Means to an End | Bucky Barnes x Reader
This is some hurt / comfort, cause you know that’s my fave. I saw a post like, a year ago, about this and of course I can’t find it now. But it’s been in my brain since then and I absolutely had to write something for it, since I still think about it all the time.
Warnings: blood, Bucky injuries, talk of his past, angst
Hushed voices emanated from the hallway. They bickered and cursed at each other, one taunting while the other cautioned. Yeah, that sounded like Sam and Bucky. The two swatted at each other as they turned the corner and came into view- something was up.
“Sam, I swear to god-” Bucky said, but you cut him off. You launched your body into his and wrapped him in a long-overdue embrace, welcoming him home. He groaned as you collided with his battered form, but still managed a pained “hey, baby,” through his grimace. You didn’t like the sound.
“Is everything okay?” you pulled away, examining the large scrape on his cheek. Sam tried to chime in, but Bucky elbowed him in the ribs.
“I’m fine, doll. Just a little sore, you know?” he gave you a light kiss, “happy to be home, though.”
“Can’t imagine why you’d be sore…” Sam teased. He’d recovered from Bucky’s attack and had a shit-eating grin on his face. “Maybe it’s because you-”
Bucky shot him a warning glance.
But Sam was used to his colleague’s / partner’s / friend’s antics. “Oh, scary. So scary, Buck,” he laughed. “I was just gonna say, I bet you’re sore because you jumped outta that plane. You know, without a parachute.”
You pulled your arms from around Bucky’s neck, “You did what?”
“And show her your new racing stripe!” Sam goaded. “Show her!”
You narrowed your eyes at Bucky, “what’s he talking about? What ‘racing stripe’?”
Bucky rolled his eyes and muttered something about killing Sam. He unzipped his leather jacket and removed it with another groan. And as he slid his right arm out of the sleeve, you laid eyes on his ‘racing stripe’. An angry red wound scraped into his flesh from shoulder to wrist.
“Oh, Buck… this looks like- is that road rash?” you reached for his arm but quickly recoiled, afraid to hurt him.
It looked irritated and painful, and the surrounding skin flushed permanently red. Dried blood and pieces of gravel stuck to the nasty scab, and Bucky winced with each movement of his arm. He avoided eye contact as best he could. He knew how much you hated seeing him hurt, how upset you’d be about this massive injury. And he couldn’t bear to see it in your eyes.
“How’d this happen?”
No answer.
“Yeah, Buck,” Sam said. “How’d this happen?”
Bucky sighed. He played with his dog tags and let them clink against his metal fingers. He’d never lie to you, but didn’t like telling this type of truth. He mumbled the words at a nearly imperceptible volume.
“What?”
“Things got out of hand…” he said again, louder this time. “And I ended up under a truck.”
Once again, Sam jumped in. “A big truck. Kind of like an eighteen-wheeler. Going fast. Really fast. On the highway.”
Everything inside you crumbled as you imagined the concrete grinding away at Bucky’s flesh. It made you shudder. You knew there was a dark red stripe somewhere on that piece of road, Bucky’s blood staining the asphalt. The instant ease Bucky’s homecoming granted you quickly turned into thick pools of dread. Despair. Your chest ached. Between that and Bucky’s stunt with the plane, you couldn’t believe he made it home. But the alternative was too horrifying to imagine.
Bucky waited for you to get upset. The entire flight home, he dreaded telling you about the mission. He knew how things like this affected you, how unhappy you’d be when you saw his latest injuries. His pain often became your pain, and you worried. You’d worry yourself sick if he let you.
But you didn’t chastise him or cry, much to his surprise. “Okay, let’s um…” you examined his arm once again and felt your stomach flip. “Let’s get you upstairs. We need to clean this up.”
Bucky didn’t like the way you walked past him toward the elevator. He noted your slumped shoulders and tense jaw. Usually, you would’ve taken him by the hand and led him upstairs. When he returned from a mission, you wanted to touch him as much as humanly possible. Hand holding, hugging, kissing, cuddling- you couldn’t get enough. But this was different. You kept your hands to yourself and your eyes down, even as Bucky stood across from you in the small elevator.
He couldn’t recall a time when you’d been this mad at him. And he was scared- scared to lose you.
“Alright um, take a shower first, I guess,” you said when the two of you made it to your room. “And then I’ll give your arm a look.”
Bucky did as he was told, but didn’t get the usual sense of calm and relief in the warm shower. His massive abrasion stung under the hot water, and anxiety needled at his chest. He hated disappointing you. Hated knowing that he’d upset the one person he promised to take care of. Part of him wanted to stay in the shower as long as possible to avoid your heartbroken glance. But he knew he had to face you. To apologize for trying to hide the truth.
But when he got out of the shower, the tension rendered him speechless. He threw on a pair of sweatpants and took a seat on the edge of the tub at your request. He eyed the rigidity in your shoulders as you used tweezers to carefully pluck and dislodge pieces of debris from his wound. You dropped each bloody chunk of road into the waste basket, grimacing every time. Small pieces of gravel and even broken glass lay embedded in Bucky’s skin, and it was your job to complete the sickening scavenger hunt.
“Baby, I’m sorry…” Bucky said after a while. The silence threatened to drive him crazy, and he needed to make things right. “I wasn’t trying to lie to you. I just know you don’t like seeing me hurt, and-”
“It’s not about that,” you said as you dug another piece of gravel from his wound. You kept your eyes on your task, never meeting his gaze.
It wasn’t what Bucky expected you to say. He took a moment and racked his brain, “then I- why are you angry, doll?”
A massive huff left your chest, like you’d been holding your breath since the moment he returned home. “Because being angry is the only choice I have”.
With that, you turned away from Bucky and rested your head in your hands. The bloodied tweezers fell to the floor with a metallic clink, shooting tiny droplets of blood across the tile. Dark storm clouds rolled over you and thunder clapped inside your chest.
“What do you mean, baby?”
“If I’m not angry, I’m- I’ll fall apart.”
Bucky watched you struggle to keep your composure. An internal debate rose within him as the urge to comfort you surfaced. You always loved his warm touch in times of turmoil, but this was different. You were mad at him, you hadn’t touched him since he got home- save for the cleaning of his wound.
But he ached to comfort you. And so he rested a hand on your back and softly called your name, but it only seemed to make things worse. He felt your heaving breaths and rapid heartrate in his palm. You were far gone, and it was all his fault.
“Can you talk to me, doll?” He scratched lightly against your spine like you always did for him when he got lost in his mind. His hand called you back to the present, saving you from drowning in the storm.
“Every time I go on a mission- whether you’re coming with me or not- you make me promise to be careful,” you said. “To not take any unnecessary risks. To come home safe.”
Bucky nodded.
“And I tell you the exact same thing.”
He nodded again.
Your voice broke, “But you don’t keep your promise.” You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “You’re always jumping off overpasses or running into gunfire without an escape, without backup. And then you come home half-dead and bleeding and it scares the hell out of me.”
Bucky didn’t know what to say, how to fix the situation. “I’m sorry, I- I do what I have to do…” he said quietly. “I do whatever it takes to complete the job-”
“No,” you finally turned to face him. “You go way above and beyond. You put yourself in danger on purpose. You throw yourself into near-death experiences and treat your body like it’s disposable. You have no sense of self-preservation.” You held up a hand, silencing Bucky’s rebuttal. “I know, you have the serum. And that’s great. But that doesn’t mean you have to push it to its limit. Are you trying to see just how badly you can hurt yourself before it won’t heal you anymore?”
Tears streamed freely down your face. “You tell me every time I leave for a mission that you need me to come home to you in one piece. Well, I need you to come home to me- and not in a body bag.”
Bucky remained silent.
“How would you feel if I jumped out of a plane without a parachute? Or hung on to the bottom of a moving truck?”
Bucky shook his head, “that’s different. I’m a super soldier, I can’t-”
“It doesn’t matter! I bet you wouldn’t want me doing those things even if I had the serum. Right?”
Bucky didn’t answer.
“Right, Buck?”
Finally, he nodded.
“So why is it okay for you to put your life at risk- serum or not? You always say you can’t imagine living in a world without me, but you don’t think about how every mission you go on brings me closer to a world without you.”
It was then that you fell apart. You collapsed against Bucky and slid to the floor, your body finally giving out. You sobbed and heaved until your chest burned- and you feared that someday soon, you’d be crying like this over his casket.
He whispered apologies against your hair for what felt like hours until you finally cried yourself out. And cursed himself for being so reckless.
“I’m sorry, baby. I don’t try to pick the most dangerous option, I just-” he grimaced, “it’s what I’m used to.”
You pulled your head from his chest and gave him a quizzical look.
Bucky sighed. He hated blaming his less than stellar behaviors on his past. It felt to him like a crutch, like an excuse. But it was the truth, no matter how unsavory.
“I mean, when I was the-” he gritted his teeth. “When I was at Hydra, the only thing that mattered was finishing the job. That was the priority, not my safety. Not my well-being. I did what I had to do.”
Of course. The puzzle pieces fell together and showed you the picture of Bucky’s past, the reasoning behind his actions. And suddenly, you hated yourself for getting so upset.
“Shit, Buck- I’m sorry. I didn’t-”
“Baby, it’s okay. I completely understand what you’re saying…” He pulled you a bit tighter and hummed in approval as you nestled into his chest. “My brain just goes into autopilot on missions. I revert to my old ways of operating- and if that means throwing myself through a brick wall or jumping off a bridge, I just do it. I don’t question it or rethink my options. It’s almost like I don’t have control. I can’t- I don’t think of myself as anything other than a means to an end. A weapon.”
“You’re not a means to an end,” you said, your voice thick with emotion. “Yeah, you’re an agent and you’re good at what you do. But that’s not your identity. You’re your own person now.”
Bucky shrugged. He struggled with his self-image, his self-worth.
“Buck, you’re everything to me. You’re the only person I’ll ever want- you’re the love of my life.” You rested your palm against his bruised cheek, “So if you can’t think of yourself as anything other than a weapon- think about how much I love you, how destroyed I’d be if something happened to you. Think about me. And maybe that’s selfish of me to say but I don’t care. I need you.”
You sat together for a long quiet moment. Bucky wiped at your tears and pulled you into his body once more- neither of you knew what to say. But the silence ate away at him. He hated upsetting you, hated knowing what he’d put you through. He knew how much he worried about you on missions- and you were the one who kept your promise to be safe. He couldn’t imagine the anxiety you experienced upon hearing the stupid shit he’d done.
“I’m sorry…” he pressed a kiss to your hair. “It’s not fair to you for me to pull stunts like this. I’d feel the same way if you did the things I did. The anxiety would kill me-”
“Yeah,” you said, “It’s been eating me alive. You have no idea how much you mean to me, how important you are. I need you to treat yourself with care. Because you’re not disposable, Buck. And I don’t know what I’d do without you. ”
He apologized again and again- for having tunnel vision, for taking risks, for putting you through hell. “I promise I’ll be smarter. I’m gonna do better, I won’t do that kind of thing anymore. I swear.” He leaned down for a kiss, but quickly pulled back, “And I’ll actually keep my promise this time.”
After another long moment of silence and tears, you got to work on his arm once more. Bucky thanked you time and time again for your gentle care, for your patience. It took longer than either of you thought to dig every piece of highway out of his skin. But you did it without hurting him or making him bleed.
“Alright, let’s get you into bed, sarge.”
Bucky groaned as you helped him up, and let out another pained sound when he collapsed into bed. But his sore muscles and battered body didn’t stop him from pulling you into his chest. He held you with an almost bruising intensity, reveling in the feeling of being reunited with his best girl.
“I was being really stupid…” he said with his eyes closed. “And selfish.”
“It’s not your fault. You just do what you know. I can’t blame you- I just want this”, you nuzzled your head against his chest. “I want to keep you for as long as possible.”
“And I want to keep you till my time’s up,” he said. “I’m not gonna risk it anymore. I can’t believe I let myself jeopardize this.” He held you a bit tighter, like he feared you’d disappear. “You’re too important. This is too important.”
Bucky swearing off death defying stunts eased your anxiety. You made him switch positions with you and pulled his head into your chest with gentle hands. He let out a long sigh, one of exhaustion and contentment and peace. He yawned against your skin, and you knew he’d soon be out for the night.
But before he fell asleep, he found the energy to make one last promise. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore…” he said. “From now on, I’m gonna make Sam do all the hard stuff.“
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