arms before you can even think to retreat. It’s only for half a second that you stiffen, poised to push him away, but you don’t. No, you collapse into him under the weight of everything you’ve shared and everything you haven’t. Your bones melt to putty as he holds you to his chest, his flesh hand rubbing your back in an attempt to soothe you. And then, you begin to cry. You sob so hard, it steals the breath from your lungs, leaving you gasping for air as you fist the material of his faded Henley. He continues to comfort you the best he knows how, ignoring how his eyes are beginning to shine as well. His heart continues to crack open as you tremble in his arms, shaking apart like a flower being tossed around in a hurricane.
“I don’t… Why does it get this bad?” Bucky asks when your sobs have subsided. “How can I fix it?”
You shake your head against his chest, hands still clenched around his shirt as if terrified that he’d let you go. As if he ever wanted to let you go now that he knows just how close he came to losing you. “There’s nothing that can fix it, Bucky. I told you… I’m broken.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Even after I’ve soaked your shirt with snot and tears?”
Bucky huffs. “Even still.” He pauses. “I noticed that it only gets really bad at the same time every month. Why is that? Did something happen around that time, or… I don’t know-”
“You noticed?” You pull away from him then, your red-rimmed eyes wide as they stare up at his face.
“Hard not to-” Bucky backtracks when he sees your face crumble- “I’ve uh, I notice things that most people don’t—been trained to actually. I don’t think the others have noticed—not as much as me at least.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
He watches you sniffle, your hands coming up to wipe away the remaining moisture clinging to your skin. And he wishes that he could prevent this from happening again. Wishes to banish the dark cloud from your mind before it even begins. Because you don’t deserve whatever’s making you feel so down.
“Would there be a way to prevent it from getting this bad?” Bucky asks. “No matter how much I wish you would, you don’t have to tell me what it is if you don’t want, but is there anything I can do?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you… It’s just…” You trail off, face heating under his scrutiny. “It’s… I don’t want you to think… Well, my doctor… he, he thinks I’m just… exaggerating.”
Resentment courses through Bucky for a man he doesn’t even know. How could anyone take such serious words, such serious circumstances lightly? Even if you were exaggerating, which you’re not, doesn’t he have a duty, as a doctor, to help? Because even if someone were exaggerating about their mental health, there’s clearly an underlying issue.
“That’s bullshit,” Bucky finds himself spitting out with a vitriol he didn’t know he was capable of.
“You—I haven’t even said what it is yet!” Your protest falls on deaf ears.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Bucky,” you sigh, burying your face in your hands. You mumble something into your palms, the words lost to his ears.
“What was that?”
“It’s because I’m on my period.” Your voice is laced with shame, face twisted as if you’re preparing for him to storm out, expecting him to belittle you or agree with your idiotic doctor.
Bucky won’t say he understands it. Because he doesn’t. Not by a long shot. A woman’s monthly was not something widely discussed when he was growing up. In fact, it was something to be hidden, something to be ashamed of as far as he knew. He had grown up with a mother and sisters, so he knows that they exist, but that’s about it.
“Your… period… causes this?” Bucky questions. Did all women have to go through this monthly? How would he not have noticed his mother or sisters falling into such a depression?
He immediately regrets how he formed the question, wishing he could shove the words back down his throat, but it’s too late. You’re already retreating into yourself, pulling your body further from his, eyes growing glassy. “I know. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t—it’s-”
“It’s not stupid.” Bucky reaches for your hands, attempting to anchor you to him so you don’t drift away. “I just… I didn’t know that it could cause… this.”
“It’s not really something that’s been studied… or well documented. My doctor says I’m just being dramatic, and I am. It’s not like… It’s not like I really have a reason to feel… like this. I just… whenever it happens it feels like the world is ending, like everything is pointless and-” You cut yourself off with a shake of your head.
“I’m sorry,” you say. “You didn’t ask for any of this shit-”
“Yes, I did. Don’t you remember me tellin’ you that I want to know what’s going on?”
“Well, yes, but… but it’s not like something you could fix. The same damn thing is going to happen next month and the month after that. I know the pattern, but I can never stop it. You might as well just give up whilst you’re ahead.”
Bucky doesn’t even attempt to hide how affronted he is by your suggestion. How could he ever leave you when he now knows the depths of your suffering? No matter how inexplicable, no matter how inevitable, he would stand by you to the end of the earth if it meant you didn’t have to fight this alone.
You notice him about to open his mouth to protest, so you quickly jump in before he can get a word in. “I can handle this. I’ve been doing this long enough to-”
“You shouldn’t deprive yourself of comfort.” His voice shakes just slightly, but it’s enough that even he knows you don’t miss it.
“I wanted to wait,” he admits quietly, his thumb rubbing up and down your hand. “Thought you’d come to me when you were ready–or even one of the others. But watching you tear apart at the seams every month and pretend you’re fine?” He exhales shakily. “I just can’t do it anymore.”
The way you look up at him steals the breath straight out of his lungs. It’s as if, instead of admitting that he had common human decency, he had admitted to hanging all the stars in the galaxy just for you. Unable to bear your gaze, he brings you into his arms.
You cling to him like he’s the only solid thing left on this earth. He holds onto you as if he had lost you. Simultaneously trying to forget that he almost had.
“I’ve wanted to take care of you for a long time,” he adds, almost too soft to hear. “Didn’t want to overstep. Didn’t think it was my place.”
The confession slips out before either of you are ready for it, but he doesn’t take it back. How could he when the words ring true?
You, so tired from carrying this weight for all these years, collapse under his words. You cry into his chest until your body gives out, until the thoughts quiet enough to breathe around them. Bucky stays with you through it all—through the apologies, the shaking, the whispered self-loathing. And though it pains him greatly to witness this, to hear of the awful things you have to say about yourself, he would go through this a hundred times just to make sure you never had to go through this ever again.
He only leaves your side once, and that’s to get food for your body that hasn’t eaten in far too long. And he praises you, even if the only thing you can get down is a piece of lightly buttered toast.
Later, when the tower is dark and still, he lies beside you without question. One arm wraps around your waist, firm and protective, his chin resting against your head.
You fall asleep like that, face pressed into his chest, tear tracks drying on your skin.
—
Morning comes softly.
It seeps in slowly, pale light edging around the curtains like it’s unsure whether it’s welcome. The tower is unusually still—no clatter from the kitchen, no voices echoing down the hall. Just the soft steady sound of your breathing against Bucky’s chest.
He wakes before you do, as he always does.
For a few seconds, instincts kick in. He assesses the room, notes exits, catalogues sounds. Then awareness settles, and he remembers where he is. Who he’s holding.
His breath hitches in his chest as he looks down. You’re curled into him, one arm draped across his torso, fingers slack with sleep. Your face is relaxed in a way he doesn’t get to see often, tension finally eased out of the lines around your mouth. There are faint tear tracks still visible on your cheeks, just enough to remind him of how hard the night was.
How hard you were on yourself.
His chest tightens.
Bucky doesn’t move. Doesn’t even breathe deeper. He’s terrified that if he shifts, you’ll wake up and the fragile peace will shatter, that you’ll pull away, embarrassed, apologising for taking up space you were never a burden in.
So he stays still and lets himself look.
He traces the quiet details instead: the way your lashes rest against your skin, the slight hitch in your breath every few seconds, the warmth of you pressed against him like your body decided, without even asking permission, that he was safe.
That thought nearly undoes him.
You trusted him. Even when you couldn’t trust yourself.
He wonders how many mornings you’ve woken up alone after enduring a night of your own personal hell. How many times you’ve cried yourself empty and then dragged yourself through the next day as if nothing had happened. The idea sits heavy in his chest, sharp and aching.
His thumb lifts, almost without his permission, brushing gently beneath your eye where tears had dried. As if he could wipe them away like he wanted to the night before. The touch is feather light, reverent. You don’t flinch away from it. No, you lean into it, like some part of you recognises comfort even in your sleep.
Bucky swallows hard.
This is what no one ever told him. How the way wanting someone sneaks up on a person in quiet moments like this. Not loud or desperate, passion that ignites like a supernova only to collapse into a black hole of nothingness. No, this is steady; it’s soft, and deep, and so, so real.
You shift a few minutes later, blinking awake slowly. Confusion flickers across your face as you take in the room, the light, the fact that you’re wrapped around him like vines on a wall.
He sees the instant your awareness hits.
“Oh,” you murmur, voice rough with sleep.
He waits. Doesn’t rush you or loosen his hold.
Your first instinct is shame—he can see it flicker across your expression like a reflex. You pull back just slightly, enough to fully look at him.
“You really didn’t have to stay.” Bucky hates the tone your voice takes on when you believe yourself to be an imposition. As if taking care of you was that much of a burden. As if you didn’t deserve it.
There’s no joking in his reply. Not after the night you just had. Not after watching you fall apart in his arms. Because after learning what you had almost done to yourself, well, he doesn’t want to hide anymore. And if his feelings are unrequited, he’ll make sure you have someone else to take care of you, so that you won’t be in the awkward position of dealing with him any more than necessary. All he wants is for you to know just how deeply you are loved. To know just how much you matter. “I wanted to.”
You study him as if trying to find a hidden meaning behind those simple words. Your throat works around the words that follow: “Thank you… For staying. I know I was a fucking mess last night.”
Bucky’s jaw tightens, not with anger, but with something akin to grief.
“You’re allowed to fall apart in front of people that want to care for you. You don’t always have to pretend like you’re alright. Not around me.”
Something in you softens at his words, tears caught in your waterline. “I thought I got really good at hiding it.”
“You are good at hiding it. I just pay too much attention to you.”
“Why? Why me?” The question is raw, laced with the same amount of vulnerability you had shown him last night.
Bucky takes a slow breath. He doesn’t want to rush this, doesn’t want to hoist upon you his feelings whilst you’re dealing with so much already. But he also doesn’t want to hide behind half-truths anymore. Doesn’t want to give you some empty excuse that leaves you regretting showing him you at your lowest.
“Because I care,” he says. “And I have for a long while.”
Your eyes widen slightly, searching his face. He doesn’t look away no matter how much this display of vulnerability makes him want to.
“I didn’t–don’t want to complicate things,” he continues softly. “Don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything, or that I’m trying to make this all about me. Because it’s not, god fucking knows it’s not.”
You blink, tears threatening to fall once again, but these are not laced with the poison of pain. They’re filled with something softer, warmer.
“But I’d rather sit through a hundred nights of you crying than let you spend one more night alone. Because you’re not alone, okay? I care about you so much more than you’ll ever know. I… I’d rather be with you than anywhere else. Because when I’m with you… I feel whole again. It’s probably not healthy, but you make me feel like a person again. And if I can grant you even the smallest bit of the comfort and kindness you’ve shown me… well, damn straight I’ll sit with you through hell.”
Silence settles between you, and for a second, Bucky worries he’s said too much, worries he’s given too much away all at once, worries that his ma was right, somethin’ about him and his big ol’ bleeding heart being too much for the world. But then you lean your head against his chest, sniffling as you bring your arms around him.
“I don’t know what I’m ready for,” you confess, wounds still weeping, “but I really don’t want to hide from you anymore.”
A small, careful smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as he returns your embrace. “That’s all I want. We can go as slow as you need. Figure this out together.”
“This won’t magically fix me,” you warn him, fingers tracing patterns on his back.
“I never thought it would,” he assures you. “I’ll be here to hold you together.”
And as the morning light grows stronger around you, you realise something; it rings astonishingly true:
You made it through the night.
And this time, you didn’t have to do it alone.