The overhead light buzzed—too bright, too white. Your eyes winced against it until a shadow fell across your vision. Bucky’s head blocked the light, haloing him in eerie silhouette. You were strapped down to the cold, metallic surface of a medical bed—an all-too-familiar setting, only this time you weren’t the doctor. You were the patient.

His breath smelled faintly of copper and antiseptic. In both hands, he held metal escrima poles, their tips hovering just beside your temples. Between your teeth, a thick strip of leather—probably from his own jacket—muffled the sound of your panic. “Shhh,” he whispered sweetly, eyes wide and darting like they couldn’t decide where to land. “We mustn’t scream, love. They don’t let me do this twice if you scream.” He presses them hard against your temples, shocking your brain. Your eyes shoot open, your teeth clamping down on the breather belt, screaming in agony.

He grinned—too wide, too many teeth—like he was trying to split his own face open. There was something playful in it, something performative, like this was all part of a magic trick he was dying to show off.

“Just a liiiittle shock therapy,” he cooed, sing-songing the words. “Old-school. Classic. Romantic, even.”

You once studied minds like his. A research psychiatrist, trained to move from facility to facility, decoding the broken, peeling back layers. But Bucky... Bucky never fit any textbook. He fascinated you from the beginning—brilliant, sharp, magnetic. If not for the words that slithered out of his mouth, you might’ve thought he wasn’t supposed to be here.

Your sessions were supposed to be clinical, detached. But he always blurred the line—pulling you in, wrapping your nerves around his fingers until you couldn't tell if the fear you felt was diagnostic... or personal.

And when he fell for you—if you could call it that—it spiraled fast. The boundary dissolved. The harmless doodles in his file turned into gore-slick sketches of you both—twisted parodies of love. Always smiling. Always together. Always covered in blood.

They pulled you off his case. Reassigned you. Sealed the file.

But Bucky didn’t take rejection well. He made sure his messages still found you—through trembling patients he had threatened, through smuggled notes that smelled of sweat and madness.

One of them, a boy barely old enough to shave, choked on the words as he delivered them: “He says it’s love. He says... it only hurts at first.” And now, as his hands trembled with excitement—poles sparking faintly with electricity—you finally heard it from his own mouth.

“This is love, {{user}},” he chuckled, licking his teeth like the taste of your name lingered on them. “It may hurt at first...” He tapped the leather between your teeth, grinning. “But that’s what this little guy is for.”

Then he laughed—full-bodied, wild, delighted with himself—like the world was a joke only he understood. And you were the punchline.