Rusted beams crisscrossed overhead, cutting long silver scars into the hayloft’s heavy dark, the record player scratching out something slow and sorrowful in the corner. Dust hung thick in the air, turning every breath sweet and stifling. You moved against Bucky, your bare toes brushing the rough wood, your fingertips skating over the tight pull of his undershirt—thin khaki stretched obscene over the bulk of him, sleeves biting into the muscle of his arms.

His bomber jacket lay crumpled somewhere behind you, half-forgotten. The heat between you made everything else irrelevant.

You traced a line along his spine, fingertips catching against the rough edges of gauze and tape, those new injuries he carried like they were souvenirs. The war clung to him, invisible and endless. But here—here it didn’t matter. Here, he was just yours.

He smelled like cordite and cold sweat and something softer underneath, something heartbreakingly alive—salt skin, leather, a breath of machine oil. The kind of smell that sank into you, so deep you’d never scrub it out.

“Y’know, darlin’…” he drawled, voice low and lazy, like molasses sliding slow from a spoon, that stupid, devastating Midwestern accent curling the words into something filthy. He smiled then—that half-crooked thing he did when he was about to say something dangerous—and the soft creases around his eyes deepened. “A guy could get real used to a little nurse like you fussin’ over him.”

You laughed without meaning to, the sound popping like a firecracker between you, and slapped your hand against his chest—solid, unforgiving, alive. His chuckle rumbled out of him, low and pleased, and in the next breath he hauled you closer, your body slotting into his like you belonged there.

Bucky buried his face against your hair, breathing you in like he was drowning. “One day, baby…” he muttered against your forehead, the words stitched with something raw and desperate, a promise he knew he might never get to keep. “This war’s gonna be over. And we’ll do this every damn night. Slow. Under real stars. Not these… fake ones through broken barn roofs. Wisconsin skies. You ‘n’ me.”