verb.
To come or go back to a place or person.
noun.
The firing of a weapon to counter a shooter's shot.
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They recoiled from their pasts, and in doing so found each other.
But the universe isn't kind enough to let a moment of peace last.
It took se...
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The heat of his breath on her skin was maddening. Intoxicating. Every touch he had placed on her body blazed a trail of fire that Kat couldn't help but follow. As if that heat were a siren song, guiding her deeper into his hold, until the motions of her own hands were no longer conscious. No longer that careful, delicate exploration of him. Of that network of pale scars that almost shone silver in the darkness. Now her hands pressed greedily to his chest, seeking more of that heat, tracing lines of hard, sculpted muscle until she felt it – the brush of his lips at her throat. The wide expanse of his palm pressing against her spine, holding her to him. The low, toe-curling curse that he growled against her skin, a last line of restraint that had her own breaths shaking-
And then he suddenly went very, very still.
"Zhelaniye."
At first, she thought she hadn't heard him correctly. Between the shuddering breaths falling from her own lips and the staggered, halting ones he breathed against her neck, she thought she hadn't heard him. Hoped she hadn't heard that word.
"Bucky?"
"Zhelaniye."
She hadn't been wrong. She knew that word, that whisper rasped over her skin, though she had never heard it from his lips. And with that realisation her own body froze. Held in prefect tension with the one under her hands, those muscles that she had felt flexing beneath her palms moments ago now as motionless as if they had been carved from stone, his face still buried against her neck as he held her on his lap – until his hand slipped from her back.
The sudden shift of her mind from blank, empty shock to action was jarring. The abrupt leap to run through every possible scenario that could be occurring only punctuated by her hand lurching to catch his wrist, her other sliding up his chest to cradle his head in her palm, drawing him back gently as she shifted her weight onto her knees. Ready to move, to do whatever she needed to in order to neutralise whatever was happening.
Because – as unthinkable as it was – if they had somehow triggered the Soldier, she needed to be ready.
She didn't want to leap to that assumption though. Up until the very second that he proved otherwise, she would trust that the person in front of her was still Bucky Barnes. She wouldn't fear him, wouldn't move to defend herself against him until that moment.
"Hey..." She whispered, softly, her thumb soothing over his wrist as she consciously adjusted her grip to make it as light as possible, to avoid making him feel cornered, or threatened. "Bucky, love, I need you to look at me."
The eyes that lifted to hers made her heart clench in her chest, as she glimpsed those midnight blue pools and saw the tangled emotion painted there – fear, realisation... And something distant, haunted. Something that made it seem like part of him wasn't fully here with her. Like he was lost to a memory.
