#Helene Stanton | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

buckets-and-trees · 2 years

Text

Into Cursed Pixie Dust

Fandom: MCU

Characters/Pairings: Winter Soldier x female!Reader

Word Count: 8.9K

Summary: “He's credited over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years…” but you don’t know that. You run into him once, then again, again, again. Destiny draws you together, and neither of you can deny the pull. And yet though he never ages, you do.

Warnings: SMUT, morally grey Winter Soldier, cheating (don’t read/complain if you don’t want it), penetrative sex, sex while pregnant, fingering, WS doesn’t stalk reader but territorially has his eyes on her/is aware of her when she’s in his orbit? Minors do not interact.

Additional Notes: First LENGTHY fic here. This idea crept up on me somewhat inspired by the feeling and some of the lyrics of Mazzy Star’s Into Dust, elements of Peter Pan folklore as he never ages and Winter Soldier also has that unconventional relationship with time, and the concept that he could keep encountering the same person – not every time he’s sent on a mission, but a few times, enough for it to be significant. Part of me also liked the challenge of trying to tie him to nefarious deeds/political intrigue/etc and going down some Google and Wikipedia rabbit holes to spin the timeline of encounters together (you can see the notes/significance/context for each date at the end of the fic).

July 1961 – St. Tropez, France

You are rushing as fast as your short heels would allow down to the docks. Your parents had left the house late for their weekend away to Cannes, which meant you were late sneaking out to Hank’s boat party, but you knew you could still make it if you kept a quick enough pace. You couldn’t run and show up in a huff of sweat and disheveled hair, but swift strides should still serve to get you there before Hank gave word to pull away from shore. Hank usually ran a little late himself, but you still needed to make good time.

Hank was the oldest of the Stanton siblings, and it was his youngest sister and your best friend Helen who was your connection to this social circle. It wasn’t going to be an excessively large party, but Hank hadn’t put a stop to any of the rumors of the various summer St. Tropez social elites that could be confirmed on his guest list. Brigette Bardot was among those names, but you were angling to catch Hudson Stanton’s eye – middle son of the Stantons and recently unattached and thus newly eligible bachelor.

You don’t give more than a glance as you approach the next street and made to cross, hearing no engines around this part of the town, and so swift is your pace that you are knocked clean off your feet as someone else appears from around the corner, colliding with your path.

You let out a small scream as you fall, not out of fear, but frustration.

“Are you alright?”

Your pride is smashed for the moment, and you can already feel that your right hip, right elbow, and the heel of your right hand would be very tender and sore, if not bruised, but you didn’t seem to be bleeding, thank goodness.

You frown but reach to take the hand of the offender, who’d leaned closer to help you get up. “You should be more careful and watch where you’re going!” you huff as he hoists you up almost effortlessly. You know you should have been looking more closely yourself, but it was definitely him, too.

After smoothing the fabric of your dress, you lift your face up to look at him, and your breath catches in your throat.

The stranger is tall and dressed in a black dinner jacket, with short brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and a firm jaw. “My apologies,” he said.

You take half a step back, pulling your hand out of his gloved hand, and smooth it over your dress again, looking down to see if it has torn or been soiled. “Is my dress alright?” you ask, looking back up to his face and turning slightly.

His eyes scan your figure, and suddenly you wish you hadn’t asked, heat rising up your neck and across your cheeks under the man’s intense gaze.

He reaches out and straightens part of your sleeve. “There. Good now.”

“Thank you.”

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asks.

“The docks; a boat party is leaving soon.”

“A young dame like you shouldn’t be walking through this part of the city alone.”

You frown at him. “I’m twenty-one and perfectly capable of getting somewhere on my own, thank you very much.”

The corner of his mouth twitches up. “I’d feel better if I could walk you there after our little incident.”

Maybe it would be good to have an escort for a few more minutes. “Fine, but only because you’re insisting, and only until we get to the docks. I can’t sneak you into the party.” And you didn’t want anyone to see this man walking you straight up to Hank’s boat. There were more than enough nosy Nellies that would immediately ask about him and spread that circulate the rumors like lightning.

With a nod of his head, he takes your hand and tucks it in the crook of his elbow, his gloved hand covering your fingers, a silent indication to keep hold of his arm.

“This way?” he asks, inclining his head to the left. You nod, and he whisks you away immediately.

He asks short, leading questions designed to keep words tumbling out of your mouth so he could stay focused on completing his mission, but of course you don’t know that. He’s too good at what he does for you to even question. You assume the kindness of a gallant, tall, dark, and handsome stranger. To him you’ve become the convenient cover as he puts distance between himself and the restaurant where three still bodies bleed out. Anyone looking for him won’t consider what looks like a young couple in love as they comb the streets for an assassin.

He’s walked you nearly all the way to the docks when tires screech as a car up at the corner ahead takes the sharp turn and begins coming your way, and no less suddenly, your escort has flung you up against the wall, a hand over your mouth before you can make a sound. You are breathless as your turn your head slightly to look at him. The two of you are not entirely in the shadows, and your bodies aren’t totally flush against each other, but the right half of his body has you pinned up against the wall, one leg planted between yours. You’ve shared a few kisses with some suitors, but this is the closest a man has ever been to you, complete contact from hips to shoulders. One hand is still hovering over your mouth, and the other has come up to brace your shoulder. He inclines his head down slightly to hover next to your ear, and the whisper of a breath you feel on your neck makes you shiver.

“Just a moment,” he promises.

It’s intoxicating.

The car passes. You both hear another car speeding down the road from the opposite direction, and he continues to hold you in what looks to anyone else like an intimate daliance.

Once the second car has passed, he steps away, and you can only blink at him for a few seconds before you recover.

He slips your hand into his arm again and tugs you back along the street.

He doesn’t usher you back into conversation, but it’s only another block before the buildings come to an end to give way to the network of St. Tropez docks.

He removes your hand from his arm and says, “Stay out of trouble,” before stepping back away from you and disappearing into the shadows, heading down another alley.

You shake your head and turn around, not knowing whether you really expect to see him or where he went. Ahead you hear another car pass, but this one has music playing loudly, and you smile and remember where you’re going. The more steps you take toward the docks, the more the music and then loud voices and laughter pull you in and push out the thoughts surrounding the man you just encountered. Helen calls your name, jumping and waving at the end of a small yacht, and then a smile beams across your face, and you forget the stranger almost completely.

November 21, 1963 – Dallas, Texas, United States

You didn’t think of him again until you see him across the way at the hotel bar, a small glass of something in front of him that looks untouched, his eyes on you. You bite your lip and incline your head to the side slightly. He gives a single small nod in response.

Suddenly Helen is arriving in a huff next to you, explaining the chaos of the last hour she’s had getting ready, the unexpected call from her soon-to-be mother-in-law, and the handful of other excuses that made her late meeting you here. Once she’s settled and ordering her drink, you look back across the bar, but your forgotten memory of a man is nowhere to be seen, the now empty glass the only indication you hadn’t made it up entirely.

You and Helen have a cocktail each before it’s time to head across the street to the restaurant to meet your respective fiancés for dinner.

The reason you hadn’t thought of that whirlwind encounter again was because that night on the yacht had exceeded your own expectations, catching Hudson Stanton’s eye early in the evening, laughing over dinner, dancing, watching the stars alone on the top deck, sharing your first kiss, and then, and then, and endless letters while you were apart, summers and holidays and weekends together while you finished school, and now an engagement ring on your finger, and you in Dallas this weekend to look at a house as Hudson’s firm has transferred him to head up their first office in the great state of Texas, your big New Year’s Day wedding less than six weeks away.

Dinner with Hudson, Helen, and Jack is just as you expected. Helen and Jack beg the pair of you to go dancing with them, but Hudson maintains he’s got to turn in early since he has to pick up his boss from the airport in the morning, Helen and Jack don’t press too hard, and you don’t expect to see Helen return to your hotel room that night, suspecting she’ll end up with Jack all night instead.

Hudson walks you back to your hotel and kisses you goodnight before you go inside. He won’t even walk you to the elevator because you both know if you get him that far, he won’t be able to refuse just the ride up, and then just walking you to your door, and…

You love and loathe how much of a gentleman he is.

Your thoughts are still sweetly lingering on Hudson as you walk through the hotel lobby. It’s busy tonight, music spilling out from the ballroom, and you start humming along with the familiar tune the band is playing.

You’re reaching to press the button for the elevator when a hand catches yours, and you whip your head to find it’s the stranger from the bar, the mystery man from that night in St. Tropez.

“You!” Your rockets into your throat.

“Come with me,” he insists.

His hand is warm, and your eyes are locked, and that intoxicating feeling you’d felt with your back pressed up against the wall floods back over you because even just the gaze from his intense blue eyes is too much. He’s not real. He can’t be.

But you nod, and he pulls you swiftly through the bodies milling about the lobby and into the ballroom. Once inside, he continues further into the room, and sweeps you into the swirl of bodies dancing in the middle. It’s darker here, but you can see every detail of his face, suddenly so close to yours again. There are too many questions you could ask, so you ask none. Your bones are melting as he holds your body flush against his, totally caught up in the movement and the music as he leads you around the dance floor.

You’re blissfully unaware that you have become an invisibility cloak to him again, this time an instrument to get close enough to his targets to verify them and register their voices in his head. He could have done this without you, but he ignores that. Using you as a cover make this easier, and his superiors don’t care how an assignment is completed if it’s done efficiently and without any trouble to clean up.

The first song you dance to is jaunty and keeps you smiling and feeling breathless. You don’t look at him much, your eyes moving around the room, taking everything in. He leads well, but the pace is so quick that you’re looking around as well to make sure you don’t bump into anyone. The next song is slow, a sweet Sinatra standard. You don’t know if he pulls you in or if you push your body closer to him, but within moments of the shift of the tone on the dance floor, you’re moving as one. His right hand has dropped to the small of your back and is not merely resting there, but intently holding you against him.

This was never part of his training, but his body knows how to move around the ballroom without a second thought. As you sway slowly together, he maneuvers you to a darker corner of the dance floor. Your head is inclined slightly, placing your cheek closer to his, and he presses his face to yours briefly. Then the two of you are in an alcove, hidden from nearly everyone, and your back is against the wall again. His lips brush your cheek, and you turn your head up to look at him. He keeps his right hand at the small of your back, but his left hand drops your hand and comes to the side of your neck, his thumb brushing softly over your jawline, his eyes searching yours. You nod, and his mouth captures yours.

The kiss is heated and hungry, he will devour you, and in this moment you don’t care. You cling to him, one hand snaking up his back to hold desperately to his shoulder as you pull closer to him, and the other clutching at his chest where you feel some sort of armored metal near his heart for a moment. He nips at your bottom lip, and you gasp and open your mouth to him. His tongue plunges in to stroke yours, to taste you.

He’s on an entirely different mission now, and his lips move from your mouth to trail along your jaw to that spot behind your ear, and you moan. You can feel an answering rumble in his chest, and his lips continue down the side of your neck, to your collarbone, making you gasp. You long to whimper his name but realize you can’t.

“Wait, wait,” you whisper, and his lips trail back up your throat.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, his breath hot as it ghosts over your ear.

“No, just–” you fight to coherently string your words together, “What’s your name?”

He pulls away slightly to look into your eyes, and you think you see a flash of uncertainty, but then it’s gone, and his lips move back to burrow in the crook of your neck, and he murmurs, “You don’t need to know that.”

“But I want to know,” you press, your fingers softly playing with his bowtie.

“We don’t always get what we want,” he says firmly, and suddenly there’s all kinds of space between you. He’s retreating, and you reach your hand out to touch his face, but he shakes his head, and then he disappears around the corner.

You stomach has plummeted, and so it takes you too long to step forward and look around the corner and back into the crowd. There’s no sign of him, so there’s no point in following, you know that. You fall back into the alcove and press up against the wall, hands clutched to your chest, heaving from the heated moment but also now from the fight to keep from crying.

You wait until you’re calm enough to step out of the shadows again, smoothing your dress and your hair. You keep along the edges of the party, careful not to draw anyone’s attention, then move across the lobby and to the elevator. You keep your eyes focused up on the arrow above the sliding doors that moves slowly from left to right as the lift rises to your floor, dinging when it hits the ten. Once you’re in your room, you close the door behind you, and rest back against it, letting your head fall back, eyes stinging again, but you bite your lip and shake your head and push away from the door.

As you move further into your room, your breath catches as you see an enormous display of more white and pink roses and peonies than you can count. You step quickly forward and snatch the card that is sticking out of the arrangement.

All my love, Holden

You smile and press the card to your chest, letting your other hand drift to touch the soft petals. With reluctance you set down the card and step away from the flowers to kick your shoes off and start to get ready for bed. Your eyes are drawn back to the flowers frequently as you move around the room and in and out of the bathroom.

The phone rings, and you pick up after the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Darling, did you get the flowers?”

“Yes, they’re perfect,” you sigh and sit on the bed.

The longer you talk, the more you’re glad you shared nothing more than a few kisses with your stranger, and the sting of shock and his sudden abandonment drift further and further away. Holden’s voice is a balm to your soul. You settle more comfortably into the bed, and you two talk until you fall asleep.

You wake again at some point not long after midnight to the beeping of the phone being off the hook, place it back on its cradle, and properly crawl under the covers, finding sleep again almost instantly.

Planning for a wedding and a move to a new home out of state would have been enough to occupy your thoughts and push the stranger and his intense blue eyes and heated kisses out of your mind, but added to that the following day in Dallas, minutes after you stood and waved at the presidential motorcade with Holden and Helen and Jack, you and the rest of the country and the rest of the world receive the horrifying news that John F. Kennedy has been shot, and then the news escalates from a shooting to the assassination of the American president. Trivial thoughts are long gone.

March 14, 1972 – Milan, Italy

You’re on a business trip with Hudson. Well, sometimes. Mostly you’re on a trip where you’re scheduled and bustled around with fifteen of the other office wives. You don’t usually mind, but there was no way you wanted to spend two hours on a bus to and then another two hours back from today’s excursion, and the women don’t fuss over you making your excuses to stay behind since you haven’t made them often on this trip, and you have ample valid excuses to draw from at the drop of a hat in your condition.

Today you wanted the day to yourself, just one day away from Marjorie, the middle-aged queen bee of all the wives. One day to do as you please.

You stay in bed just a little later than usual, eat breakfast on the patio of the hotel restaurant, then slowly amble around some of the tourist points of the city that your hired guides had whipped through in a frenzy the first few days with you and the other wives.

You think you see him first during your long lunch, but it’s across the street, and it’s probably not him anyway.

But it is him, and you didn’t see him first. You don’t know he saw you yesterday.

After you meander back to your hotel room, you draw a bath, intending to read for the rest of the afternoon. You twist your hair up, then sink into the tub. You read until the water’s lost its heat, then you wrap up in a silk robe and move out to the chaise lounge chair. You ring down to have afternoon tea service brought up to your room. It’s been years since you’ve had this kind of time – husband and house and two children already traipsing around your home while preparing for a third and the Junior League meetings and social and work functions. It’s been eight days in Italy, and half of you misses the hustle of home, but half of you wants to stay here away from the bustle like this forever.

A quarter of an hour later, there’s a quick trio of knocks, and you stretch and set your book down before rising to answer the door.

“Come in,” you offer, pulling the door open wide so the tea cart can be pushed in, and you quickly walk toward the small balcony and slide the glass door open to indicate that’s where you’d like them to leave your tea.

The tea cart has not been pushed along behind you though. It’s only been pushed a few feet into the room from the door, which the man, who is not hotel staff, is closing quietly.

He removes the uniform hat, places it on the corner of the tea cart, and runs a hand through his hair as he turns to look at you. His hair is a longer than it was in Dallas almost ten years earlier, but those impossibly blue eyes lock onto yours with the same intensity they did back then.

“It was you earlier today.”

He nods.

You stand motionless, but he strides across the room, not quickly, but not slowly either.

“What are you doing here?”

He does not answer with words, but with a kiss that pulls your soul from your chest up into your throat. Your hands come to his chest, and the natural inclination is to pull him closer, but somehow your brain registers that you should push him away. You can’t seem to put the effort into pushing against him, but you do hold him at bay and manage to turn away from him.

“I’m married,” you say.

“I don’t care that you’re married,” he responds, his hand brushing up your arm to your shoulder, then across to the base of your neck, drawing a shiver from you. “Unless he’s a bastard,” he adds.

“Why do you care at all?” It’s not a bitter question, just honest curiosity from you.

“I shouldn’t, but our paths have crossed too many times not to. We must belong to each other.”

He steps closer, and you feel the heat of him against your back. His hand moves to skim over your right collar bone, then down across your chest, slipping so easily into your silk robe, and palming your left breast. You moan sinfully, your right hand coming up to cover his, your fingers twining together.

Then another flash in your mind and you pull his hand away and turn back to face him.

“I’m married,” you repeat again, and you draw his hand down to the very new baby bump that is still mostly undetectable to others.

His eyes drop to your stomach, where your hands are resting together. The calculations are happening quickly, you can see it on his face. His eyes dart back up to yours, hand moving from your stomach to your hip.

“I came to claim what’s mine.”

He’s so close, and he’s looking at you with so much heat.

“I–“

You lose your ability to continue thinking clearly when both of his hands come up to capture either side of your neck.

“You,” he insists, his lips descending on yours, cutting off any more protest. “You’re mine.”

The kiss is demanding, and his hands don’t move from where they frame your neck until he can feel the moment you surrender to the kiss and to him. It’s a small sigh falling from your mouth that you can’t hold back, parting your lips, and his tongue slips in. Both of his hands from your neck across your clavicle to your shoulders, purposefully slipping beneath the silk robe, pushing it off. He easily releases the tie at your waist, and you don’t stop the robe from falling away completely, pooling on the floor.

His kisses are relentless, but his lips move to your jaw, and then your neck. Your head falls back, and he draws a moan from you when he pauses to tongue the sensitive spot where your neck and collarbone meet.

Then his mouth descends to your breasts, kissing along the curve of your left breast, then moving to the right. His right hand moves up to palm and gently squeeze one breast while he licks and sucks the nipple of the other. Finally powerless to fight anymore, your hands thread through his hair, urging him to continue. He easily scoops you up into his arms, bringing you into his chest, and your legs wrap around him, lips meeting each other again. He walks you over to the bed and tosses you onto the mattress.

You’re breathless, but so is he, standing above you at the edge of the bed. His blue eyes have blown with the lust he won’t deny, the lust he demands. He’s only looking at you, but the scorching heat of his eyes as they move over your nearly naked body have you burning in a way that you’ve never felt before. It’s overwhelming, and yet not unwelcome.

Before your head and your heart can catch up with your core, he reaches for your ankles and draws your body down to the edge of the mattress. He is quick in removing the last bit of clothing from your body, tossing the panties behind him without another thought.

Your arms are down by your sides, hands grasping at the sheets, watching as he undoes his pants, pushing them down around his thighs with his underwear in one go. His cock is hard and ready. Your eyes follow his hands now, and his right hand grazes along your inner thigh, coming to rest on top of your mound. He brushes his thumb over your folds and releases a deep satisfied hum, finding you hot and wet. You bite your lip as you look back up into his face. His thumb pushes inside you, and the small whimper that escapes you betrays what you were trying desperately to deny from him and from yourself.

He leans down over you, using his left arm to brace himself above you, removes his thumb from your entrance and slips in two long fingers, drawing a sigh from you.

“Just this moment,” he says, “this afternoon.” His lips seek yours again.

“Just this,” you agree and then continue the feverish kiss.

“Just you,” he murmurs against your cheek. He moves his hand and presses his cock warmly against you, teasing the tip in and out of your folds.

You look down to see where your bodies are connecting as he slides his into your cunt. Slowly he pulls back out, guiding the head of his penis over your clit, causing your hips to buck up into him at the sensation. You can feel him watching your face, taking in your reaction. You close your eyes as he slides into you again, and the exquisite fullness draws a moan from your lips.

He draws back out, then pushes in again, then another slow draw out, and back in till you take his length completely. Your breath comes in short gasps as you adjust to his size, and you clutch at the front of his uniform jacket. He brushes his right hand over your cheek, and you turn your head slightly to kiss his palm, a silent assurance that you’re okay.

He pulls your leg up to rest over his shoulder, and it seats him more deeply inside of you. The sound you make is one you’ve never made before as he starts thrusting again with this new angle. While his left hand stays planted at your side on the bed, his right hand freely explores your body, drifting up and down your neck, palming your breast, squeezing at your waist, brushing along your thigh, gripping your hips, threading into your hair to pull you in for another kiss, skimming over your shoulder. It’s a starved, hungry touch, and your body sings everywhere his fingers seek out.

Once he finds his rhythm, he is relentless, pumping more quickly. That he’s still mostly clothed while you’re naked beneath him is maddening but reassuring – you feel vulnerable beneath him, but if it was skin to skin with every inch of your bones pressing into his, it would be too intimate, completely undeniable. The single barrier keeps you from being consumed by this enigma, and since you know he’s going to disappear, you need that.

Both of you are breathing in heavy pants, and while he’s still drawing moans and whimpers from you, he’s been maddeningly silent. He adjusts his hips slightly so he can move his hand between you, fingers seeking out your aching clit, rubbing concentrated, furious circles over the bud. The band within you is pulling tighter and tighter, until and he achieves his goal in pushing you over the edge. You bite back a scream, and his mouth covers yours once again with a kiss to stifle the noise and possibly steal a bit of your soul – at least that’s how it feels as he fucks you through your climax, chasing his own end. You roll your hips slightly beneath him, and the shift makes his breath hitch. Two more powerful thrusts, and he stops, spilling his seed inside you, the low groan escaping him as gratifying to your ears as the feel of him sinking against you, pumping in and out of you slowly a few more times. Then he stills, and time seems to stop, the two of you just holding onto each other.

Satisfied.

He kisses the side of your neck again, and you hum contentedly. Your fingers brush gently through his hair. He squeezes your hip again, then suddenly rolls off you and moves from the bed. You want to reach for him, pull him back for more, but you don’t. He must disappear again.

After pulling up his trousers, he retrieves your robe and panties from the floor and sets them on the bed next to you. He does lean in for one final kiss, and you arch up to meet his lips. When he can feel you begin to melt again, he draws away, looking back only once when he reaches the door. You will remember that hint of a smile for years.

He disappears like a shadow.

December 16, 1991 – suburban area of Washington, D.C., United States

You sigh and drum your fingers against the steering wheel. You’ve just dropped your youngest off at high school and been to the grocery store. The traffic isn’t terrible, but it seems to be more congested and moving more slowly through this part of town than normal, and you’re bored and impatient. Suddenly you hear a commotion above the sounds of your radio, and you roll your window down and look around. There are cars honking, screeching of tires, and shouts in the street, but you can’t see clearly what’s happening as you crane your head to look all around. Only a few other drivers seem to be noticing the strangeness as well. You give up for a moment as the light changes and you pass through the intersection and then into the next block, but then you’re stopped again, waiting at another light, and the sounds grow softer, more distant. You look around again and still can’t seem to see any clue as to what’s going on, but you do see a man all in black with almost shoulder length hair walking incredibly fast down the sidewalk, moving quickly past the pedestrians around him. He is on the left side of the road, but walking your way, so it’s easy for you to follow his progress. He looks up and scans his surroundings, eyes naturally glancing your way, but when he does a doubletake your jaw drops because you know those eyes, that face, though the hair is longer.

His eyes now locked on you. He quickly but casually begins to cross the two lanes of traffic that separated you. “Let me in,” he says when he’s close enough before crossing in front of your car. You reach to unlock the passenger side door, and he slips in just before the light at the next intersection changes and the line of cars you were waiting behind begins to move again.

He sees a dark blue baseball cap left on the backseat by your son and quickly reaches for it, putting it on his own head. “Just drive like normal,” he says, “keep heading north or east.”

You nod and keep going, glancing over briefly to look at his face. He’s watching the streets.

The sound of sirens begins blaring behind you, and a glance in the rearview mirror shows a Chevy Blazer speeding through the quaint traffic, the cops in pursuit right behind. You and the cars around you move to the right and stop as quickly as you can as you’re supposed to – and to get out of the way – and you give your companion a quizzical look.

He shrugs, but there’s a hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.

“So, hello,” you finally say after the commotion speeds past and normal traffic has resumes.

“Hello,” he responds.

You tuck your hair behind your ear, then glance at him again. It’s been almost twenty years since that afternoon in your hotel room in Milan. Before you slept together in Italy, you’d been so blissfully and happily married to Hudson. After sex with this stranger, you remained happily married to Hudson – you had certainly reeled from the realization of what had occurred between you two, but you genuinely didn’t have a desire for anything in your life to change. You never told a soul what happened, and after years it finally faded from your conscience.

With this man in your car, however, all the heat and memories from every encounter have flooded back immediately, vivid and undeniable. Part of your core aches. And you try to concentrate on your driving and keeping your breath even. All of that seems like a lifetime ago, almost made up like a fairytale, and yet he’s here, beside you again today, hardly a foot away.

And now he’s looking at you.

“Are you alright?”

His gaze is as intense as it always has been.

Everything about him is the same as it always has been.

But that can’t possibly be true, can it?

“You haven’t changed at all.” The words tumble so quickly out of your mouth, after you finally think of something to say. “What are you… some kind of Peter Pan?”

“If you want.”

“Well, you’ve never given me any other name.”

And just how much he hasn’t changed magnifies in your own mind how much you feel you’ve changed. You’ve aged, with lines around your eyes, five children rounding out your body, elbows the only true angle you feel your figure still has to boast, you know the grey in your hair has started to become more prominent despite your efforts to cover it up. You didn’t do all your make up today, only the essentials, and you’d only tossed on a sweater and jeans for what was supposed to be a typical Monday.

After another few minutes, you’re outside of the town and driving down a stretch of wooded highway.

“When you want to pull over and let me out, anywhere is good, I can make it where I need to go.”

You nod but don’t know exactly how to respond. There’s not an immediately convenient place to pull off, but your mind recalls some of the turn offs up ahead that you’ve passed a few hundred times. You don’t notice you nervously biting your bottom lip.

But he does, his eyes on you more than they are on the road.

“Or we can drive for a while.”

You glance back over at him, then turn your attention back to the road, tapping your thumbs anxiously on the steering wheel, your hands diligently gripping the ten and two position, the speed a little ahead of whatever is playing over the radio because you’re not even aware of the music at this point.

“Are you alright?” he asks again.

You huff out a breath you’ve been holding in. “You make me nervous.”

“You know I will never hurt you, don’t you?”

“Not that kind of nervous.”

The last time you were this close to each other, this man thoroughly fucked you into a mattress, and two decades later your body can’t deny the memories.

Finally, you reach a turnoff for a relatively unimportant road, flanked by forest on both sides. You drive a fair distance from the main road before you finally stop. Then you turn off the car, and return your hand to the wheel, needing that grounding to turn and face those blue eyes.

“I don’t understand. How can you look almost the same? The only thing that’s changed is your hair, some stubble, a new leather jacket.” You turn your head back to look out the windshield at the empty road before you. “You even look at me the same way you did back then, but I’m in no way the same young woman you came across a lifetime ago!”

Hudson still loves and adores you, but he hasn’t looked at you the way this man does in years – with this much heat, so intensely you can hardly breathe.

He never buckled in, so he easily angles his body to face you. Slowly, he reaches across the short space between you, brushing the fingers of his right hand tentatively over your fingers, giving you time to react or stop him, before he eases your hand off the wheel, letting your hand gently fall to rest in your lap. His eyes move to your face, and you close your eyes, holding your breath. His hands move down to unbuckle your seatbelt, and you let your left hand release from its grip on the wheel and shift out of the strap, drawing your hand to your chest. You nervously inhale and exhale. You can feel your heart pounding in your chest.

Then suddenly the slow hesitation is abandoned, and he turns your head towards him to receive his kiss. Lips and tongue urging you to surrender immediately, and you do, mouth opening to him, and he angles your head to deepen the kiss further. The kisses are hungry, those of a starved man. Your hands come up to hold helplessly onto his wrists as he continues to hold your face in his grasp, the overwhelming desire he won’t hold back any longer sweeping you away with him to a neverland where nothing else exists.

After a few moments or a few minutes, you really don’t know, his hands drop down and quickly find the button and zipper of your jeans, unbuttoning and unzipping eagerly. Swiftly his left hand pushes your legs apart, his right hand slips down the front of your panties, and your breath hitches as his middle finger purposefully strokes from your clit down your slit, finding you very wet – all for him now. He continues to trace back and forth across your folds, but not quite back up to your clit.

When he finally slides that single long finger inside your heat, you moan, dropping your head back against the headrest. His lips move to your neck, pressing heated kisses slowly up and down the column of your throat, each press of his lips matching the rhythm of his finger moving in and out of you. You press your left hand up to the roof of your car, and the other clutches his forearm. He starts to draw his hand away, but you push him back, your hand sliding now over the back of his, holding him there, and now he slips in a second finger, curling deliciously into your core.

He pulls his head back to watch your face when he moves his thumb to start circling your clit while he continues pumping his fingers, seemingly fascinated by the whimpers and keens he’s pulling from you as he plays your core with expert touch, stroking that spongy spot that deliciously tightens the coil tighter and tighter within you. Your cheeks are totally flushed, and you feel like you’re flying as he pulls you closer to the edge.

“Please,” you rasp desperately, hips rocking into his hand.

He quickens his motions while applying more pressure, giving you what you ask for, and watches your face as you come undone with a breathy, wordless shout, body shaking, your other hand grasping his bicep, curling forward as he slows but continues stroking your clenching walls through the immediate comedown, slowly and more slowly until your breathing finally evens out.

“Look at me,” he says in a low voice that makes your stomach flip again, and you open your eyes. His face is still so close to you.

He withdraws his hand from your core and slips just the tip of his index finger into your open and panting mouth, urging you to taste yourself on him. You suck without thinking, but he only allows you a moment before drawing his hand away and then sucking each of his fingers clean. He wants you to see him enjoy the taste of you on his lips, and when he’s done, he licks his lips, reaches down and gathers more slick from your release on his index finger and then licks it off again, and you can only whimper as you watch, overcome by the still unsatiated level of his lust.

He places slow deliberate kisses up along your jaw, and when he reaches your ear, he whispers, “That’s how I still see you,” and licks the shell of your ear, making you shiver and melt back against the seat.

Then suddenly he withdraws from your personal space, and in the next second opens and closes the passenger side door and you only register the sound quickly enough to see him disappear into the trees.

October 11, 2001 – Seattle, Washington, United States

You are with Hudson in Seattle. Over the years you have been with him on many business trips, but this was a trip from one coast to the other to see a new grandbaby. The other grandparents have just arrived, so the two of you decided to go to dinner on your own.

As you’re led through the restaurant to your table, you think you see his familiar face far across the dining room, eyes catching briefly, but it’s likely not him.

An hour later you are taking one of the last bites of the dessert you shared with Hudson when the waiter returns. “Is there anything else I can get for you this evening?” he asks.

“Oh, no,” Hudson responds, “just the check, please.”

“It’s already been taken care of, sir.”

“What?” you both ask.

“I was told to say it’s compliments of someone who admires your relationship.”

Hudson reaches across the table to take your hand and says something to the waiter, but you don’t pay attention to his words.

You have no idea how to feel, but you know it had to be him.

2014

You have seen him a lot this year, but it’s been on the television screen. First as a piece in a storm of news and revelations the day S.H.I.E.L.D. launched and sank three hellicarriers in Washington D.C. and Captain America exposed the remnants of HYDRA that had burrowed within the organization – HYDRA and their “fist,” the Winter Soldier. Then there was the Senate investigation into what went on that day, preceded and followed by many news specials. Now you know more about him than you ever did before, and so much about him makes sense to you, though you imagine you will never know the whole story. Even now, so much that has been pieced together by the media and further sketched out by you is fractured, pieces missing, conjectures tying gaps together.

That he’s resurfaced in your life at this point is perhaps just as it should be. Though not physically present, he provides a consuming something else to think about in the new stage of your life where the other man who has been at the center of your life is also no longer physically present, as you awake and remember with a fresh wave of grief each day.

You’re not consumed by grief, there are still children, and grandchildren, friends, errands, hobbies, dreams, social obligations, but the person who was your constant is gone, and it’s always an ache.

You and Hudson had celebrated your fiftieth wedding anniversary at the beginning of the year, a stroke taking him one afternoon unexpectedly in the early spring. He was your best friend, and the two of you had certainly built a life together. It was not a fairytale perfect marriage, but pretty damn near close, and Hudson was the love of your life despite the man you now know was the Winter Soldier dropping incidents of indiscretion into your history. Over the years you had never spoken of the other man to anyone, reckoning with the incongruence on your own, knowing that the ties to both men existed but who your home was.

Nobody needs to know, all of that merely moments, unconnected to your true life.

Spring 2016 – Bucharest, Romania

You see him one last time as you lay in a hospital bed. He hovers just outside your door wearing the medical scrubs of the other nurses.

“Jane?” You draw your granddaughter’s attention from her book as she’s curled up in what can only be a moderately comfortable chair at your bedside.

“Yes, Gran?”

“Be a dear and go get me a real cup tea? You said there’s a good café just down at the corner, right?”

She stands and smiles. “I did. And if you’re craving tea, you must be feeling a little better.”

“Mhmm,” you hum. “It will be good for you to stretch your legs, too.”

“Alright, I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll just wait here.”

She grins and shakes her head. “You better. No adventures without me.”

She slips her jacket on and slips out of your room.

A moment later, he enters.

“Hello, Sergeant Barnes.”

He smirks. “You know who I actually am.”

You nod. “How did you know I was here?”

“I saw you collapse this morning in the museum.”

You shake your head. “It’s nothing serious,” you say as he reaches for your charts.

“Cardiac arrhythmias.”

“Heart palpitations. Light fainting spell this morning. It hasn’t happened for a few years, and I hadn’t been eating properly the last few days. They’re keeping me for observation for twenty-four hours and then they’ll let me go if my heart behaves.”

“Good, you should have a good few years ahead of you still,” he says, almost admonishingly.

He stands at the side of your bed, but at the very foot of it seemingly trying to keep his distance, as if he doesn’t trust himself around others. Now that you know his story, his current behavior makes sense – especially why he was guarded but never hesitant before but keeps that buffer of distance now.

“She looks like you.”

“Jane? She’s a beautiful and brilliant young woman,” you say, a warm smile spreading across your face. “I’ll never admit aloud that she’s my favorite grandchild though.”

He doesn’t respond but gives you a tight-lipped smile.

“She’s my traveling companion for a grand adventure around Europe.”

“It’s only the two of you here in Bucharest?”

You hesitate before answering. “Yes.”

This ageless Peter Pan could capture her easily into his orbit. She’s twenty-one, the same age you were when you first ran into the Winter Soldier. He must suspect that’s what you’re thinking.

“I’ll make sure she stays safe.”

“She’s young.”

“No younger than you were when we met.”

The heat rises in your cheeks. “It’s different.”

He nods and you notice his face soften slightly. “It is. I’m ancient.”

“Come sit by me, old man.” You motion to the chair next to your bed, and he comes forward and takes a seat, perching on the edge, back ramrod straight.

“You said you saw us at the museum. Why do I have the feeling you’ve been watching us since before today?”

He regards you for just a split second before answering. “I stay near the train station, close enough to leave town quickly if I need to. I saw you arrive two nights ago when I was walking back to my place.”

“How often did you see me before I saw you?”

“Every time. There were times you never knew I was there.”

“Were you checking up on me?”

He shook his head. “Not at first. St. Tropez, Dallas, Milan, DC, and Seattle were purely circumstantial, but after DC I did check on where you were when I could.”

“But how did you remember me when they took so much else away from you?”

His face churns out a wry, bitter smile. “Yeah, they took away a lot of who I was, tried to overwrite my memories and what I knew before they took me, but after the initial programming,” his tone with that particular word is more vitriolic than the rest, ”they thought it was good for me to have context and history for the missions they sent me on, the new skills I learned, knowledge I acquired. Wiping was messy, and they had to know what to wipe. You were never an interference of any kind all those years and part of the Winter Soldier – part of me – I think never gave them a hint of your existence because I knew they knew everything else about me, had control over everything, and I didn’t want to risk losing this one piece I had found outside of what they made me. The Winter Soldier wanted the secret and thank God for that because If they’d ever found out about you...”

He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. He studies the pattern of the hospital bedding, and it gives you a moment to study his face – you’re sure he knows this, allows it.

After a moment, you say, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk so much in all our meetings over the years.”

“I didn’t converse much as the Winter Soldier,” he replies, his eyes meeting yours again, his entire presence softening just a degree. “It’s still not something I’m used to yet.”

“I know so much about you now, and I thought I’d have a hundred questions to ask if I ever saw you again, but…”

“But?”

“But I imagine you are still searching and want answers about your own more than I do.” You move your hand to the edge of the bed and offer him your palm. “So just sit with me.”

You almost thought he would refuse, but he removes the glove from his right hand and then carefully puts his hand in yours, his gaze returning to your face.

“Just this afternoon.”

“Just us.”

You brush your thumb over the back of his hand. There isn’t heat between you today, but there’s still a closeness that is only the two of you.

2026

The next and last time he sees you is from a distance, laid to rest in a beautifully polished wooden casket covered in an abundant spray of white flowers, surrounded in a sea of people in black. He recognizes Jane among them, as well. Though the Winter Soldier had claimed a piece of you belonged to him, destiny entwining your paths too many times in those early years, he could see now and had always been glad to know you had a full life outside your scattered encounters. He sends his goodbye silently across the cemetery from where he watches unseen, and finally slips away.

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VERY INFORMAL HISTORICAL/TIMELINE NOTES:

St. Tropez 1961 = St. Tropez was a big port for shipping at the time, so these deaths were two problematic traders making moving things in and out of the port difficult for Hydra.

Dallas 1963 = Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Milan 1972 = From Wikipedia: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (45), who had during the 1950s published the smuggled manuscript of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, but later became a left-wing militant during Italy's Years of Lead, was found dead at the base of a power-line transmission tower outside Segrate, near his native Milan, on 15 March 1972. It was believed that he had died when a bomb he was attempting to plant on the tower went off, and later testimony by other members of the Red Brigades supported this. However, the death was always viewed suspiciously, and in the 2010s forensic reports surfaced that suggested he had been tied to the tower before the bomb went off, with various intelligence agencies inside and outside of Italy suspected of responsibility.

…sounds like the Winter Soldier to me.

Washington 1991 = Howard and Maria Stark and the acquisition of the newly developed super soldier serum.

Seattle 2001 = Unsolved murder of former US Attorney General Thomas Crane Wales, announced by the FBI in 2018 to likely have been the work of a paid hitman – or the Winter Soldier.

2014 = Aftermath of Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Romania 2016 = Theoretically just before the events of Captain America: Civil War.

2026 = arbitrary future date, Bucky just came to pay his respects, no mission or happenstance connected