three words × oneshot

three words

He looks at me, loaded with all these damned feelings spilling out of his orbs, but he doesn't say anything. We're planted on the floor of an abandoned warehouse somewhere in southern New York. I don't remember much about how we got here, about how we got back into this kid's game of seeing who blinks first. But I know having your face so close is new - more than that, it's electrifying.
And maybe it hasn't even been five seconds since James screamed the third time today how hard it is for him to understand all the decisions I keep making, how much he hates me for keeping doing this, yet these seconds have turned into years , centuries. And I'm not sure whether or not to let them through.

I stare at his face, his expression so steady and the lines starting to form into his features. Cheap irritation uses the wrinkles I so admire in his smile as a weapon to destabilize me, and it works - but he'll never know it.
In addition to all the little verses that tell the story on his face, there is this ocean, huge and deep, that I sink fearlessly into, and that's where I know three little words are stuck in his throat, so he would never dare say, full of feelings Bucky is unwilling to reveal. Not for me.
In the end, maybe it's this avalanche of truths that makes us hear the shield fall, the noise of the vibranium in contact with the concrete floor and all the sorrows that lie there on our knees.

And he doesn't dodge, blink or change his pose, he just continues to stare at me, maybe waiting for me to scream, for me to hit him until I can't do it anymore, for me to try to do the same: break him in half with fists, or worse, words as cold and lying as those he himself uttered.
Instead, I change my face, and let in the air all the pain I feel, all the fear that holds me back. I lean in a little more and whisper the damn three words in his ear.
This is how I disarm him, how I feel his body searching for mine, as if he could no longer stand upright. And neither his chiseled torso nor his stupidly blue eyes could compare to the beauty of breaking James so gently in half.
For me, there is no way out but to take him as mine, to claim everything we feel in the simple act of catching him when his knees fail, when his head hangs on my shoulder.

Right now, I know the world has gone off its axis. I know I wouldn't do anything to make him come back too.
Why having this man handed over to me, as he demonstrates, is all I need.
Whe in one breath he tells about all the pain he felt, about all the years with Steve, about all the tortures he had been subjected to, about the drug that is his quest for redemption, about what I mean at the end of it all, I understand that this is the most beautiful moment I will witness for the rest of my life.

There is silence after he himself recites the three words in such a poetic way, and there is no torture or anxiety about what will come next. But there is doubt and shame.
James is hiding in the crook of my neck as he begins to ramble, about that sunset we watched on the boat, about the smell of my perfume and fabric softener and the sea, about the peace he never wanted but that there, and only there he could enjoy. And I stroke his hair as if to say it feels exactly this way with him in my arms. And he talks more, talks about my smile and my truths, and about my eyes and the blouses he hates me wearing. We laughed.
We're lost here, cut off from everything, and smelling Bucky's conditioner is enough oxygen I need.