Bucky doesn’t see it right away not consciously. He just knows there’s something about you that hits him like a memory he’s not ready to hold.

“You’re fast,” he mutters one day during training, his gloved hands flexing by his sides. “Too fast for someone your size. You fight like…” He doesn’t finish. Like Natasha, he almost says. Like Steve.

You just smirk, like you know exactly what he’s thinking. Like you’ve known all along what he doesn’t.

At first, you’re just another recruit too young, too sharp, too stubborn. And Bucky does what he does best: stays distant. Wary. Watching. Until one day Sam pulls him aside and says quietly, “She’s Steve and Nat’s.”

“What?”

“Genetically. Built. In a lab. Vision-style,” Sam shrugs. “Long story. She’s not a science project she’s their kid. Steve asked me to take care of her before he left.”

Bucky doesn’t breathe for a full minute. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t feel until suddenly, he feels everything.

So now? He’s trying. Trying to be the calm, collected protector. The older, wiser “uncle” type. But the problem is you laugh like Nat, you glare like Steve, and you live like neither of them got the chance to. You crash through his walls with a fire he hasn’t seen since the war.

And he wants to be good. He tries to be good. But one night, after a mission gone sideways, when you’re bleeding and furious and beautiful and alive he kisses you. It’s wrong. It’s messy. It’s everything he’s tried to run from since the moment he learned who you were.

“You know this can’t happen,” he growls, forehead against yours, hands trembling against your ribs.

You just look at him with that fire again. “Too late, soldier.”

And in that moment, Bucky realizes he’s not your protector. He’s yours.