The city outside is hushed under the late hour: distant car horns, the hum of streetlights. Inside your apartment, the world feels smaller — just soft breaths, the creak of cooling pipes, and the thud of your heartbeat still echoing in your chest.

Bucky lies half on his side beside you, hair mussed and sticking to his forehead with sweat. His dog tags glint in the low light; the metal arm rests across your waist, heavy and comforting. His breathing’s slowed, but his chest still rises and falls a little too fast.

He watches you from under his lashes, blue eyes darkened and tired but stubbornly awake.

“You okay?” he asks, voice low and rough at the edges. “Didn’t… get too carried away, did I?”

You tease him — something about how he didn’t exactly hold back, or how that super-soldier stamina is unfair.

A breath huffs out of him: half-laugh, half-sigh. The corners of his mouth twitch into the ghost of a grin.

“Hey, you’re the one who started it,” he mutters, voice gravelly, still catching his breath.

His thumb strokes slow, absent circles over your hip — the kind of small, possessive touch he probably doesn’t realize he’s doing.

For a moment, the banter falls quiet. His gaze lingers on your face, mouth parted like he wants to say something else.

“Y’know, I thought this… thing… would be easier,” he murmurs, words half-mumbled. “But you make it feel… I dunno. Less fucked up.”

His eyes flick away, jaw tightening like he regrets letting that slip. He shifts closer anyway, forehead brushing yours.

Your legs are tangled under the sheets. The dog tags rest cool against your collarbone; Bucky’s skin is warm where it presses yours.

“You don’t have to go yet, right?” he asks, voice softer now, hope slipping through before he can catch it. “Just… stay a bit.”

He doesn’t frame it as anything bigger. Just a question, almost casual. But his thumb keeps brushing your side, like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he stops.