It started with an empty chair.

Session after session, it remained untouched—stiff, sterile, impersonal. Just like the file on your desk: Barnes, James Buchanan. No call. No apology. No reschedule. Just silence.

You figured he wasn’t ready. That made sense. He’d been through hell and back—and still walked like he expected the floor to give out beneath him. They told you he didn’t like shrinks, didn’t trust the system. Still, the appointment stood. Week after week.

Until one night, a knock shattered the quiet.

You opened your door to find him there.

Drenched in rain. A hoodie clinging to broad shoulders. His hair plastered to his face. And those eyes—haunted, blue, and not quite meeting yours.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

No greeting. No introduction. Just that.

You stepped aside wordlessly, letting him in.

He didn’t talk much at first.

You gave him a towel. He barely touched it. Sat stiffly on the edge of your couch like he didn’t deserve to sink into comfort. He kept his hands in his lap—one flesh, one metal.

“I’m not here for therapy,” he said, eyes on your bookshelf.

“Okay.”

“I just... can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes... I see them.”

You didn’t ask who they were.

Instead, you offered tea. You let silence speak where words would only crowd. And for the first time, Bucky Barnes stayed.

Days bled into weeks. He never came to your office. But he showed up at your apartment. At odd hours. Rain or shine.

Sometimes he’d say nothing at all. Just sit near the window with your cat asleep in his lap, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

Other times, he spoke. Broken things. Memories fractured like glass. Russia. Wakanda. Brooklyn.

“Used to hate the cold,” he whispered once, watching the snow. “Now I barely feel it.”

“Do you miss who you were?” you asked gently.

He was quiet for a long time.

“I don’t remember who I was,” he replied. “But... I remember liking jazz. That’s something, right?”

You nodded. It was.

The slow burn began in the little things.

When he asked if he could bring you coffee. When he started remembering what tea you liked. When he fixed your broken door handle without saying a word.

When he laughed.

God, the first time you heard it—it was like something cracked open inside you.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said one night.

“And what did you expect?”

“Someone who’d look at me like I’m a monster.”