Chapter Text
The locker room stank of wet earth, adrenaline, and quiet humiliation.
Rain tapped steadily on the fogged windows like a slow metronome. Inside, the silence was unbearable. The game had ended thirty minutes ago, but the ache of loss still hung heavy, coiled in shoulders and silence. No one moved. Not really. They just sat in the mess of it—muddy jerseys half-peeled off, socks stuck to calves, cleats discarded like broken bones across the floor.
Coach Alexei hadn’t spoken yet. He stood near the whiteboard, hand clenched around a dry-erase marker he hadn’t touched. His jaw was tight. He looked like a man biting his own rage in half, tasting blood.
From the far end of the bench, Bucky sat motionless, elbows on his knees, his dark curls still damp with sweat. His jersey clung to him like a second skin. He didn’t blink. Didn’t speak. He just stared at the floor, as if it might offer an answer.
No one could tell he was trying not to throw up.
Two years ago, he was the son of a man who carved his name into the back pages of true crime documentaries. Now he was just the captain of a team that couldn’t win. The guilt never left. Sometimes it was a hum under his skin, other times a scream. Today it was silence. Screaming silence.
Jon sat across the room, his thigh bouncing with restless energy. His knuckles were raw again, scraped open during a slide tackle no one asked him to make. He tapped his foot like he was building up to an explosion.
Then he said it.
“Fucking useless.”
The words snapped through the room like a whip.
Yelena’s breath caught. She sat on the floor by the showers, back against the wall, knees drawn up tightly to her chest. Her goalie jersey hung off one shoulder. Damp strands of blonde hair clung to her cheeks. She looked small. Pale.
“She didn’t block a single shot,” Jon added, louder now. Meaner.
Bucky looked up sharply.
Yelena blinked hard. Once. Her heart felt like it had dropped through the floor, but she didn’t flinch. She just curled in tighter.
“I said shut up,” Ava muttered from behind her locker door, voice low, measured, but seething. “You missed two tackles. Wanna start keeping score?”
There was something jagged in her tone. Protective. Dangerous.
Jon turned toward her, eyes flaring with something more than irritation. But when he met her gaze, something else passed between them—an electric, bitter thread of shared secrets and bruised vulnerability. His eyes lingered on her for half a second too long.
And Ava looked back.
Not a glance. A lock. The kind that meant: I know what you are when we’re alone.
Then it was over. She turned away, pulling on her hoodie with sharp, angry movements. Her hands trembled for a moment. She clenched them into fists to hide it.
Bucky exhaled slowly, grounding himself. Natasha stood nearby, arms crossed, posture perfect. Her expression unreadable, eyes fixed on the whiteboard. She hadn’t said a word.
But when Jon muttered something under his breath again—“Goalkeeper my ass”—her gaze slid sideways. Only for a second. Toward Yelena.
A flash of emotion passed across Natasha’s face. Not pity. Not quite. Maybe regret. Maybe the sick taste of memory: a sister in a world that demanded too much, too soon.
Bob sat three lockers down, hoodie up, eyes on the floor. His left hand rubbed the inside of his right wrist absently. A twitch. A tick. The skin there was angry and red under the cuff.
Yelena saw it.
She turned her face away, her throat tightening. She hated that she noticed. Hated that her first feeling was recognition. Then shame.
Bob’s hand twitched again. He was trying to stop. He really was.
He glanced up once—just once—toward her.
She wasn’t looking.
Antonia stood at the edge of it all, shoulders tight, hands clenched around her water bottle like it was the only real thing in the room. She hadn’t said a word. Her face was blank, composed in that way that wasn’t real calm—just a mask she learned young. Sometimes the silence helped. Sometimes it was all she had.
Alexei finally turned.
“You want pity?” His voice cracked through the quiet like a pistol. “That’s what you’ll get. A sad article in the school paper. ‘Shostakov’s Team Falls Again.’ Another joke.”
He looked at them one by one. His eyes didn’t soften.
Except—when they landed on Natasha. A second passed. Just one. The fury faded from his gaze, barely, and a flicker of guilt bloomed in its place. Then it vanished.
“We train tomorrow,” he said. “5:30. No excuses. You’re late, you don’t come. You’re soft, you don’t come. You don’t want this, don’t waste my fucking time.”
He dropped the marker on the floor and left. The door slammed shut behind him like a final judgment.
For a moment, no one moved.
Natasha stepped away from the wall. “He’s right,” she said. Her voice was even. But her fists were clenched. “We’re playing like ghosts.”
“We are ghosts,” Yelena said softly.
Ava stood up. “Speak for yourself.”
Yelena’s lips pressed together. Ava wasn’t mad at her. Not really. But she looked at everyone like she was waiting for them to turn on her. Like they had before. Like they always might.
Jon reached into his bag and grabbed a protein bar. He didn’t eat it. Just unwrapped it, tore off a piece, and let it sit in his palm.
“Anyone want half?” he asked, voice light, fake.
No one answered.
Yelena finally stood, slow and stiff. She walked past Bob, brushing close without meaning to. He stiffened at the contact.
She hesitated at the door. Looked back once. At Natasha. Then at Bob.
He was already staring at her. This time, she saw it.
And she looked away.
The storm outside grew louder. But inside the locker room, the quiet was deafening.
⧗
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting the empty locker room in a sterile, sour hue. The others had left—one by one, slowly, avoiding eye contact and dragging the weight of another loss behind them like broken bones.
Natasha stayed behind, still in uniform, sitting alone on the wooden bench by the far wall. Her cleats were unlaced, her hands idle in her lap. Her expression was blank, almost cold. But that was a lie. She was just very good at hiding things.
The door creaked open again, and she knew it was him before she looked.
Bucky stepped back inside, moving like a ghost. His jersey was gone now, replaced by a black hoodie, still damp around the collar. He closed the door softly behind him, but it still sounded like a verdict.
“You okay?” he asked.
It was a stupid question. He knew it. But it was the only one he had.
Natasha didn’t look up. “Are you?”
He didn’t answer.
The silence between them was familiar. It wasn’t empty. It was filled with the kind of things you don’t say around other people. The things that would ruin you if you said them out loud.
He crossed the room slowly and sat beside her. Not too close. Not yet. The bench creaked under his weight.
“It wasn’t Yelena’s fault,” she said, voice soft but sharp around the edges. “Jon’s just pissed we lost again. He wants someone to bleed for it.”
“She shouldn’t have to.”
“She always has.”
Bucky glanced over at her, eyes shadowed. “So have you.”
Natasha flinched—almost imperceptibly—but didn’t turn to him. Her hands tightened in her lap.
“That’s not the same,” she said.
“Isn’t it?”
There was a long pause. The sound of the rain hitting the rooftop was louder now, filling in all the space between words. Natasha breathed in slowly through her nose.
“I’m trying to keep her safe,” she said. “That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.”
Bucky didn’t speak right away. He looked at her hands instead. The fingers were curled tightly together, knuckles pale. The same hands that had gripped his neck the night she first kissed him like she needed to be ruined by something of her own choosing.
“She looks up to you,” he said.
“She shouldn’t.”
He reached out, gently brushing his fingers against hers. Just once. Just enough to make her look at him.
“She should.”
That cracked something. Not broken, not shattered—just a tiny fracture through the surface of her mask. Natasha blinked, slowly. Her eyes looked tired. More than tired. Haunted.
“Sometimes I wish I’d never come back to this town,” she murmured.
“You didn’t,” he said. “You never really did.”
Her lips twitched—something between a smile and a wound. She turned toward him fully now, legs angled so her knees barely touched his. The closeness made her stomach twist.
“You’re not exactly built for pep talks, you know.”
“I’m not trying to be.”
“What are you trying to be?”
The question hung there. It could have meant anything. A boyfriend. A secret. A shield. A ghost.
Bucky exhaled through his nose, slow. Measured.
“Yours,” he said quietly.
Natasha looked down at their hands. Her fingers moved, hesitant, and then slowly curled around his.
“I don’t know how to be loved,” she said. “I only know how to be used.”
Bucky swallowed. He wanted to tell her she wasn’t. That she never had to be again. But he knew words like that didn’t mean anything to girls like her. You had to prove it. Every time. Over and over. Like penance.
So instead he just said: “Then I’ll wait.”
She leaned into him after that, resting her forehead against his shoulder. His hand moved up instinctively, resting gently at the back of her neck. They stayed like that for a long time. No rush. No promises. Just silence.
Outside, the storm kept beating against the windows like a warning. But inside, for just a moment, there was quiet.
And the shape of something fragile, and real, and impossible.