A/N: I know, I know. I'm horrid. I haven't updated my other stories in GOD KNOWS how long and here I am. Posting another. But I have fallen in love with Bucky Barnes and wanted to write a story in which someone else does too. And before you think that I may not get very far into it I have made sure that I pre-wrote tonnes so I don't just leave you guys hanging as in the past. So I've already got like 30 thousand words and I will be updating this regularly whilst still writing more so you guys will get like, at least a solid 50 thousand, if not way more. (Hopefully). Anyway. I kind of really like this so have fun with it. Love you all! Please leave a review!
~O~
Bucky had lived in a lot of places in the two years since Hydra was taken down and he had pulled Steven Rogers from almost certain death in the river. He moved every three or so months, always renting under a false name and paying only in cash. He had to keep moving, he couldn't settle down or they'd find him. His last move had been to an old, rather abhorrent building in Bucharest, Romania. That had been over six months ago. He knew he needed to move on, knew if he stayed he was going to eventually get caught. But how could he move? How could he move and leave her?
~O~ (6 months previous)
Holding the phone between her ear and shoulder, Madelyn gripped the briefcase tightly in one hand, opening the front door of her apartment with the other and walking out into the hallway of the building.
"No dad! I'm not accepting this! I have a good job and I'm doing fine." She said sternly into the phone, turning around to lock the door behind her.
"I'm not having my daughter live in a disgusting apartment unnecessarily!" The man on the other side of the phone insisted.
"It's my choice to live in this apartment - not because of money. I'm not going to accept charity from you, I'm bringing the briefcase over now to give back to you," she insisted, spinning around on her heel and hurrying toward the flight of steps that led down. In her flurry of movement, she smacked straight into someone, landing with a humpf on the ground. The mobile she had been talking into skidded across the floor one way whilst the briefcase popped open, spilling the contents within all over the concrete ground.
"Imi pare stat de rau!" She gushed out in Romanian - I'm so sorry. She looked up at the slightly startled man, who offered her a glove-clad hand. She swiftly accepted, slipping her hand into his and allowing him to easily pull her to her feet.
"It's fine," he assured her quietly, in English. He immediately picked up on her blatantly British accent and although her Romanian was good, he could tell it was not her first language.
"I was just-.." She looked at the phone where they could both hear the man on the other end of the line yelling her name. "Distracted," she muttered, swooping up the phone and pressing it against her ear. "I'm sorry dad, I'm going to have to call you back." She looked at the man she'd bumped into as she spoke. He was a face she hadn't seen before, which was rare because she knew everyone in the building. He wore a few layers of clothing - a hoodie and a long sleeved shirt underneath, gloves on his hands and a cap on his head, even though it wasn't that sunny outside. His long, dark hair brushed his shoulders and his piercing blue eyes looked somewhere caught between confusion and suspicion. Maddy couldn't blame him, considering the thousands upon thousands of dollars that had just spilled out of the suitcase. She hung up the phone, cutting off whatever protestations her father had been about to yell at her. "Um…" she looked down at the money. "It's…not mine..?" It was a poor excuse, but it was all she had.
He raised his eyebrows, disbelieving, before crouching down to begin placing the bound together piles of notes back into the briefcase. Maddy followed suit, crouching down.
"Sorry," she repeated. "For knocking into you. It's been a crazy day."
"It's fine," he replied, not looking at her.
"I'm Madelyn, by the way," she stuck out a hand. "You must be the guy that replaced George in 6A." She looked to the apartment right across from her own.
"Uh..Yeah. I'm.." He hesitated, which she thought was rather strange. Shouldn't your own name be the easiest piece of information to supply? "Bucky," he decided on. "My name's Bucky." He shook her hand.
"Well, Bucky, it's nice to meet you," she clicked the briefcase back into place once all the money was securely inside, a little messier than before. They stood up at the same time, Maddy smiling brightly, whilst Bucky mostly avoided her gaze. "We'll have to have a welcome party for you! We're all really close here."
Bucky nearly grimaced, looking at the door to his apartment. "Parties aren't really my thing."
Maddy let out a small laugh, like that answer didn't surprise her at all. "Fair enough. What is your thing then?"
Bucky had no idea, but was luckily saved from answering when her phone began ringing. Groaning as she looked down at it, she sent him an apologetic glance. "I have to take this. Thanks for the help," she held the briefcase up higher for a moment, then answered the phone. "Dad, I'm heading over now." She smiled at Bucky one last time before heading toward the staircase. She stopped just before she got to the first stair and she turned back to him, muttering into the phone, "Just a second." Bucky met her brown gaze. "I'll see you 'round, Bucky," she grinned before jogging down the steps, leaving him to watch as she disappeared from sight.
He turned and walked toward his apartment door. He gripped the handle and stopped for a minute, eyebrows furrowed. He felt…almost puffed. He pulled off the glove of his real hand and placed it over his chest. His heart was pounding against his ribcage, as if he'd just been running. He realised that, possibly for the first time in years, it wasn't because of physical exertion that his heart was racing.
~O~
Bucky had been in the apartment nearly two weeks when there was a sudden knock on the door. He'd just gotten out of the lukewarm, bad pressurised shower (which was still better than the ones at Hydra, which were always ice-cold and rarely had clean towels). Suspicion swam in him. Had he been compromised? Why else would someone be knocking on his door? He didn't exactly have weekly visitors.
He pulled on a pair of jeans and shrugged on a hoodie, not bothering to zip it up. He grabbed his gun and shoved it into the back of his jeans. He braced himself, jaw set tight and body tensed for a fight, before pulling open the door.
The pretty, young girl from across the hall stood outside his door, her arms crossed over her chest and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment - what was her name again? He let himself pretend that he had forgotten, even though he'd thought about her a few too many times since their first meeting. Madelyn.
For a moment, all he could do was stare at her, lips slightly parted. That was because this pretty, young girl was standing outside of his apartment, a dark maroon skirt clinging to her thin hips and…and she was wearing no shirt. Her arms, crossed over her chest, attempted to hide her bra and as much skin as was possible, but she was failing miserably.
"Oh thank god," she said when he opened the door. Her gaze ran over his exposed stomach and chest where the hoodie was unzipped. It made her a little more comfortable that they were in at least similar states of dress. "I know I probably look like such a crazy person right now - I dropped my phone outside my door on my way back from grocery shopping and I was half dressed when I realised so I quickly ducked out to grab it and the door closed behind me and my key is still in the apartment and…I'm locked out. I called Harold - the creepy landlord - and he's on his way over with a spare key but he won't be here for twenty minutes. Could I maybe…wait in your apartment till he gets here?" This all came out on one single breath and Bucky didn't think he'd spoken half as much in the past year, as she had in the past minute.
He gulped and moved to the side, shoving his metal hand into his hoodie pocket so she couldn't see it. She hurried in and he shut the door behind her. She stood, looking around the scarcely decorated apartment, arms still clutching around herself. He reached for one of his clean shirts and walked a few steps toward her, holding it out. She turned to face him, smiling when she saw his offer. "Oh, thank you! Seriously..Harold is such a creep, I did not want to have to deal with him seeing me half naked." She took the shirt eagerly and pulled it over her head. It was much too large for her, falling down and nearly covering her entire skirt, the sleeves, which normally ended halfway down Bucky's biceps, fell just past her elbows.
Bucky didn't like the idea of some creepy guy - which Harold was, he'd been super weird when Bucky had met him to discuss renting in his apartment block - staring at Maddy in her state of undress either. Although, when he thought about it, he didn't like the idea of creepy Harold staring at any poor girl half naked. He figured it was just one of his old personality traits, one of the ones that HYDRA had carved out of him long ago. One that was finally starting to seep back in, followed by all of his old memories.
"You probably think I'm such a klutz, but I swear I'm not normally. Well..actually maybe a little but not normally this bad. You've just caught me on bad days," she laughed a little. He nodded slightly, the side of his mouth ticking up momentarily. "So…" She walked around his apartment slowly, taking in the mattress on the floor, the dirty pile of dishes in the sink. He shifted, almost self-conscious. He tried to tell himself that he couldn't have cared less about what this girl thought, but the truth was…he did. He wasn't the Winter Solider anymore - he cared about things, meaningless things, in a way he hadn't for a long time. However, when Maddy next spoke, there wasn't a drop of judgement in her voice. "When did you move to Romania?" She looked at him. She knew from his accent that he wasn't from around there, not even close.
"A couple of months ago," he said. His voice was a little gravelly, like he hadn't used it in awhile. He hesitated before asking, "What about you? When did you move from England?"
She barked out a laugh. "What gave it away?" She questioned sarcastically, knowing full well that her British accent was still very strong. "Me and my dad moved here nearly 6 years ago from London. I moved out of home, to this lovely apartment block, last year." She swept her long, beautiful brown locks up into a ponytail, securing it with a hair band that was previously around her wrist. Bucky couldn't stop himself before he thought that he liked her with her hair down a lot. Whilst she still looked very nice with it tied back, he felt as though she was more comfortable with it down. The wavy, thick locks gave her an almost…wild look that matched the glint of mischief in her creamy brown eyes.
"And you? Where did you move from?" She enquired.
He licked his lips a little. "Brooklyn, America…originally."
She leaned back on the scratched up wooden dining table, facing him. "Why'd you decide to move here?" She asked, pushing herself up to sit on the table, her legs swinging slightly in the air. He shifted, looking uncomfortable. She smiled softly, almost sympathetically, clearly seeing that it was a question he would rather avoid. "That's ok," she assured him with a sweet smile that could surely rival the northern lights. "It's a real nice building here. We're all good friends. Julie, she's the person that lives next to me - I would have gone to her after I got locked out but she's away at the moment, I'm looking after her cat Polly. And Marcus and Gabe on the level below, they're a really nice couple, really great guys, good friends of mine. Mrs Ford can be a bit of a cranky old lady, but I think she had a pretty hard life, so we mostly give her a break."
Maddy continued to tell him about all of the tenants in the building - she knew every single one by name and knew a little bit about their lives. She was a very, very social girl. Bucky didn't talk much, but that was ok because she could talk enough for the both of them. Bucky thought that if it had have been anyone else talking that much to him, he probably would have found it unbearably irritating, but for some strange reason, on Maddy it was just horribly endearing. By the time her phone dinged with a text from Harold, telling her that he was outside of her apartment, Bucky was smiling ever so slightly and he was just beginning to remember what it felt like to have the sole attention of a pretty girl.
"I gotta go!" She pushed herself off the table. "Thanks so much for letting me wait in here. I'll wash the shirt and get it back to you ASAP." She went to squeeze his arm as she walked past but he had to swiftly move away, because she would have gotten quite the shock when she felt hard metal instead of warm flesh underneath the hoodie. It was a shame, really, because Bucky didn't like seeing the slightly disappointed look flash across her face as well as missing out on the opportunity to feel her hand on him. She pulled open his front door, ignoring Harold calling out to her excitedly, her focus solely on Bucky. "Well..I'll see you 'round Bucky," she said, just like last time. Then she left, closing the door behind her, although not before he heard her say enthusiastically to Harold, "Hey! Thank you so much for bringing the key over, you're the best!"
Bucky thought that maybe she was a little bit two faced, considering she'd just been calling Harold creepy, but then again he had a metal arm, had murdered dozens of people and was technically over 90 years old, so maybe he was being a bit hypercritical. Maybe it was because it was hard to find a flaw in the beautiful girl.
He looked around his empty apartment. It suddenly seemed very quiet.
~O~
A/N: Aaaaand there we go, first chapter done! I was going to make it longer, but I thought that was a nice place to end it. Watch out for the second chapter - it will be up in the next couple of days. Love you all! Until next time xx
PS Please leave a review and tell me what you think! I'd really appreciate it!
