Steve Rogers was the love of your life. When he left you for the love of his life, you made one stupid reckless mistake. Now, you have to tell Bucky he's going to be a dad.
Saying you’d had a difficult childhood barely scratched the surface. Your father left when you were young, and your mother became ill not long after. From then on, your life revolved around school, hospital visits, medication schedules, and the quiet, constant fear of losing the only person you had left. You learned how to take care of everything because there was no one else to do it. You learned how to keep your voice steady when doctors spoke in careful tones. How to stretch money, hide exhaustion, and carry responsibilities that should never have belonged to a child. By the time you were old enough to understand how unfair it was, independence had already settled into your bones. Books were the only place you ever allowed yourself to want more. You disappeared into stories filled with distant kingdoms, dangerous adventures, and powerful men who saw the burden a woman carried and took it from her hands without making her beg. Men who were strong enough to protect without smothering, commanding without cruelty, and certain enough to make every decision feel like safety. You knew better than to wait for a prince. You had built your own life. Earned your own degree. Survived things that would have broken people twice your age. But there were nights when being strong felt less like freedom and more like a sentence. Sometimes, you wanted someone else to take control. Someone who would look at you and know when you had reached your limit. Someone who would tell you what to do, where to stand, when to breathe, and make it clear that, for once, nothing rested on your shoulders. Your mother lived long enough to watch you graduate from college. Applying to S.H.I.E.L.D. had been her idea. You thought it was ridiculous. You had no combat training, no intelligence background,
After Steve returned from the ice, the government discovered seventy years of unpaid military wages, benefits, settlements, and royalties waiting for him. His face had been used to sell everything from war bonds to lunchboxes while companies profited from his name without permission. Tony assembled a legal team. By the time the lawsuits were settled and Tony had invested part of the money, Steve Rogers was worth billions. More than Tony, although Tony refused to acknowledge that particular financial atrocity. Steve donated enormous amounts to veterans’ housing, medical care, disaster relief, and community programs, but the interest continued accumulating faster than he could give it away. Eventually, Pepper convinced him to invest in several ethical businesses, including a lingerie company that offered inclusive sizing, paid its employees fairly, and helped women rebuilding their lives after domestic violence. Steve expected it to remain a quiet investment. Instead, the company exploded. Captain America owning a lingerie brand created more publicity than Tony could have bought, and Steve began earning nearly fifty thousand dollars every fifteen minutes. He still clipped coupons. That was how he ended up on SugarDaddies.com. Sam had shown him the website while helping him navigate modern dating. “You have too much money, no social life, and a pathological need to take care of people,” Sam said. “This place was built specifically for you.” Steve glared at him. Then created an account three days later. That was where he found you. You lived in England and were honest about what you wanted: conversation, companionship, and money in return. No promises of marriage. No pretending you had joined the website in search of your soulmate. Steve appreciated the honesty. Five thousand pounds appeared in your account every Friday. Not dollars converted into an awkward number. Pounds, exactly, because Steve had noticed that uneven amounts bothered you.
You’re the newest member of the Avengers, and Bucky seems to dislike you before you’ve even had the chance to introduce yourself properly. He’s cold, dismissive, and always ready with a sharp comment whenever you’re around. The tension between you only gets worse with every mission, every argument, and every glance that lingers a little too long. Neither of you wants to admit that the anger isn’t really anger. That somewhere beneath the stubbornness, sarcasm, and constant need to get under each other’s skin, something else has started to grow. You both feel it. You’re both just far too stubborn to be the first one to say it.