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cowboy like me
summary: a bad day for Bucky, a splendid week for the woman. mixed feelings and memories of a stormy past prevent Bucky from giving voice to his true feelings. (I'm really sorry I'm so bad at summary's)
pairing: bucky barnes x reader
words: 2k or so.
warnings: poor bucky letting his feelings get the better of him and saying mean things from time to time, sorry bout that. oh, and I wrote this in the third person, I don't know if that's a warning but still. and last but not least, English is not my native language so I apologise in advance for any mistakes.
also, the title of this and the part of the song quoted below only inspired the setting of this one-shot. the "plot" is independent of the theme song. I just have a bunch of taylor's songs that inspires me scenarios like this with independent plots, it's like a hobby. and ALSO, this is my first fic in here, and I really hope to do more parts in the future, especially when this semester is over. so, I hope you like it!
you're a bandit like me eyes full of stars hustling for the good life
It had not rained like this for quite some time. Lightning echoed in every part of the city and the drops were crashing against the window glass with the speed of a Maserati on a winding road; the sky was dark even though it was only four o'clock in the afternoon. Inside the room, the atmosphere was warm and comfortable, one of the reasons she stopped by at least five times a week. However, a few minutes before the downpour began, the whole atmosphere had turned so grey that for a moment it seemed as if the clouds were bringing a bad omen...
But no, it was only him.
The man who always sat next to her in the cafeteria to use one of the computers that the café provided as a service.
Besides the sound of the bell above the door and his soaked boots, it was his exasperated sigh that caught her attention before she looked away from her laptop screen.
His hair fell over his forehead with a few raindrops slipping from his forehead and temples, until they were lost under his jawline and mingling in the cotton of his shirt. The frown he kept on his face did not disappear as he tried, very unsuccessfully, to dry his clothes by shaking them slightly.
He would definitely do anything to keep that leather jacket and gloves on.
The smell of coffee and the hustle and bustle of the room contrasted with the calm but resignedly helpless attitude of the man who was running his hands heavily over his trousers as if they were a portable hairdryer.
Michael, one of the waiters who occasionally gave them ham and cheese croissants on Saturdays when they were both there, approached the sulking man and, seconds later, they both disappeared into the kitchen behind the till.
The screen of her mobile phone lit up as she tried to refocus on the reading she had to do.
Betty: I still don't understand how not wanting to visit your abusive dad in hospital is an important topic of conversation in a counselling session. I mean, the words abusive father say it all.
Tell me you're on my side.
Me: I still think you should change your psychologist.
Betty: I know! But at that clinic it's 30% cheaper than getting a private one. But, I already have a solution, next week I'll...
The squeak of the chair next to her being dragged startled her and her mobile phone almost flew out of her hands. The grumpy man, now a little drier, dropped the weight of his giant body on the poor chair so that it squeaked as if complaining about the man's rudeness. He stared at the computer screen on as if it held the solution to all his problems.
“Bad day?”
“Just an unfortunate string of inconveniences since I opened my eyes this morning,” he commented seriously and gravely as he began to move his hands over the keyboard. He hadn't looked at her when he spoke, which was not unusual, but at the moment it felt inappropriate, “Nothing I'm not used to.”
The woman turned her head to look at the twenty-seven pages she still had to read, and it seemed too tedious a thing to spend her time on now that Bucky had arrived.
“Is there anything I can do for you? I'm going to apply for a job at a daycare, maybe I could start practicing with you.”
Bucky faked a laugh, rather bitter and strained the kind she was used to hearing, “Very funny,” he said, his gaze dark and fixed on the screen.
“Sometimes you laugh at my jokes.”
“When they're funny,” he blurted out as soon as she finished speaking, instantly regretting it but not showing it in his body language.
“Hey! Don't hurt my feelings like that. What happened with your therapist? If you want to talk about it, sure.”
She watched his body tense and how he made no attempt to hide the bitter expression on his face as soon as the word "therapist" left her mouth. The woman thought she'd made a poor choice of words, yet Bucky felt unsettled by how strangely easily she seemed to be able to read his attitudes. Since when had she started doing such things? Had she always been that way? Had he let his guard down that much these past few weeks?
“Just... trouble, in general,” he pronounced her name with feigned gentleness, sending a shiver down her spine. Had he noticed by now? So soon? She thought, hastily.
“Okay,” she mumbled, trying to keep her composure as her mind worked at full speed, “I understand if you don't want to talk about it.”
No, he couldn't have noticed. Regardless of how damaged and broken she was inside, she knew that wasn't something Bucky paid the most detailed attention to. And, even if that were the case, there wasn't a person on the planet who knew her better than he did at this point, so if he wanted to walk away and leave her to not deal with her problems and constant chatter, he would have done so long ago.
Bucky sighed deeply, the movement of his chest aching from the lump in his throat. His hands moved on automatic over the keyboard, digging into things he already knew, spending the time just trying to divert the train of thought that wouldn't leave him alone. Anyway, is it really so bad for someone to know me like that? He thought, as the woman returned to her reading, it's not bad to be vulnerable once in a while, she's not going to hurt me. I know, I know.
Then why does it scare me so much?
His hands clasped as a third presence appeared between them. Michael, with a giant grin on his face, set two medium-sized cups of coffee on the small table they shared in front of the window. The woman's, with milk and sweetened with vanilla, as she always asked for. Bucky's, black, plain and cold, the way he always drank it.
The girl sitting next to him and the barista shared a couple of words in a conversation that seemed to be too funny, because she kept laughing. Why did he find her laughter annoying? Was it because it was too loud, or because it sounded too high-pitched unlike her normal laughter? When she laughed with Bucky, her tone was softer, gravelly, delicate and jovial. He couldn't describe the sensation that burned in his chest every time her eyes narrowed at her smile, or every time she brought her right hand to her chest, over her heart, as if she couldn't bear to laugh anymore, but at the same time holding back the pain in her cheeks so she wouldn't stop.
Michael didn't get that. No, he wasn't getting what Bucky was.
“Bucky?”
Her chuckling voice disconnected him from the bizarre conjectures in his mind, and he turned his eyes to her. She was looking at him with a rueful smile and her cheeks were too flushed.
“Are you all right?”
The aforementioned reveled in the sight that was plastered in front of him, with her sparkling eyes and the way her lips curved, before replying, “Yeah, all good.”
When he noticed Michael was still there, his shoulders tensed and quickly his gaze refocused on the sea of words displayed on the screen in front of him.
“You're too stiff,” he heard the woman's voice again a few seconds later, “Are you sure you don't want to do something to distract yourself? There are a lot of things coming to mind right now.”
Bucky turned to look at her with a frown.
“What things?”
“Um, last week you told me you've never played twenty questions before.”
The man arched an eyebrow, intrigued by how his mind played him, but quickly replied, “Do I look like the kind of person who plays the twenty questions?”
“Not really, but that day you told me you were willing to try it if I played it with you.”
Bucky was silent for a few seconds.
“I don't remember saying that.”
“Sometimes you don't remember a lot of things for convenience, Barnes,” she teased innocently, but Bucky knew what that meant: you're always evading me when I'm trying to help you.
And well, it was true.
“I imagine you don't remember Sam's invitation to you three days ago either.”
“What invitation?” he played distracted, as he pretended to vehemently read what he'd Googled.
“He asked you to join him to watch a game at the bar two blocks from your flat.”
Bucky hummed as he pretended to think about what he'd just heard, even though he remembered it perfectly. And he knew that earlier in the day he'd left it on hold, which was a clear and express no, but he hadn't said that to the woman who was now staring at him.
“I don't like football.”
The woman let out a snort of exasperation.
“This is why you have no friends, Bucky.”
“I could say the same about you.”
Bucky knew it was a joke. She'd said things like that to him before and it had never bothered him; he knew she didn't mean it in a derogatory way or to make fun of him. She would never do that. But subconsciously, he couldn't stop his mouth from blurting out the words he didn't want to say; words he would never have thought to say to her.
“I know you've had a bad day, Buck,” she spoke again after a few seconds, “But I just want to distract you.”
“I don't need your help, I can manage on my own.”
“Okay, let's just... change the subject, shall we?”
Bucky pursed his lips, but didn't dare connect their gazes.
“I'm sorry.”
“It's okay," she mused, and didn't speak again until a couple of seconds later, “How was your date?”
He gave a small smile before saying, “I'm sure you waited for a reasonable amount of time so you could satiate your curiosity.”
The woman let out a laugh, the kind that had the ability to calm Bucky's countenance for a few moments, before replying, “It's just that ever since I met you I didn't think I'd ever see you going on a real date.”
“And you probably won't again.”
“That's how bad it went?”
Bucky twisted his mouth, only remembering the image in the background of his neighbour's flat.
“It could have been worse.”
“Maybe we're just not cut out for dating.”
After a long moment, Bucky turned his head to watch her pursed lips. Her expression seemed downcast, but she pulled herself together quickly when she felt his gaze on her.
“What we've done or who we've been in the past, doesn't define what we can do or be now,” he reminded her of the words she always said to him when he felt he didn't deserve something good, and watched her nod at his words with a small smile, “Don't torment yourself thinking about it, neither of us had a choice.”
“I could tell you the same thing.”
Bucky smiled, sincerely, and for the first time since he had awoken that morning.
“I apply the philosophy you preach perfectly, I'm a great disciple.”
She elongated a sarcastic laugh that widened Bucky's grin. What was it about her that drew you in and bewitched you like that?
“In a trauma contest, you'd take first place, Barnes.”
“We'd be tied, you mean.”
The woman smiled at him, and between their looks, they both knew they were only hiding the truth behind the humour. Bucky didn't often do it, but since he'd met her, and considering that was something she often did -using humour to cover up the truth she'd rather not accept, or simply to hide the pain-, he'd gotten such a habit of doing it every so often that even his therapist was a little put out the first time he joked about one of his traumas in front of her. It was a very strange scenario that was never repeated.
“I'm sorry for the way I acted earlier,” Bucky took the floor again, a little more relaxed than when he'd arrived soaking wet in the cafeteria, “It's just... I killed my neighbour's son.”
“No,” she replied quickly and firmly, as she did every time a similar topic came up in their conversations, “It was the Winter Soldier. It was a person they created to control and disenfranchise, that wasn't you. It wasn't the Bucky I know. I'm sorry to hear that, but... it wasn't your fault, I know that whatever they did for your mind was always rejected by your body, even if you couldn't control it.”
The man half-opened his lips, wanting to say something, wanting to give voice to the jumble of thoughts concurring in his mind, but nothing managed to come out other than incoherent babbling.
“I... I don't know how to tell him.”
“You really want to?”
Bucky nodded, looking into the woman's shining, understanding eyes as she brought one of her hands up to cradle the side of his face.
“Then you'll find a way. Don't push yourself.”
He rested his right hand on the hand the woman held on his cheek, and leaned his head slightly into her touch. Although the stress and tension did not disappear completely, it did give way to a relaxing and lively sense of calm and stillness. Bucky didn't know if she had done it on purpose or not, but her words, though few, brought back a harmonic undertone he hadn't allowed himself to return to in a long time.
Then you'll find a way.
Don't push yourself.
invisible string
summary: in a surprising and not at all awkward outing with Sam Wilson, Bucky discovers what he's been looking for for weeks in the place he least expected.
pairing: bucky barnes x reader (although she doesn't appear much, sorry)
words: +2k
warnings: descriptions of nervousness or a panic attack, thoughts of loneliness and a lot of Sam/Bucky interaction <3 (this is also in third person). and again, English is not my native language, so sorry for any mistakes!
note: hi! i don't usually like what i write, mainly because i've had writer's block for 4 years now, but what i wrote yesterday kept hanging around in my head and i wanted to write something else today, so this came out. chronologically, it would be several weeks before cowboy like me. ALSO, again, the song only inspired me the setting, not so much to do with the plot. hope you like it!
a string that pulled me
out of all the wrong arms right into that dive bar
something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire
chains around my demons, wool to brave the seasons
one single thread of gold tied me to you
Bucky enjoyed his solitude even if the darkness of night brought back stormy memories. The echo of his footsteps in the early morning sometimes exalted him, noting that he found it hard to remember that there was no longer someone running behind him. That the people who had died at the hand of him... the Soldier, were not chasing him in his dreams looking for him to make amends for what he had broken; what he had taken from them so fiercely and mercilessly so many years ago.
How can you live a free life, as he's doing, knowing that you usurped other people's freedom of life?
Bucky enjoyed his solitude, yes, because he felt he could disappear into it. That he could sink and mingle with the floor tiles at midnight when the memories were too much; when the sensations, the guilt and the remorse took the air out of him and all he was able to feel was his own agonising pain.
He was free, yes, but at what cost?
The images would not go away, and the impressions those violent events left on his body were involuntary. He knew that despair was going to be a constant in his path, that he would repeatedly be thinking that moving on was worth it, that he could really start his life in peace now. But how? Sometimes he would feel that his path was in pieces that were scattered all over a field of dry grass, that it had no direction or harmony; that it was broken, forgotten and neglected like him.
"Man, are you listening to me?"
Bucky snapped out of it, remembering where he was. The night before had been a real mess that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about all day, going about his daily business. For some reason, he thought hanging out with Sam Wilson, getting out of the rut he'd fallen into for a bit, was a good way to clear his mind of all the dark memories he'd conjured up and wanted to wrest from his mind. And it had worked, at first. Now, somehow, the cosy and familiar feeling -entirely alien to him- imprinted on the atmosphere of that coffee shop, had caused what had happened the night before, to come back to his head automatically.
As if his own body rejected the sensation; as if he didn't want to feel welcome in a place, or comfortable being with someone. Because was that really something he deserved? Was that thrill of belonging meant for someone like him?
"Yes," he replied vaguely, picking up the glass of beer still half-full on the table, "but no, I don't feel like it."
"Oh, come on, man, it's an affectionate place! And the people are friendly, I assure you. I know half the people who are going to be there, we've been to games at the bar near your flat."
"Sounds like a lot of people just like you. I'll pass."
Sam let out a laugh, shaking his head. Coming up with a thousand ideas to get Bucky out of his rut was more complicated than he thought. It seemed he was simply quite comfortable being completely alone, no noise or people around him. Just the fact that he was there, at that moment with him in a rather crowded coffee shop, was an incredible step closer to the other edge of the cliff that stood between Bucky and the world.
"You don't have to hide from the world anymore, buddy. You can go out and roam it at your leisure now."
Bucky gave him a scowl and a grimace. Sam's lips were pursed in a sympathetic smile, and for some reason, the comment gave him a bittersweet feeling.
The world is yours to know, you just have to open the door to it, echoed in his head like an old memory.
Steve.
"Anyway, I'll leave the invitation on the table. If you decide to attend, you're welcome," Sam raised his glass and tilted it slightly towards Bucky before taking a long drink.
Welcome, what an odd word to dedicate to a retired assassin.
Without replying, Bucky mimicked Sam's gesture and gulped down the entire contents of his beer.
At Sam's arched eyebrows, he said, "I can't get drunk."
"Ah, the serum."
"Yeah."
Sam ordered another round for both of them and ordered himself a plain hamburger while he was at it.
"So what happened with your research, did you get any breakthroughs on that stack of papers?"
Bucky grimaced in exasperation, remembering how he'd spent the last few nights, -mostly just preventing himself from sleeping and having some other dream that would leave him with the attitude he had that day- reading and rifling through all the papers in a corner of his room.
"Nothing interesting. Papers of people who had already died, forged passports and very strange clinical cases I'd rather not remember."
Sam frowned not wanting to imagine what he was referring to, "If you'd accepted my help you'd be done with that pile of rubbish by now."
"It's not rubbish," Bucky grumbled, as the waiter, -Michael, it read on the edge of his shirt pocket- brought them their beers and Sam's burger, "Thanks. Somewhere her file will be, it can't have been recast or just lost."
"Maybe they burned it before you got here."
"There was no way they knew I was going."
Sam sighed and, as he finished pouring ketchup on his burger, asked, "Don't you think it's enough to know that you let her go alive and well?"
"No," he replied instantly, "She could have died."
"I like your optimism."
"Or she could have been killed on the way out. I need to find her."
"You're taking a lot of credit from her, man. She almost kicked your good arm off."
Bucky rolled his eyes in exasperation, "It didn't happen like that."
Sam let out a laugh noting the grumpy expression Bucky was giving him.
"No," he said after recovering, "But almost."
"They could also capture her again," he continued with his hypotheses trying to get back to the main topic.
"I think she's all right, from what you said, she looked pretty capable."
Bucky pursed his lips but didn't answer him. Since he'd arrived half dead in town after not showing up or showing any signs of life for a week, Sam had ambushed him at his flat and had to tell him what he'd been up to.
It was quite a talk, too long for Bucky's taste, but at the same time quite liberating, as well as revealing. Sam had given him the idea of going back to the place and gathering all the information so he could find the woman; the woman who had attacked him as if he had been trying to kill her, but he was really there to take her out.
Then she had defeated him cleanly and had run away without looking back like a sniper's bullet fired.
Bucky had returned to the deserted place, destroyed and almost unrecognisable from the way he had left it, and with great effort managed to collect the files that had been salvaged from the place. That was a month and a half ago, and now he had a room in his flat full of papers, boxes and compressed files on CDs that he hadn't finished going through, all to see if there was anything he could find on this woman.
A name, an address, a number, anything.
"And even if you did find something in that pile of paper," Sam continued, after taking a bite of his burger and a long sip of his beer, "what makes you think you're really going to find her? I mean, if I were her I would have gone to a country where they didn't even speak English and changed my name."
"I can try," he said, pretending the idea hadn't crossed his mind a couple of times these days.
"You have faith in lost causes."
"Just like you."
Sam narrowed his eyes at him, knowing exactly what he was referring to, but he didn't comment on it, just continued to nibble on his food.
Bucky took a minute to weigh whether or not he should continue to search for this woman's whereabouts, even though there was a chance he might never find her. There was something about the moment he found her, cowering in on herself in the corner of the room, but at the same time defensive and fierce. Though her expression had been annoyed and imperious, through her eyes he had been able to see fear. And he recognised it, because he had seen it in his own.
Hiding fear behind a mask of serenity and inexpressiveness was something he had done daily for so many years, that now he did it involuntarily and could recognise when someone else did it. Like a perfect liar who could recognises lies. That unfamiliar and uncharacteristic feeling he had the moment he saw her and realised how scared she was to see him there, because she would surely have recognised him, was something that hadn't left him alone since she escaped. And even though, like Sam, Bucky knew she was fully capable of surviving, that was something he wanted to verify personally. It was something he needed, he didn't know why, but he did.
"You're really not hungry?" Sam's voice echoed in his head and he looked up, "This burger is one of the best I've ever tasted."
"I'm good. Thanks for the recommendation, Sam."
"Just saying," the brunet shrugged and finished his meal in two more bites, "So, what are you doing tonight?"
"I'm not going to any get-togethers or watching a game or climbing a mountain."
"Hey, first of all, mountains are on weekends. Second of all, you need to surround yourself with people, man."
"I think with this," Bucky gestured around him, "I've crossed that off your list for at least three months."
Sam was going to scold him, but seemed to regret it at the last moment, "At least let me help you look through those boxes. It wouldn't hurt to talk to someone once in a while, like now."
Bucky half-opened his lips to answer him, but his body froze. Suddenly, a shiver ran through his body and the beer in his left hand went static. Sam watched him with a questioning face, but Bucky concentrated on the hundred emotions that erupted inside his body.
The nervousness he hadn't heard in a couple of days - since the last time he thought the cat's footsteps on his windowsill were a person spying on him - had just returned along with a tightness in his chest that almost took his breath away.
Someone was watching him.
But who? Everyone in the cafeteria was focused on their own business, even the waiters were all together behind the cash register whispering to each other.
He clasped his hands as he felt a tingle run through them, just before they began to shake. His chest heaved in time with his anxious breathing, and for a moment he felt the room shrink and shrink until it was capable of crushing him.
"What is it, Bucky?"
He was on the verge of standing up and running away like a frightened child. He came within an inch of knocking over everything on the table and flipping the table over, of breaking a glass, of hitting something, or hiding in a corner. When his breathing got heavier and heavier, when he felt that he couldn't get enough air into his lungs, that's when he saw it.
No, when he saw her.
Strangely unperturbed but curious, a few feet in front of him, sitting in a long wooden chair with a laptop in front of her and her eyes fixed on his presence, was her. The woman.
She had recognised him instantly, it seemed, but this time she didn't look scared, she didn't look like she wanted to run away. She just looked intrigued.
Sam, noticing Bucky in some sort of trance, followed his gaze behind him and found a rather young woman, she almost looked like a college student, returning his gaze to the man who had turned into a nervous wreck five seconds ago.
"Is that her?" He whispered to him, and Bucky only answered with a slight, brief nod that Sam almost missed.
Bucky didn't look away from her for several seconds where he felt a weight leave his shoulders, because it was peaceful to know that she was alive, and it was amazing just to have found her in this place, without even considering it. So he had, he had helped her. He had gone to rescue her, but in the end she had saved herself.
Maybe this was how he could redeem himself; this was probably the right way to make amends for the atrocities an alien being had committed. Maybe it wasn't a big deal, but he felt it was a big step towards becoming the person he really wanted to be; to be that person who is welcome, who feels at ease with himself. A person who can belong to something... to someone.
The world is yours to know, you just have to open the door to it.
ivy
summary: you have to accept your fate as the wife of another man while the one you love decides to step back.
pairing: royal!au bucky barnes x reader (around 1800's)
words: +2.5k
warnings: very angsty? that's the word, isn't it? highly inspired by ivy (taylor swift always right) and i am not surprised. English is not my native language, so sorry for any mistakes! also, i'll probably edit this later, and add a few things to it. i only wrote this at midnight and I'm half asleep. EDITED! :)
that's it, hope you like it!
i'd live and die for moments that we stole on begged and borrowed time so tell me to run or dare to sit and watch what we'll become
The ballroom was more crowded than you would expect. People were moving around, laughing and dancing as best they could to the melody that echoed loudly from the band playing at the back of the hall. The sound of clinking glasses and laughing eyes were a constant under your gaze, sharp but cautious, as well as haughty and tense, waiting. Just waiting.
You couldn't stop moving around the room. You encountered countless new faces every time you turned a corner of the castle. It was definitely a huge party, surely worthy of celebrating an event of such magnitude as the one that day. Despite your reluctance to hold such a (gigantic) gathering, you were quickly convinced by the people you lived with in that place, who easily persuaded you by pointing out all the advantages that such a big celebration could bring to the town: besides generating more unity as all the people of the kingdom were present, it was also the perfect opportunity to create political and commercial ties with the regents of the neighbouring kingdoms.
It was, quite simply, the perfect moment for everything and everyone.
Except for you.
The engagement celebration party.
Your engagement to the new king of Anderland, Steven Rogers.
That morning went by too fast. Your mother showed up too early in your chambers, exclaiming that it was the big day where news of such magnitude would be made public and that you were surely entirely happy about what was soon to happen. Marrying Steve, the great and compassionate King Steve. Yes, it was a great event for the kingdom and the reputation of your father's legacy. Your sister, the ruthless Natasha, had appeared in your room in the same manner as your mother with a big smile on her face, and behind her her entourage of professional make-up artists who were going to fix you up for the rest of the morning, the Black Widows.
But the truth was, no, you were not entirely happy. And that fact, if they ever noticed it, was completely overlooked by your mother and Natasha, and even your father, to whom you were closest. It was only a few hours later, minutes before the great feast was to begin, that one person could see the misfortune you were trying to hide in the dull gleam of your eyes.
The Duchess of Vandurness, Wanda Maximoff. Your best friend and only confidante, the only one who truly knew the whole truth.
"By the gods. I haven't seen you this down since Roy passed away," Wanda commented as soon as she entered your room and noticed the dull expression that adorned your face, trying unsuccessfully to cheer you up after reminding you of your dog's death a couple of months ago, "Sorry, bad choice of words."
She approached you with a sympathetic expression, as if she could understand the pain that tightened your chest and the helplessness that left a lump in your throat, but the truth was you didn't know if she could understand.
"I know it's not the big moment you were expecting, nor with whom you were expecting it, but the faster it happens the less strong the pain will be. I promise."
And it was a lie. Of course it was. Wanda didn't lie often, mainly because she wasn't good at it, but when it happened you used to hold on tightly to that lie, because you preferred it to the agonizing grief that would come with accepting the raw truth.
The beginning of the night was hard, amidst fake smiles and hundreds of congratulations from both the townspeople and the kings of the nearby kingdoms. The sight of the pile of dresses swaying to the music and your family pretending that everything was perfect as they chatted animatedly with Steve and his parents, made you terribly anxious because you knew that, when the day was over, there would be no turning back. After that night, your days would be numbered and there would be no escape from the destiny that had been forcibly and fiercely marked in the book of your life.
A destiny in which you were marrying Steve, and not the man you truly loved.
Bucky.
"Everything okay, sweetheart?" You heard Steve's voice before you felt his arm around your waist. You lifted your head to watch his blue eyes sparkle under the chandeliers with a confessed adoration for your person, "You've been walking all over the place for a while now."
"Yeah, all good," you quickly replied and returned your gaze to the crowd of couples dancing animatedly, "I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed. There are too many people."
"Sure," Steve exclaimed, as if he had suddenly remembered how much you disliked being around people for so long, especially in celebration of an event that caused you nothing but torture, but he couldn't know that, "If you want, I can ask Wanda to escort you to your quarters. I saw her a few seconds ago talking to..."
"Steve," you interrupted him when he had raised his head to try to look for Wanda in the crowd, "No need. I'll take a walk around the courtyard."
"You sure? I can walk with you..."
"I'll be fine, I can take care of myself."
Steve's hand, the one that wasn't around your waist, held your hand as you gave him a tight-mouthed smile. He believed you without hesitation. Of course he did, he always did. He slowly approached your face, not taking his gaze from yours for several seconds, until his lips made contact with yours for a few brief seconds, as if he had all the time in the world to do better later.
His hand squeezed your waist lightly before he let go and gave you a deeply enamoured smile before pulling away and starting to walk to the Stark family table, one of the most important ones. The king, Tony, and Steve had a good relationship, both in battle and when it came to sitting down to talk business or just mundane things like planning a festival in their respective kingdoms to celebrate their recent business union. You could tell he was one of the few people Steve considered a friend.
You averted your gaze as your future husband took a seat between Tony and his wife, and took a deep breath which, for familiar reasons, caused a burning in your chest that you had been trying to control for months.
You began to make your way to the gold decorated glass door that led to a grand stone staircase adorned with beautiful green bushes, freshly trimmed that morning, with breathtaking floral arrangements.
As you finished descending the steps, you noticed Wanda seated to the left of the exit along with her brother, Duke Pietro Maximoff. Their gazes focused on your figure as you stopped to watch them, both so condescending and kind, willing to turn a blind eye as you walked to the back of the courtyard, knowing the way by heart. Walking with the same speed and emotion as hundreds of times before, days in a row and nights on the run, burning with the pain of stolen moments and tight-mouthed smiles full of anguish; expressions that tried to hide an affliction that they tried to appease with the warmth of two bodies.
A fiery grief that would never be extinguished.
"Bucky," you whispered like a prayer, watching the man through the window of the small gardening house where he spent most of his time, "Bucky."
You opened the door with a little more force than usual, and the man was elated for a few seconds. When your gaze met his, a bitter feeling welled up in his chest, and you felt the same sourness pass through your body as he turned his gaze to the ground refusing to continue to look at something that could never be his. Something that did not belong to him, nor something he would belong to.
You approached slowly, closing the door behind you, always bolted. You watched his body tense as you were too close to be able to brush his body with a breath. So close to love and so far from accepting the truth.
"The flowers are beautiful," was the only thing that could come out of your mouth, as you felt a burning in your eyes that you were sadly familiar with, "I would never have imagined that dahlias and lilies would create such a sight to behold as you arranged them."
Bucky felt a shiver run through his body as he heard your voice crack. The temptation to raise his hands so that he could shelter you in his arms, trying to drown out and drive away the grief that also gripped him at those moments. But he couldn't... he shouldn't.
You raised one of your hands to rest on his shoulder, and though you knew he wanted to repel the gesture, he did not. He held still as you ran your fingers up and down the material of his shirt.
"I'm sorry," you murmured, choking back a sob.
"It's not your fault."
"I could have objected, I can make my own decisions."
"You couldn't have done anything. You couldn't change the decisions that were made before you were born."
The man turned his face to look at you, your eyes crystalline like dewdrops on flowers and the ground after a rainy day. His eyes narrowed as he tried to contain his suffering as you freely expressed it, because he did not want to collapse in front of you. He had always been the strong one, he couldn't let himself be defeated at that moment.
"I should have tried harder," you try to excuse yourself, but Bucky was already shaking his head in denial.
"There was nothing we could do. That's how it was supposed to happen."
His cold hand took yours, squeezing it a little as if that way he could appease the aching clamour of your need to be with him. Of him being the man you would soon marry, the one to put that ring on your finger, on the hand he held so tightly, as if just letting go of it meant he had to let you go forever; let you go with someone who wasn't him, and that was totally unacceptable.
"It's not fair. I don't understand why my father wouldn't listen to me. There's nothing he won't do for me, why not this time... not...?"
"Steve is a good man, Y/N, he'll know how to take care of you."
"No, no, no..." you shook your head repeatedly, trying to get the idea that you would spend the rest of your life with a man you didn't love out of your mind, "Don't you dare, Barnes."
"We've spent so much time pushing our luck, I feel like we're already running out."
"You started this! If we're burning now it's because of you, and now you don't want to do anything about it," your voice sounded desperate, trying to find a way out of this little war in which they had no chance of winning.
"The best thing we can do is to leave it here, just go our separate ways from now on. We can't risk it any more."
"You told me this wouldn't happen," your eyes quickly blurred with tears that expressed the uneasiness that haunted your stability like a threat, "And you said - you said if this happened, we'd leave. You said we'd leave! You said you weren't going to leave me alone."
"We can't do that. We'd spend our whole lives running away."
"So what of it?"
"Running away to survive isn't life, Y/N."
The fire that burned in the pit of your stomach didn't subside, it only seemed to grow hotter with every word that came out of the mouth of the man in front of you. The man who had promised you a life and was now tearing it all apart in front of you like a tiny sheet of paper.
You couldn't stop the sobs that came out of your mouth, that tried to give sound to the unbearable pain you felt knowing that there was nothing to fight for now.
A broken heart.
"You're a coward," you managed to say, then abruptly pulled your hands away from his. The look of rage and anger you gave him froze him for a few seconds, trying to understand that he had caused it with his insecurities and his infinite fear of ruining your life, "You said you weren't going to leave," your voice came out as a broken whisper, a sentence you repeated to try to convince yourself that what was happening couldn't be true.
"I'm doing what I think is best for you."
"What's best for me?" you exclaimed, incredulously. It seemed that the man in front of you was not the same man who smiled at you every morning when you had your clandestine meetings, lamenting the loss of his dreams, his promises and the living. "What's best for me is to be with you, Bucky! Not with Steve, not with my parents, not in this castle. If you're not here none of this will be worth it in the end."
"I can't give you what you need, or what you deserve. You're not going to have a good life with me."
"It's going to be a good life just by being with you."
Bucky pursed his lips, his eyes glazing over just like yours the first time you spoke. He was afraid to speak for a few seconds, feeling his breath hitch with every sullen breath he took trying to calm the runaway beating of his heart. His heart, which rejected everything that came out of his mouth.
The feeling of despair mixed with helplessness took over his resignation and he was quickly trying to find a way to make you see reason. To let you know that really this, all this suffering, was for the welfare of both of you. His lack and inadequacy of words made him feel incapable of anything for a moment. His world was falling apart.
"What are we supposed to do if he found out? He'd destroy this damn castle!"
You cringed as Bucky turned away from you and ran his hands through his dark hair. His exalted voice hadn't surprised you, you'd heard him angry a couple of times before, but that voice had never been directed at you with such rage and impotence. He had never looked at you the way he did now: scared, desperate and fearful of what might happen, whether you would continue all this from the shadows, as always, or whether you would decide to run away and not look back, knowing that you would live with a sign marked on your back with someone chasing you wherever you set foot.
And, sadly, he was right.
"I can't do this, Y/N, it's too... painful."
"But you can't just walk away. I'm covered in you. I'm your half and you're mine. Wherever we go, a part of the other is always going to be incomplete."
"Then I will rejoice in the knowledge that someday our halves will meet again, and be united as they once were."
His eyes watched you resignedly, and though you wanted to yell at him to try to talk some sense into him, you knew he was too stubborn. You took no comfort in knowing that he would suffer if he left, because you would be the same. At least he would have his freedom, he could freely start a life with whomever he wanted the moment he left this realm, but what about you? You would have to start a life, as queen, hand in hand with someone to whom you cannot, nor will you ever be able to, return the love he professes for you.
The adoration with which you looked at Bucky, how your hands worshipped him as if he were some kind of mythological god and how your body reacted to his, was something you could never give to Steve. It was something you could never give to anyone else you were with after Bucky.
He broke you. Something in you died that night as you watched him resign himself to losing the fight he'd started, but wasn't capable of fighting even because it was tearing him apart inside.
"There's still a chance we may never see each other again," you murmured reluctantly, and his gaze met yours. The pain his gaze reflected was a mirror image of yours, and his shoulders slumped as he weighed the possibility he had not wanted to think about.
"Then we will meet where spirit meets bone."
His voice was a low, raspy whisper, out of tune with the speed at which his chest moved with his breathing. Unlike his body, straight and tense, his eyes said everything his heart truly felt, even though he knew he felt the same emptiness in his chest as you did. The emptiness of knowing you're going to lose what you love the most without being able to do anything about it.
You weren't ready for this. You weren't ready to give up, but you couldn't stand alone fighting for a lost cause, when a relationship like yours stands strong when they run hand in hand.
Tears welled up in your eyes as you knew there was no turning back.
"In a land forgotten by faith."
Bucky shook his head in denial, frantic because he knew what would happen next, but reluctant to stop you from making the one decision he had allowed you to make.
You moved quickly to him, and cradled his pain-stricken face. Your thumbs moved gently over his cheeks and he closed his eyes, enjoying your touch. The last he would feel, surely for the rest of his life.
"Goddamn, Barnes," you muttered closing your eyes and resting your forehead on his, "I should never have let you in. But how was I supposed to know?"
Your breaths hitched for a few seconds, as they did every time you lay down on the makeshift bed in that little cottage, just staring at the sky through the glass that adorned the ceiling thinking of the endless possibilities they would have if this wasn't their destiny.
"I'm sorry," was all he said. And certainly the last thing you would hear from his lips for the rest of your life.
-----
i didn't intend to end it here, but sleep overcame my ideas and my inspiration, sorry! edited!
edited! in case you want to take another look at it 💕
ivy
summary: you have to accept your fate as the wife of another man while the one you love decides to step back.
pairing: royal!au bucky barnes x reader (around 1800's)
words: +2.5k
warnings: very angsty? that's the word, isn't it? highly inspired by ivy (taylor swift always right) and i am not surprised. English is not my native language, so sorry for any mistakes! also, i'll probably edit this later, and add a few things to it. i only wrote this at midnight and I'm half asleep. EDITED! :)
that's it, hope you like it!
i'd live and die for moments that we stole on begged and borrowed time so tell me to run or dare to sit and watch what we'll become
The ballroom was more crowded than you would expect. People were moving around, laughing and dancing as best they could to the melody that echoed loudly from the band playing at the back of the hall. The sound of clinking glasses and laughing eyes were a constant under your gaze, sharp but cautious, as well as haughty and tense, waiting. Just waiting.
You couldn't stop moving around the room. You encountered countless new faces every time you turned a corner of the castle. It was definitely a huge party, surely worthy of celebrating an event of such magnitude as the one that day. Despite your reluctance to hold such a (gigantic) gathering, you were quickly convinced by the people you lived with in that place, who easily persuaded you by pointing out all the advantages that such a big celebration could bring to the town: besides generating more unity as all the people of the kingdom were present, it was also the perfect opportunity to create political and commercial ties with the regents of the neighbouring kingdoms.
It was, quite simply, the perfect moment for everything and everyone.
Except for you.
The engagement celebration party.
Your engagement to the new king of Anderland, Steven Rogers.
That morning went by too fast. Your mother showed up too early in your chambers, exclaiming that it was the big day where news of such magnitude would be made public and that you were surely entirely happy about what was soon to happen. Marrying Steve, the great and compassionate King Steve. Yes, it was a great event for the kingdom and the reputation of your father's legacy. Your sister, the ruthless Natasha, had appeared in your room in the same manner as your mother with a big smile on her face, and behind her her entourage of professional make-up artists who were going to fix you up for the rest of the morning, the Black Widows.
But the truth was, no, you were not entirely happy. And that fact, if they ever noticed it, was completely overlooked by your mother and Natasha, and even your father, to whom you were closest. It was only a few hours later, minutes before the great feast was to begin, that one person could see the misfortune you were trying to hide in the dull gleam of your eyes.
The Duchess of Vandurness, Wanda Maximoff. Your best friend and only confidante, the only one who truly knew the whole truth.
"By the gods. I haven't seen you this down since Roy passed away," Wanda commented as soon as she entered your room and noticed the dull expression that adorned your face, trying unsuccessfully to cheer you up after reminding you of your dog's death a couple of months ago, "Sorry, bad choice of words."
She approached you with a sympathetic expression, as if she could understand the pain that tightened your chest and the helplessness that left a lump in your throat, but the truth was you didn't know if she could understand.
"I know it's not the big moment you were expecting, nor with whom you were expecting it, but the faster it happens the less strong the pain will be. I promise."
And it was a lie. Of course it was. Wanda didn't lie often, mainly because she wasn't good at it, but when it happened you used to hold on tightly to that lie, because you preferred it to the agonizing grief that would come with accepting the raw truth.
The beginning of the night was hard, amidst fake smiles and hundreds of congratulations from both the townspeople and the kings of the nearby kingdoms. The sight of the pile of dresses swaying to the music and your family pretending that everything was perfect as they chatted animatedly with Steve and his parents, made you terribly anxious because you knew that, when the day was over, there would be no turning back. After that night, your days would be numbered and there would be no escape from the destiny that had been forcibly and fiercely marked in the book of your life.
A destiny in which you were marrying Steve, and not the man you truly loved.
Bucky.
"Everything okay, sweetheart?" You heard Steve's voice before you felt his arm around your waist. You lifted your head to watch his blue eyes sparkle under the chandeliers with a confessed adoration for your person, "You've been walking all over the place for a while now."
"Yeah, all good," you quickly replied and returned your gaze to the crowd of couples dancing animatedly, "I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed. There are too many people."
"Sure," Steve exclaimed, as if he had suddenly remembered how much you disliked being around people for so long, especially in celebration of an event that caused you nothing but torture, but he couldn't know that, "If you want, I can ask Wanda to escort you to your quarters. I saw her a few seconds ago talking to..."
"Steve," you interrupted him when he had raised his head to try to look for Wanda in the crowd, "No need. I'll take a walk around the courtyard."
"You sure? I can walk with you..."
"I'll be fine, I can take care of myself."
Steve's hand, the one that wasn't around your waist, held your hand as you gave him a tight-mouthed smile. He believed you without hesitation. Of course he did, he always did. He slowly approached your face, not taking his gaze from yours for several seconds, until his lips made contact with yours for a few brief seconds, as if he had all the time in the world to do better later.
His hand squeezed your waist lightly before he let go and gave you a deeply enamoured smile before pulling away and starting to walk to the Stark family table, one of the most important ones. The king, Tony, and Steve had a good relationship, both in battle and when it came to sitting down to talk business or just mundane things like planning a festival in their respective kingdoms to celebrate their recent business union. You could tell he was one of the few people Steve considered a friend.
You averted your gaze as your future husband took a seat between Tony and his wife, and took a deep breath which, for familiar reasons, caused a burning in your chest that you had been trying to control for months.
You began to make your way to the gold decorated glass door that led to a grand stone staircase adorned with beautiful green bushes, freshly trimmed that morning, with breathtaking floral arrangements.
As you finished descending the steps, you noticed Wanda seated to the left of the exit along with her brother, Duke Pietro Maximoff. Their gazes focused on your figure as you stopped to watch them, both so condescending and kind, willing to turn a blind eye as you walked to the back of the courtyard, knowing the way by heart. Walking with the same speed and emotion as hundreds of times before, days in a row and nights on the run, burning with the pain of stolen moments and tight-mouthed smiles full of anguish; expressions that tried to hide an affliction that they tried to appease with the warmth of two bodies.
A fiery grief that would never be extinguished.
"Bucky," you whispered like a prayer, watching the man through the window of the small gardening house where he spent most of his time, "Bucky."
You opened the door with a little more force than usual, and the man was elated for a few seconds. When your gaze met his, a bitter feeling welled up in his chest, and you felt the same sourness pass through your body as he turned his gaze to the ground refusing to continue to look at something that could never be his. Something that did not belong to him, nor something he would belong to.
You approached slowly, closing the door behind you, always bolted. You watched his body tense as you were too close to be able to brush his body with a breath. So close to love and so far from accepting the truth.
"The flowers are beautiful," was the only thing that could come out of your mouth, as you felt a burning in your eyes that you were sadly familiar with, "I would never have imagined that dahlias and lilies would create such a sight to behold as you arranged them."
Bucky felt a shiver run through his body as he heard your voice crack. The temptation to raise his hands so that he could shelter you in his arms, trying to drown out and drive away the grief that also gripped him at those moments. But he couldn't... he shouldn't.
You raised one of your hands to rest on his shoulder, and though you knew he wanted to repel the gesture, he did not. He held still as you ran your fingers up and down the material of his shirt.
"I'm sorry," you murmured, choking back a sob.
"It's not your fault."
"I could have objected, I can make my own decisions."
"You couldn't have done anything. You couldn't change the decisions that were made before you were born."
The man turned his face to look at you, your eyes crystalline like dewdrops on flowers and the ground after a rainy day. His eyes narrowed as he tried to contain his suffering as you freely expressed it, because he did not want to collapse in front of you. He had always been the strong one, he couldn't let himself be defeated at that moment.
"I should have tried harder," you try to excuse yourself, but Bucky was already shaking his head in denial.
"There was nothing we could do. That's how it was supposed to happen."
His cold hand took yours, squeezing it a little as if that way he could appease the aching clamour of your need to be with him. Of him being the man you would soon marry, the one to put that ring on your finger, on the hand he held so tightly, as if just letting go of it meant he had to let you go forever; let you go with someone who wasn't him, and that was totally unacceptable.
"It's not fair. I don't understand why my father wouldn't listen to me. There's nothing he won't do for me, why not this time... not...?"
"Steve is a good man, Y/N, he'll know how to take care of you."
"No, no, no..." you shook your head repeatedly, trying to get the idea that you would spend the rest of your life with a man you didn't love out of your mind, "Don't you dare, Barnes."
"We've spent so much time pushing our luck, I feel like we're already running out."
"You started this! If we're burning now it's because of you, and now you don't want to do anything about it," your voice sounded desperate, trying to find a way out of this little war in which they had no chance of winning.
"The best thing we can do is to leave it here, just go our separate ways from now on. We can't risk it any more."
"You told me this wouldn't happen," your eyes quickly blurred with tears that expressed the uneasiness that haunted your stability like a threat, "And you said - you said if this happened, we'd leave. You said we'd leave! You said you weren't going to leave me alone."
"We can't do that. We'd spend our whole lives running away."
"So what of it?"
"Running away to survive isn't life, Y/N."
The fire that burned in the pit of your stomach didn't subside, it only seemed to grow hotter with every word that came out of the mouth of the man in front of you. The man who had promised you a life and was now tearing it all apart in front of you like a tiny sheet of paper.
You couldn't stop the sobs that came out of your mouth, that tried to give sound to the unbearable pain you felt knowing that there was nothing to fight for now.
A broken heart.
"You're a coward," you managed to say, then abruptly pulled your hands away from his. The look of rage and anger you gave him froze him for a few seconds, trying to understand that he had caused it with his insecurities and his infinite fear of ruining your life, "You said you weren't going to leave," your voice came out as a broken whisper, a sentence you repeated to try to convince yourself that what was happening couldn't be true.
"I'm doing what I think is best for you."
"What's best for me?" you exclaimed, incredulously. It seemed that the man in front of you was not the same man who smiled at you every morning when you had your clandestine meetings, lamenting the loss of his dreams, his promises and the living. "What's best for me is to be with you, Bucky! Not with Steve, not with my parents, not in this castle. If you're not here none of this will be worth it in the end."
"I can't give you what you need, or what you deserve. You're not going to have a good life with me."
"It's going to be a good life just by being with you."
Bucky pursed his lips, his eyes glazing over just like yours the first time you spoke. He was afraid to speak for a few seconds, feeling his breath hitch with every sullen breath he took trying to calm the runaway beating of his heart. His heart, which rejected everything that came out of his mouth.
The feeling of despair mixed with helplessness took over his resignation and he was quickly trying to find a way to make you see reason. To let you know that really this, all this suffering, was for the welfare of both of you. His lack and inadequacy of words made him feel incapable of anything for a moment. His world was falling apart.
"What are we supposed to do if he found out? He'd destroy this damn castle!"
You cringed as Bucky turned away from you and ran his hands through his dark hair. His exalted voice hadn't surprised you, you'd heard him angry a couple of times before, but that voice had never been directed at you with such rage and impotence. He had never looked at you the way he did now: scared, desperate and fearful of what might happen, whether you would continue all this from the shadows, as always, or whether you would decide to run away and not look back, knowing that you would live with a sign marked on your back with someone chasing you wherever you set foot.
And, sadly, he was right.
"I can't do this, Y/N, it's too... painful."
"But you can't just walk away. I'm covered in you. I'm your half and you're mine. Wherever we go, a part of the other is always going to be incomplete."
"Then I will rejoice in the knowledge that someday our halves will meet again, and be united as they once were."
His eyes watched you resignedly, and though you wanted to yell at him to try to talk some sense into him, you knew he was too stubborn. You took no comfort in knowing that he would suffer if he left, because you would be the same. At least he would have his freedom, he could freely start a life with whomever he wanted the moment he left this realm, but what about you? You would have to start a life, as queen, hand in hand with someone to whom you cannot, nor will you ever be able to, return the love he professes for you.
The adoration with which you looked at Bucky, how your hands worshipped him as if he were some kind of mythological god and how your body reacted to his, was something you could never give to Steve. It was something you could never give to anyone else you were with after Bucky.
He broke you. Something in you died that night as you watched him resign himself to losing the fight he'd started, but wasn't capable of fighting even because it was tearing him apart inside.
"There's still a chance we may never see each other again," you murmured reluctantly, and his gaze met yours. The pain his gaze reflected was a mirror image of yours, and his shoulders slumped as he weighed the possibility he had not wanted to think about.
"Then we will meet where spirit meets bone."
His voice was a low, raspy whisper, out of tune with the speed at which his chest moved with his breathing. Unlike his body, straight and tense, his eyes said everything his heart truly felt, even though he knew he felt the same emptiness in his chest as you did. The emptiness of knowing you're going to lose what you love the most without being able to do anything about it.
You weren't ready for this. You weren't ready to give up, but you couldn't stand alone fighting for a lost cause, when a relationship like yours stands strong when they run hand in hand.
Tears welled up in your eyes as you knew there was no turning back.
"In a land forgotten by faith."
Bucky shook his head in denial, frantic because he knew what would happen next, but reluctant to stop you from making the one decision he had allowed you to make.
You moved quickly to him, and cradled his pain-stricken face. Your thumbs moved gently over his cheeks and he closed his eyes, enjoying your touch. The last he would feel, surely for the rest of his life.
"Goddamn, Barnes," you muttered closing your eyes and resting your forehead on his, "I should never have let you in. But how was I supposed to know?"
Your breaths hitched for a few seconds, as they did every time you lay down on the makeshift bed in that little cottage, just staring at the sky through the glass that adorned the ceiling thinking of the endless possibilities they would have if this wasn't their destiny.
"I'm sorry," was all he said. And certainly the last thing you would hear from his lips for the rest of your life.
-----
i didn't intend to end it here, but sleep overcame my ideas and my inspiration, sorry! edited!
strike one (2)
summary: Bucky is trying to balance his life after making you a part of it, but there were still some walls he needed to work on
pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader
words: 4k
warnings: i think none? lmk if you think i should add one. also, English is not my first language, so sorry for any mistakes!
note: i don't know how i got the inspiration, the cunning or the desire to write again. i feel like i have a weird relationship with it but i want to overcome it but i don't allow myself to. it's very strange and i hate it. but well, i was thinking very often about the first part of this and finally i could think of something harmonious to continue it. i hope you like it and i hope tumblr will make it reach more people this time.
- part 1: how to break a routine in one year
Bucky only knew that there was some sort of event. He awoke that Sunday morning to a constant pounding on his door, insatiable and irritating, followed by a female voice that, sadly, he had come to know all too well. His young neighbour had woken up early that day with the sole purpose of making him wake up grumpy and on the wrong foot; he had barely had three hours of sleep and felt like his body had been run over several times by a tractor-trailer. Did that feel like being sick? He couldn't feel it from the serum, but he thought it was something similar to how his body felt at that moment.
Bucky came to regret several times in those two weeks that he had made the decision to let that noisy neighbour into his life. Sometimes she was helpful, but other times she was too unwelcome, and though she didn't ask questions to fill the awkward silences around his half-told life story, Bucky knew she was dying to know what was really going on when his gaze wandered somewhere in the instance. Knowing that she had this curiosity made him too uncomfortable, sometimes he couldn't even bear it, but he knew he would have to live with it until the day he decided to tell her the truth or until he cut her out of his life for good.
Bucky… Bucky considered himself a man of patience. That life he lived in the shadows left him with a lot of bad things that he was still dealing with, and he would never dare say that anything good came out of it. There was nothing but heartache and suffering, both from himself and from the people he hurt. But patience was something that had endured in him despite all these upheavals in his life. As always, it was common for him to want to control every aspect of his life, a situation that required a great deal of patience to carry out with skill and perfection.
That Sunday morning, Bucky felt his patience hanging by a thread. He had heard something about an event being held in the building that day, when he arrived in the early hours of the morning where he lived, teenagers talking about it at the reception desk. He had a slight feeling that his neighbour had something to tell him about it at that moment. He sighed in defeat.
His body shifted, settling face down, his hands settled on either side of his body. He could simply ignore her and continue with his rest… However, he stifled a grunt against the pillow and slowly made his way towards the front door.
“We're going to be late!” Bucky heard clearly as he approached the door, “Thomas is going to finish all the sandwiches,” she mumbled through her teeth and Bucky swore he could see her cross her arms as she said it.
He opened the door wide, his neighbour's eyes quickly locked on his, and her grumpy expression changed to one of joy at the sight of him. Though Bucky was not the epitome of happiness at the moment. He was sure his features were set in cement, like his frown and pursed lips.
“It's seven in the morning,” was all the man could say, still refusing to open the door entirely.
Bucky watched his neighbour grimace “I can't believe it,” her brow furrowed in disbelief, but with a hint of grace shining in her eyes.
“I texted you last night if you wanted to join me in celebrating the building's birthday,” the woman began, her body pushing Bucky aside to enter, who could do nothing but close his eyes in frustration as he stepped aside to let her pass, “You didn't reply so I took it as a positive silence.”
Bucky frowned, a few flashbacks from the night before furrowing through his memory. “You couldn't think that maybe I didn't answer because I was busy?”
“Are you busy now?”
“No.”
Damn.
“Yes,” Bucky tried to rectify.
He heard his neighbour let out a laugh, in time with her anatomy shifting in front of the kitchen in his flat.
“How long has it been since you've made dinner at home? Your dishwasher has cobwebs in it.”
“What do I need to make dinner at home for?”
The woman turned to look at him, a confused expression on her face, “To spend time with yourself?”
Bucky snorted, starting to move back to his room, that time to change, because he entirely doubted she would leave him alone now that he was inside his flat.
You watched him walk away, his shoulders squared in defence and his whole posture hostile. You already knew that Bucky was some kind of dark man, someone who was going through something but wasn't able to share it with others. You didn't blame him, not everyone was as chatty as you. You'd tell your secrets to a rock. But the point was, even though Bucky wasn't a talkative man (and you'd learned that well these past two weeks, even though you were already “friends”), you knew that somehow he needed a little human companionship. Everyone needs it, right? At least to keep from going crazy.
So you tried to give him that company often, but you were very careful not to overwhelm him. You could tell he was someone who was already used to being alone, who probably had a routine and total control over his life. Sometimes you wondered how he could hide his feelings so well and what kind of circumstances had led him to be like that. Or what kind of people…
In the distance, you heard the sliding doors of his wardrobe and the sound of hooks clanging against metal. You smiled triumphantly inside, continuing your thorough inspection of the natural habitat of the specimen in his room. You made a mental note to come over someday to help him with the grooming.
“What are we supposed to do?” You heard his voice through the masses of air. You rolled your eyes as you realised he didn't even try to pick up his phone to check your messages.
“Today marks 10 years since the opening of this building.”
“And that's my fault?”
“Let me finish,” you approached the cupboard. A stack of cereal boxes and canned food was what greeted you, “The building owners planned a breakfast, a barbecue for lunch and a big dinner in the evening for all the residents. Completely free of charge. It's a day of spending it together, in each other's company. These are things we used to take for granted, but, as you noticed, a lot has happened over the last few years.”
Bucky came out as you finished inspecting the fridge. “Now everyone wants each other's company.”
“And you want each other's company?”
“I'm just going for the food.”
Undoubtedly, you noticed Bucky crack a half-smile at your comment as he walked nimbly towards the door trying to evade your gaze. You smiled triumphantly, again.
“We've never talked about that,” you commented warningly, as you walked towards the lift after Bucky closed the door to his flat.
“We haven't talked about a lot of things, kiddo.”
“I mean the blip,” you replied bluntly, and watched him directly as he pressed the button to call the lift. He held your gaze for a few seconds.
“I disappeared. There's not much we can talk about.”
“We could share emotions.”
The lift arrived and Bucky stepped in without a word. You knew that was his way of snorting and evading a conversation without really needing to because of the same mental and emotional exhaustion that kind of talk caused him. So you didn't push. But you didn't have to try to revive the conversation either.
“Is Emmet coming?” He did it for you, surprisingly. It didn't happen very often.
You turned to look at him.
“I mentioned it to him and he said he was going to see if he could. He's got some business to take care of.”
Bucky just let out an affirmative sound, his head bobbing in time.
He was always that way, cautious when talking about your partner. You didn't really know the reason why, when he brought it up it wasn't for too long, and he also didn't feel like hearing much about things related to him or your relatively constant fights lately. That's why you stopped using him as your complaint box when you realised that he didn't really even listen to what you said. What you really thought was that he was trying to be nice; he was trying to start a conversation however he could about a topic he knew was of genuine interest to you.
It was the little details that really mattered.
The lift stopped on the first floor and the first thing Bucky noticed was the bustle of conversation among the people on the floor. Then he noticed the number of people equal to the noise that filled the room. His gaze swept quickly around the room, his classic scowl making its presence known as his neighbour rushed out of the lift to meet one of his friends from the building.
Bucky watched them from afar, his hands clasped at his sides and a look that kept people from getting too close to him. This allowed him to easily weave his way through the sea of people there.
To be honest, he was quite surprised at how many people lived in the building with him. He felt that he really only knew two, and he had met by chance about five at most, most of them in the lift. But he didn't know anyone on his floor, except for his extroverted neighbour who approached him with a plate full of sausages, chicken nuggets and a kind of ham and cheese rolled up on a wooden stick. All over the centre, a small cup with a white sauce and flashes of some green spice.
“You have to try the nuggets with this sauce, they're a delight!” you exclaimed with a smile before popping the aforementioned combo into your mouth and closing your eyes enjoying the explosion of flavours.
Luckily, before Bucky could try to refuse your offer, another of the building's inhabitants appeared to entertain you as he slipped away victoriously.
Reaching the back exit of the building, he could tell that there were still more people to be seen living in the place with him. The pool was empty, for now, but there were a considerable number of children running around it, hiding behind trees and eating together with their parents. Most of the families occupied almost every table in the building's gigantic courtyard, that Bucky could hardly find a remote one to sit at in relative peace.
He was actually surprised that he had gone so long without knowing that all those children lived in the building.
But hey, the less he knew, the better. He'd never know at what point he'd have to pack up and leave.
“You're good at sneaking out,” Bucky heard your voice approaching, and didn't even bother to turn around. He continued to scan the front, the city streets and the small shops that lined the streets nearby.
Before you sat down, you watched him. His hands were folded on the table, his posture less tense than before but still alert. You knew he had heard you, you knew more or less how to interpret his body language.
“I brought you some things I thought you might like,” you commented as you took a seat across from him, being careful not to deprive him of the view, whatever it was that captivated him so much about it.
“I didn't know there was a café there,” you heard him say as you arranged the small plates you brought on the tray. You turned to see what he mentioned, and sure enough, you saw the café you went to almost every day before you took the shuttle to work. They made the best cappuccino you'd ever tasted in the whole city.
“You've missed out on so much by being cooped up in your four walls.”
“My four walls are comfortable,” Bucky rebutted, his brow slightly furrowed, “Besides, I do go out.”
“Yeah, but you're too busy thinking about who knows what to notice the things around you. We could take a tour sometime, I know these streets well.”
“No, thanks,” he replied almost as soon as you finished speaking, as he took one of the cups of food you had brought him, “What's this?”
“Dulce de leche, I think.”
“It looks too sweet.”
“It is, but it's ultra delicious.”
“Have you tried it yet?”
“Yes, it's a recurring dish in Mrs. Mildred's kitchen. She lives on the third floor with her grandson and a little dog. She gave me a cup of the sweet stuff for my birthday last month,” you told Bucky, watching her from a distance. She was an amazing person; even with how little you had interacted with her you could tell.
“It's too sweet,” you heard Bucky say, his lips twisting into a pout. You watched him set the cup with the dulce aside, willing to turn a blind eye to it for the rest of the day.
“You definitely don't seem like the type to be a dessert fan. You should try Mrs. Maria's ham and cheese croissant. It's very fluffy, it has such a soft texture that you feel it melts in your mouth,” you commented as you approached the plate with the food you had pointed out to him, “She told me once that it's her grandfather's recipe; she told me that they don't taste as delicious as they did for him, but his children love them. And believe me, they're the best I've ever tasted.”
Bucky kept his eyes fixed on yours, for a little longer than you thought normal.
“So, you know everyone in the building?”
You smiled slightly.
“I like to think so. I know that Mrs. Sarah is a taco fanatic thanks to her husband Manuel, and that Mr. Alfred on the fifth floor hates Mrs. Mildred's dog, and that her grandson takes the little dog for a walk right around the same time Mr. Alfred goes out for his four o'clock walk. I also know Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer, they have two children, Veronica and Tom, they are big lawyers who live on the top floor of the building, the one with the biggest flats,” as you told Bucky about someone, you would discreetly point them out so he could recognise them and, strangely, it seemed like he was really paying attention to you.
“So yes,” you concluded after a while of introductions, “I know almost everyone in this building.”
“Am I excluded from that list? Because technically you do know me, we're not strangers.”
“Maybe not, but if someone asked me about you the only thing I could tell them would be your name and where you live.”
“Why would anyone ask you about me? You don't have to know everything about me to be an acquaintance.”
“You know a lot of things about me.”
“Against my will.”
“But you do.”
Bucky rolled his eyes. Little did you notice that, between your introduction and his short talk, he had finished almost every cup of food you had brought him. YYou were about to ask him if there was anything he wanted to repeat so you could bring it to him, when the crash of an object followed by an almost stony silence stole the show.
A boy had kicked a ball, which had hit Bucky's left arm.
His tension was instantaneous. You saw him go from a flaccid jelly to a stone in a matter of seconds. It seemed exaggerated to you how everyone stared at the place where you were sitting, waiting for the moment when the man would explode or something. You didn't know how, but it seemed incredible to you that Bucky had been able to deliberately ignore all the stares from the moment he came out of the lift to the moment he sat down at that table, to that moment. You had told him about the many people, mostly nobles, who lived there, but you had neglected to mention how indiscreet and gossipy the other part of the people who shared the building with you were.
You watched him warily, for his good humour had suddenly vanished. He was staring at the tray you had brought, not even showing signs of breathing.
“Trevor,” you heard a female voice in the distance, cautious and reprimanding.
You turned just barely to observe a boy, he couldn't have been older than 10, walking in the direction of the table where you were standing. You knew Bucky wasn't going to do anything, he would just stay like that until all the people dispersed, ignoring them and ignoring also his own feeling of running away, or he would wait for the right moment to leave the event and, most likely, not meet any of these people again for weeks.
You fervently hoped for the first option.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Barnes,” you heard the boy say, the ball he hit Bucky with lying under his armpit.
You noticed Bucky turn to look at the boy, a little uneasy as he realised how many eyes were on him, as if expecting him to start screaming. All he did was give the boy a nod and the kid walked away with a smile. The children's shouting resumed and the people dispersed.
Bucky barely turned to see your surprised face.
“What?”
“That boy knows you.”
“Surely.”
“How? I thought you weren't talking to anyone.”
“Maybe he saw me at some point picking up the mail.”
You frowned. You were trying to play it down, and yes, it probably wasn't that important. You didn't know why it gave you a strange uneasy feeling.
“What's the matter, don't you like not being the only one who knows my full name?”
“Ha ha, that's funny, Barnes.”
“It's no big deal, I'm not a public figure or anything.”
You nod briefly, your mind trying to forget the subject quickly. No big deal, Bucky was most likely right.
“Anyway, we were just talking about how little I know about you.”
“Mmm, I think we were talking about the food.”
“Don't do that, Bucky. At least tell me your birthday.”
The aforementioned grimaced, “For what, you want to throw me a party?”
“No,” you replied. Bucky arched an eyebrow at you and you shifted in your chair, “Maybe.”
He stared at you, perhaps weighing what the consequences of saying it would be or thinking about how to get rid of you so he could get back to his room. He let out a sigh, his shoulders slumped and his gaze lowered.
“March 10th.”
“Funny, the same day as Chuck Norris.”
“Who?”
You shook your hands and head, “Never mind. Tell me what your favorite colour is.”
“You're pushing your luck.”
“I'm just trying to get to know you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to get to know me?”
“Why wouldn't I want to? You're my neighbour, and you're not as bitter as you want to make it seem.”
Bucky kept his gaze on yours for a few moments longer. You knew you were really pushing your luck, and while this wasn't the longest conversation you'd ever had with the man, it might be one in which you'd gone the furthest in knowing something about him, even if it wasn't so personal. Now you knew his birthday! And it was only a couple of weeks away.
Ignoring the icy expression that had taken over Bucky's face, you began to brainstorm ideas of how you could celebrate his birthday without it really being a super celebration. Bucky didn't seem like the type to celebrate with big parties… He didn't really seem like the celebrating type at all. But it doesn't hurt to have cake on the day of your birth anniversary. Thinking about a celebration made you think about people: what people did Bucky know that he liked to have attend his birthday party? Hm, in the hypothetical case there was one, of course. You barely knew the date, it was like the tip of the iceberg compared to knowing the people he surrounded himself with outside the building, apart from you.
Your lack of attention didn't allow you to notice Bucky's sudden change in attitude. He didn't know why he suddenly felt so uncomfortable out there, surrounded by all these people with cool lives and huge smiles. It was as if he felt… out of place. As if he didn't really fit into that painting that everyone was a part of on that artistic stage that was life. Including you.
Bucky didn't know what your sudden and intense interest was in knowing him. If your intentions really were genuine; if he really could trust you blindly, how could Bucky know that you were not a person sent to…?
He shook his head. Enough thoughts for today.
“You shouldn't,” Bucky's voice snapped you out of it, your gaze finally noticing his icy expression and his mouth twisted in displeasure. Seeing him like that so suddenly caused your stomach to flip. What had you done wrong?
“I think that's my decision,” despite feeling it was a completely wrong scenario, you kept your gaze steady on his.
Bucky was an enigma and you wanted to figure it out. Not as an experiment, not as a science project and not as charity, but just to deconstruct his persona and really know who the man was before society. The connection you felt with him was strange, ambiguous, but for a while you thought it was reciprocal. Maybe it was just one-sided. You're a good listener, so you've been told. Also that you talk too much, and that sometimes people prefer to let you be around them just so they don't bother you and make you think they care about you, when they're not really listening. Who's there for you when the night is darker than ever?
You didn't know if Bucky had that someone, but you knew he looked just like a person going through a very, very dark night.
His phone rang. Suddenly his attention was focused on something else as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. You watch his eyes sweep across the screen, the rush of emotions fleeting and rushing.
"Gotta go," he mutters without looking up from the screen. You felt it all happen so fast that you barely noticed when he got up from his chair.
“Okay, s-see you tomorrow,” you stammer, watching his figure walk away through the crowd without knowing if he really heard you.
Your heart felt heavy inside your chest. You felt fully aware of it pounding inside your body, your own chest closing in on itself, giving you a strange suffocating sensation you hadn't experienced before. But you couldn't stop thinking about him. What to do. How to do it. When. Where. How…
A hand on your shoulder startles you, your heart pumping wildly as you notice a woman beside you. Mrs. Sawyer, Tina Sawyer.
“I don't understand how you could get close to that man. I fear for your life every time I see you near him,” she commented graciously, as if she expected you to laugh or something.
You watched her with a frown.
“Don't talk about him like that, he's not a monster.”
Tina clicked her tongue, her hands moving in a nonchalant gesture. It made you incredibly angry that she was talking about Bucky like that, and why? She didn't even really know him.
“Relax. Just yell if you need help. The walls aren't that thick.”
“Tina, don't-”
“Ah! I remembered why I came,” the woman interrupted, a wicked grin forming on her face, “Your boyfriend's here. And he doesn't look too happy to have seen you sharing a meal with someone else.”
Amidst the masses of air, your gaze collided with Emmet's. Sadly, Tina was right. His body was leaning against a pillar of the building, right next to the door to the back exit. His scowl and his arms crossed over his chest were a clear sign of his annoyance, and for some reason, him being annoyed by that didn't give you the best of feelings.
But you sighed, tried to neutralise the look on your face and started to approach your boyfriend. You had a feeling that things were not going to get better from here.
the part where it gets weird (2)
summary: Bucky is trying to balance his life after making you a part of it, but there were still some walls he needed to work on
pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader
words: 4k
warnings: i think none? lmk if you think i should add one. also, English is not my first language, so sorry for any mistakes!
note: i don't know how i got the inspiration, the cunning or the desire to write again. i feel like i have a weird relationship with it but i want to overcome it but i don't allow myself to. it's very strange and i hate it. but well, i was thinking very often about the first part of this and finally i could think of something harmonious to continue it. i hope you like it and i hope tumblr will make it reach more people this time.
- part 1: how to break a routine in one year
Bucky only knew that there was some sort of event. He awoke that Sunday morning to a constant pounding on his door, insatiable and irritating, followed by a female voice that, sadly, he had come to know all too well. His young neighbour had woken up early that day with the sole purpose of making him wake up grumpy and on the wrong foot; he had barely had three hours of sleep and felt like his body had been run over several times by a tractor-trailer. Did that feel like being sick? He couldn't feel it from the serum, but he thought it was something similar to how his body felt at that moment.
Bucky came to regret several times in those two weeks that he had made the decision to let that noisy neighbour into his life. Sometimes she was helpful, but other times she was too unwelcome, and though she didn't ask questions to fill the awkward silences around his half-told life story, Bucky knew she was dying to know what was really going on when his gaze wandered somewhere in the instance. Knowing that she had this curiosity made him too uncomfortable, sometimes he couldn't even bear it, but he knew he would have to live with it until the day he decided to tell her the truth or until he cut her out of his life for good.
Bucky… Bucky considered himself a man of patience. That life he lived in the shadows left him with a lot of bad things that he was still dealing with, and he would never dare say that anything good came out of it. There was nothing but heartache and suffering, both from himself and from the people he hurt. But patience was something that had endured in him despite all these upheavals in his life. As always, it was common for him to want to control every aspect of his life, a situation that required a great deal of patience to carry out with skill and perfection.
That Sunday morning, Bucky felt his patience hanging by a thread. He had heard something about an event being held in the building that day, when he arrived in the early hours of the morning where he lived, teenagers talking about it at the reception desk. He had a slight feeling that his neighbour had something to tell him about it at that moment. He sighed in defeat.
His body shifted, settling face down, his hands settled on either side of his body. He could simply ignore her and continue with his rest… However, he stifled a grunt against the pillow and slowly made his way towards the front door.
“We're going to be late!” Bucky heard clearly as he approached the door, “Thomas is going to finish all the sandwiches,” she mumbled through her teeth and Bucky swore he could see her cross her arms as she said it.
He opened the door wide, his neighbour's eyes quickly locked on his, and her grumpy expression changed to one of joy at the sight of him. Though Bucky was not the epitome of happiness at the moment. He was sure his features were set in cement, like his frown and pursed lips.
“It's seven in the morning,” was all the man could say, still refusing to open the door entirely.
Bucky watched his neighbour grimace “I can't believe it,” her brow furrowed in disbelief, but with a hint of grace shining in her eyes.
“I texted you last night if you wanted to join me in celebrating the building's birthday,” the woman began, her body pushing Bucky aside to enter, who could do nothing but close his eyes in frustration as he stepped aside to let her pass, “You didn't reply so I took it as a positive silence.”
Bucky frowned, a few flashbacks from the night before furrowing through his memory. “You couldn't think that maybe I didn't answer because I was busy?”
“Are you busy now?”
“No.”
Damn.
“Yes,” Bucky tried to rectify.
He heard his neighbour let out a laugh, in time with her anatomy shifting in front of the kitchen in his flat.
“How long has it been since you've made dinner at home? Your dishwasher has cobwebs in it.”
“What do I need to make dinner at home for?”
The woman turned to look at him, a confused expression on her face, “To spend time with yourself?”
Bucky snorted, starting to move back to his room, that time to change, because he entirely doubted she would leave him alone now that he was inside his flat.
You watched him walk away, his shoulders squared in defence and his whole posture hostile. You already knew that Bucky was some kind of dark man, someone who was going through something but wasn't able to share it with others. You didn't blame him, not everyone was as chatty as you. You'd tell your secrets to a rock. But the point was, even though Bucky wasn't a talkative man (and you'd learned that well these past two weeks, even though you were already “friends”), you knew that somehow he needed a little human companionship. Everyone needs it, right? At least to keep from going crazy.
So you tried to give him that company often, but you were very careful not to overwhelm him. You could tell he was someone who was already used to being alone, who probably had a routine and total control over his life. Sometimes you wondered how he could hide his feelings so well and what kind of circumstances had led him to be like that. Or what kind of people…
In the distance, you heard the sliding doors of his wardrobe and the sound of hooks clanging against metal. You smiled triumphantly inside, continuing your thorough inspection of the natural habitat of the specimen in his room. You made a mental note to come over someday to help him with the grooming.
“What are we supposed to do?” You heard his voice through the masses of air. You rolled your eyes as you realised he didn't even try to pick up his phone to check your messages.
“Today marks 10 years since the opening of this building.”
“And that's my fault?”
“Let me finish,” you approached the cupboard. A stack of cereal boxes and canned food was what greeted you, “The building owners planned a breakfast, a barbecue for lunch and a big dinner in the evening for all the residents. Completely free of charge. It's a day of spending it together, in each other's company. These are things we used to take for granted, but, as you noticed, a lot has happened over the last few years.”
Bucky came out as you finished inspecting the fridge. “Now everyone wants each other's company.”
“And you want each other's company?”
“I'm just going for the food.”
Undoubtedly, you noticed Bucky crack a half-smile at your comment as he walked nimbly towards the door trying to evade your gaze. You smiled triumphantly, again.
“We've never talked about that,” you commented warningly, as you walked towards the lift after Bucky closed the door to his flat.
“We haven't talked about a lot of things, kiddo.”
“I mean the blip,” you replied bluntly, and watched him directly as he pressed the button to call the lift. He held your gaze for a few seconds.
“I disappeared, just like you. There's not much we can talk about.”
“We could share emotions.”
The lift arrived and Bucky stepped in without a word. You knew that was his way of snorting and evading a conversation without really needing to because of the same mental and emotional exhaustion that kind of talk caused him. So you didn't push. But you didn't have to try to revive the conversation either.
“Is Emmet coming?” He did it for you, surprisingly. It didn't happen very often.
You turned to look at him.
“I mentioned it to him and he said he was going to see if he could. He's got some business to take care of.”
Bucky just let out an affirmative sound, his head bobbing in time.
He was always that way, cautious when talking about your partner. You didn't really know the reason why, when he brought it up it wasn't for too long, and he also didn't feel like hearing much about things related to him or your relatively constant fights lately. That's why you stopped using him as your complaint box when you realised that he didn't really even listen to what you said. What you really thought was that he was trying to be nice; he was trying to start a conversation however he could about a topic he knew was of genuine interest to you.
It was the little details that really mattered.
The lift stopped on the first floor and the first thing Bucky noticed was the bustle of conversation among the people on the floor. Then he noticed the number of people equal to the noise that filled the room. His gaze swept quickly around the room, his classic scowl making its presence known as his neighbour rushed out of the lift to meet one of his friends from the building.
Bucky watched them from afar, his hands clasped at his sides and a look that kept people from getting too close to him. This allowed him to easily weave his way through the sea of people there.
To be honest, he was quite surprised at how many people lived in the building with him. He felt that he really only knew two, and he had met by chance about five at most, most of them in the lift. But he didn't know anyone on his floor, except for his extroverted neighbour who approached him with a plate full of sausages, chicken nuggets and a kind of ham and cheese rolled up on a wooden stick. All over the centre, a small cup with a white sauce and flashes of some green spice.
“You have to try the nuggets with this sauce, they're a delight!” you exclaimed with a smile before popping the aforementioned combo into your mouth and closing your eyes enjoying the explosion of flavours.
Luckily, before Bucky could try to refuse your offer, another of the building's inhabitants appeared to entertain you as he slipped away victoriously.
Reaching the back exit of the building, he could tell that there were still more people to be seen living in the place with him. The pool was empty, for now, but there were a considerable number of children running around it, hiding behind trees and eating together with their parents. Most of the families occupied almost every table in the building's gigantic courtyard, that Bucky could hardly find a remote one to sit at in relative peace.
He was actually surprised that he had gone so long without knowing that all those children lived in the building.
But hey, the less he knew, the better. He'd never know at what point he'd have to pack up and leave.
“You're good at sneaking out,” Bucky heard your voice approaching, and didn't even bother to turn around. He continued to scan the front, the city streets and the small shops that lined the streets nearby.
Before you sat down, you watched him. His hands were folded on the table, his posture less tense than before but still alert. You knew he had heard you, you knew more or less how to interpret his body language.
“I brought you some things I thought you might like,” you commented as you took a seat across from him, being careful not to deprive him of the view, whatever it was that captivated him so much about it.
“I didn't know there was a café there,” you heard him say as you arranged the small plates you brought on the tray. You turned to see what he mentioned, and sure enough, you saw the café you went to almost every day before you took the shuttle to work. They made the best cappuccino you'd ever tasted in the whole city.
“You've missed out on so much by being cooped up in your four walls.”
“My four walls are comfortable,” Bucky rebutted, his brow slightly furrowed, “Besides, I do go out.”
“Yeah, but you're too busy thinking about who knows what to notice the things around you. We could take a tour sometime, I know these streets well.”
“No, thanks,” he replied almost as soon as you finished speaking, as he took one of the cups of food you had brought him, “What's this?”
“Dulce de leche, I think.”
“It looks too sweet.”
“It is, but it's ultra delicious.”
“Have you tried it yet?”
“Yes, it's a recurring dish in Mrs. Mildred's kitchen. She lives on the third floor with her grandson and a little dog. She gave me a cup of the sweet stuff for my birthday last month,” you told Bucky, watching her from a distance. She was an amazing person; even with how little you had interacted with her you could tell.
“It's too sweet,” you heard Bucky say, his lips twisting into a pout. You watched him set the cup with the dulce aside, willing to turn a blind eye to it for the rest of the day.
“You definitely don't seem like the type to be a dessert fan. You should try Mrs. Maria's ham and cheese croissant. It's very fluffy, it has such a soft texture that you feel it melts in your mouth,” you commented as you approached the plate with the food you had pointed out to him, “She told me once that it's her grandfather's recipe; she told me that they don't taste as delicious as they did for him, but his children love them. And believe me, they're the best I've ever tasted.”
Bucky kept his eyes fixed on yours, for a little longer than you thought normal.
“So, you know everyone in the building?”
You smiled slightly.
“I like to think so. I know that Mrs. Sarah is a taco fanatic thanks to her husband Manuel, and that Mr. Alfred on the fifth floor hates Mrs. Mildred's dog, and that her grandson takes the little dog for a walk right around the same time Mr. Alfred goes out for his four o'clock walk. I also know Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer, they have two children, Veronica and Tom, they are big lawyers who live on the top floor of the building, the one with the biggest flats,” as you told Bucky about someone, you would discreetly point them out so he could recognise them and, strangely, it seemed like he was really paying attention to you.
“So yes,” you concluded after a while of introductions, “I know almost everyone in this building.”
“Am I excluded from that list? Because technically you do know me, we're not strangers.”
“Maybe not, but if someone asked me about you the only thing I could tell them would be your name and where you live.”
“Why would anyone ask you about me? You don't have to know everything about me to be an acquaintance.”
“You know a lot of things about me.”
“Against my will.”
“But you do.”
Bucky rolled his eyes. Little did you notice that, between your introduction and his short talk, he had finished almost every cup of food you had brought him. YYou were about to ask him if there was anything he wanted to repeat so you could bring it to him, when the crash of an object followed by an almost stony silence stole the show.
A boy had kicked a ball, which had hit Bucky's left arm.
His tension was instantaneous. You saw him go from a flaccid jelly to a stone in a matter of seconds. It seemed exaggerated to you how everyone stared at the place where you were sitting, waiting for the moment when the man would explode or something. You didn't know how, but it seemed incredible to you that Bucky had been able to deliberately ignore all the stares from the moment he came out of the lift to the moment he sat down at that table, to that moment. You had told him about the many people, mostly nobles, who lived there, but you had neglected to mention how indiscreet and gossipy the other part of the people who shared the building with you were.
You watched him warily, for his good humour had suddenly vanished. He was staring at the tray you had brought, not even showing signs of breathing.
“Trevor,” you heard a female voice in the distance, cautious and reprimanding.
You turned just barely to observe a boy, he couldn't have been older than 10, walking in the direction of the table where you were standing. You knew Bucky wasn't going to do anything, he would just stay like that until all the people dispersed, ignoring them and ignoring also his own feeling of running away, or he would wait for the right moment to leave the event and, most likely, not meet any of these people again for weeks.
You fervently hoped for the first option.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Barnes,” you heard the boy say, the ball he hit Bucky with lying under his armpit.
You noticed Bucky turn to look at the boy, a little uneasy as he realised how many eyes were on him, as if expecting him to start screaming. All he did was give the boy a nod and the kid walked away with a smile. The children's shouting resumed and the people dispersed.
Bucky barely turned to see your surprised face.
“What?”
“That boy knows you.”
“Surely.”
“How? I thought you weren't talking to anyone.”
“Maybe he saw me at some point picking up the mail.”
You frowned. You were trying to play it down, and yes, it probably wasn't that important. You didn't know why it gave you a strange uneasy feeling.
“What's the matter, don't you like not being the only one who knows my full name?”
“Ha ha, that's funny, Barnes.”
“It's no big deal, I'm not a public figure or anything.”
You nod briefly, your mind trying to forget the subject quickly. No big deal, Bucky was most likely right.
“Anyway, we were just talking about how little I know about you.”
“Mmm, I think we were talking about the food.”
“Don't do that, Bucky. At least tell me your birthday.”
The aforementioned grimaced, “For what, you want to throw me a party?”
“No,” you replied. Bucky arched an eyebrow at you and you shifted in your chair, “Maybe.”
He stared at you, perhaps weighing what the consequences of saying it would be or thinking about how to get rid of you so he could get back to his room. He let out a sigh, his shoulders slumped and his gaze lowered.
“March 10th.”
“Funny, the same day as Chuck Norris.”
“Who?”
You shook your hands and head, “Never mind. Tell me what your favorite colour is.”
“You're pushing your luck.”
“I'm just trying to get to know you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to get to know me?”
“Why wouldn't I want to? You're my neighbour, and you're not as bitter as you want to make it seem.”
Bucky kept his gaze on yours for a few moments longer. You knew you were really pushing your luck, and while this wasn't the longest conversation you'd ever had with the man, it might be one in which you'd gone the furthest in knowing something about him, even if it wasn't so personal. Now you knew his birthday! And it was only a couple of weeks away.
Ignoring the icy expression that had taken over Bucky's face, you began to brainstorm ideas of how you could celebrate his birthday without it really being a super celebration. Bucky didn't seem like the type to celebrate with big parties… He didn't really seem like the celebrating type at all. But it doesn't hurt to have cake on the day of your birth anniversary. Thinking about a celebration made you think about people: what people did Bucky know that he liked to have attend his birthday party? Hm, in the hypothetical case there was one, of course. You barely knew the date, it was like the tip of the iceberg compared to knowing the people he surrounded himself with outside the building, apart from you.
Your lack of attention didn't allow you to notice Bucky's sudden change in attitude. He didn't know why he suddenly felt so uncomfortable out there, surrounded by all these people with cool lives and huge smiles. It was as if he felt… out of place. As if he didn't really fit into that painting that everyone was a part of on that artistic stage that was life. Including you.
Bucky didn't know what your sudden and intense interest was in knowing him. If your intentions really were genuine; if he really could trust you blindly, how could Bucky know that you were not a person sent to…?
He shook his head. Enough thoughts for today.
“You shouldn't,” Bucky's voice snapped you out of it, your gaze finally noticing his icy expression and his mouth twisted in displeasure. Seeing him like that so suddenly caused your stomach to flip. What had you done wrong?
“I think that's my decision,” despite feeling it was a completely wrong scenario, you kept your gaze steady on his.
Bucky was an enigma and you wanted to figure it out. Not as an experiment, not as a science project and not as charity, but just to deconstruct his persona and really know who the man was before society. The connection you felt with him was strange, ambiguous, but for a while you thought it was reciprocal. Maybe it was just one-sided. You're a good listener, so you've been told. Also that you talk too much, and that sometimes people prefer to let you be around them just so they don't bother you and make you think they care about you, when they're not really listening. Who's there for you when the night is darker than ever?
You didn't know if Bucky had that someone, but you knew he looked just like a person going through a very, very dark night.
His phone rang. Suddenly his attention was focused on something else as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. You watch his eyes sweep across the screen, the rush of emotions fleeting and rushing.
"Gotta go," he mutters without looking up from the screen. You felt it all happen so fast that you barely noticed when he got up from his chair.
“Okay, s-see you tomorrow,” you stammer, watching his figure walk away through the crowd without knowing if he really heard you.
Your heart felt heavy inside your chest. You felt fully aware of it pounding inside your body, your own chest closing in on itself, giving you a strange suffocating sensation you hadn't experienced before. But you couldn't stop thinking about him. What to do. How to do it. When. Where. How…
A hand on your shoulder startles you, your heart pumping wildly as you notice a woman beside you. Mrs. Sawyer, Tina Sawyer.
“I don't understand how you could get close to that man. I fear for your life every time I see you near him,” she commented graciously, as if she expected you to laugh or something.
You watched her with a frown.
“Don't talk about him like that, he's not a monster.”
Tina clicked her tongue, her hands moving in a nonchalant gesture. It made you incredibly angry that she was talking about Bucky like that, and why? She didn't even really know him.
“Relax. Just yell if you need help. The walls aren't that thick.”
“Tina, don't-”
“Ah! I remembered why I came,” the woman interrupted, a wicked grin forming on her face, “Your boyfriend's here. And he doesn't look too happy to have seen you sharing a meal with someone else.”
Amidst the masses of air, your gaze collided with Emmet's. Sadly, Tina was right. His body was leaning against a pillar of the building, right next to the door to the back exit. His scowl and his arms crossed over his chest were a clear sign of his annoyance, and for some reason, him being annoyed by that didn't give you the best of feelings.
But you sighed, tried to neutralise the look on your face and started to approach your boyfriend. You had a feeling that things were not going to get better from here.
been through so much the past couple of months but these two never fail to bring a smile to my face, love these two
Y/N: I'm just saying, technology is way overrated.
Bucky: That's interesting. Just yesterday you told me you intend to have your wedding in space.
Y/N: And that hasn't changed!
If anyone ever sees this it'll probably get alot of hate, and tbh im not really looking for a discussion just trying to get this off my chest, but I don't hate the John Walker character from FATWS.
And it just doesn't make sense, up until he straight up murdered that guy I had nothing against him.
He got put in a strange new role that no one could guide him and no one knew the rules to it, and Sam being mad at him was petty, like you gave it up man, and yeah you thought no one was going to use it, so it sucks the military lied to him, but then he should have been mad at the military and brought it up with them not doing everything to undermine John walker
Which is another thing that is against him, not only is he in a role that he didn't choose, didn't sign up for, was picked for and as a good military person said yes and did his duty, but the only two who properly worked the first Captain America, and most likely have a lot of respect in the military treat him like garbage.
They are facing a threat that is international so technically avengers level, and John now has that clearance with the shield, and they are giving him nothing, and he is doing everything by the books and trying to be respectful but they keep treating him like crap.
So yeah he starts to crack, you see home become ruder and more curt to them, like damn I would too
Then he gets his *** handed to him, and the not even soldiers line makes me feel bad, like given this impossible role, and he doesn't feel like he lives up to it already, but then when facing threats he should be able to take down, like regular people, he still fails and that, that just sucked
And up till then i really had no issue with him, even the wanting the serum part, like duh, he's facing insane threats and insane expectations, like it makes sense, likes Sam you fly, and have an ai robot, ofc you don't want nor need the serum( love Sam tho don't get me wrong) and he has a Frisbee
So right up till then no issues, but he's murdered someone, and honestly haven't even finished 6 cuz im really mad at how they treat him, but yeah what he did was awful, but the way Carly murdered his friend( and also burned that whole building of people, that sicko) and looked like a scared baby (which they did for a reason) and then he gets upset by his friends murder and they decided to villianise him sucks
Im losing my train of thought, anyways, John suck but only and only because of the murder, and its not because he murdered a man but the how, it wasn't in the heat of battle, but he chased him down just to get revenge (and yeah his best friend died) and it was also a really cruel way to die
But other than that he was wasn't awful, and then on top of that how Sam and James took back the shield was disgusting and just brings back the feeling bad for him, like he knew what he did was wrong , they should've gone back to the us and let them deal with it, he probably would have, but they only thought of the shield and broke his arm
And yes he was dangerous at that point, and should disarm him, but still they did it awfully
Also if it was Steve, like still alive and someone had just killed bucky like that and he went off to finish the job aint nobody was gonna be this pressed, which I totally get, we know Steve so people like Steve, but i find people refused to give walker a chance from the get go and looking for every chance to villianize him and that sucks
It also sucks that this is how they are trying to make Sam captain, like firstly i think its useless because he is falcon and i think he is great at that and shield doesn't go with the look, but like they are obviously tearing this character down just to build his and that's jut lame writing, Sam coming into on his own would have made for a much better story, or even the guy being great at his job but realising he didn't really earn this shield and having Sam take it back would have been great
Anyways i don't love John walker, i think hes kinda a goody two shoes character, and those have never been my fave, but i think he was well written and could make for a great bad guy later in if this is how they want it, and i know that sounds contradictory, but i don't need to love a character not to hate him, he was kinda boring, so it was neutral at the beginning, and while i think he leans more in the good guy lane, a lot of great villians come from good guys, so while villianising from the get go is stupid imo because he really wasn't, but since the show so obviously wanted him to be a bad guy to make Sam look better (which is so lame- also again i like Sam) then they did it poorly, that part where he's talking to Lamar about their badges and he knows while he did it for his country it was still awful actions, was a great insight and could have definitely be used later on, especially after Lamar's death, like he's done all these 'good things' and at what cost, his conscience, his friend's life? And then he goes bad, that would have been so much more interesting to see
Anyways he's obviously now the villain and from now out i don't think there any redeeming, but from the get go? Yall was wrong to hate, or at least i don't think he deserved all of that hate.
Also side note to that Carly remark its sucks they villainies John instead of the real villain, and are trying to make us sympathetic to her, but again they want to make John the ultimate baddie in this, so they can't have any other really bad villains, which is in an interesting way to go, but again it sucks because this is how they are building up Sam to be captain America and again I find that weak.
Like i said I haven't even finished 6 so who knows how worse he gets, also this is my opinion regarding the show, not anything to do with how he is in the comics, idc if he blows up the moon in the comics and is the ultimate villain, in this show, he had real potential to be a boring good guy character
If anyone sees this please don't give me hate this is my opinion on a poorly written character arc, for a character that i think doesn't deserve half the hate he gets, i really don't want to discuss this but if anyone does, give me some constructive criticism not blataint you're wrong, also don't come for my spelling or grammar, i didn't care that much
Marvel's over here making me cry and shattering my into 10,000 pieces for no reason. GODDAMN.
