Darcy wears combat boots and scrapes on her knees.
There's a smear of blood on her forehead and Bucky's not sure if it's hers or someone else's.
The way she ignores it and grabs a bottle from behind the bar she jumps over – Bucky has the impression that blood, hers or otherwise, is the least thing on her mind.
He keeps shaking. There are sirens everywhere.
The bar they sit at has broken plaster littered all over it.
Bucky doubts anyone around them for a solid couple of miles is even alive.
They don't even know each other. Steve knows Darcy.
She's Thor's friend.
Bucky didn't know anybody, except Shuri and T'Challa.
And Shuri was –
Bucky tastes bile and retches again.
Darcy doesn't react, instead sipping her glass filled to the brim with amber liquid.
Bucky wishes he could get drunk like she is.
What was she even doing here?
"Where were you?" he murmurs, barely audible.
His voice is hoarse.
"With Jane."
He lip trembles and she begins to sob for the first time, reality sinking in.
"She's really gone, isn't she?"
Bucky fails to say anything worthwhile. Talking still isn't his strong suit.
He puts a hand on her shoulder but she shrinks back, away like she's afraid.
In the space of a couple days, Thanos managed to upend entire continents.
One day the world was there and then it was gone.
Three months later, Darcy gets a call from SHIELD.
They tell her they have a job for her.
She has nothing but cleanup to do. Her home town doesn't exist anymore.
Her parents' farm is gone.
She counts the people she knows from before Thanos on her two hands. Everyone since she met at evacuation centres.
There are so many mouths to feed, and so little to offer.
People come crawling from across the Middle East, Europe, South America -
It goes on and on.
Nothing seems to staunch the flow.
She grips the phone a little tighter in her hand, the calm voice on the other end enough to make her scream back they have no idea what really matters.
So fuck Bucky Barnes.
It wasn't her job to go find him.
Thor collides with her, and she holds him tight, wanting to stay with him forever – but he's still dealing with Thanos galaxies away.
He tells her he knows where Barnes is and squeezes her shoulder, tears in his eyes.
He wishes he could take her with him, but knows she'll most likely die.
Luckily for Earth, Thor thinks Thanos has little interest in returning, considering the thoroughness of his first visit.
Darcy knows the meaning of the phrase 'with a heavy heart' more than ever.
She calls SHIELD back and packs her knapsack.
Travelling is a nightmare in general so going into the countryside with roads mostly blocked off by the thinner military takes forever.
She takes three days to go West. She has to wait and see the missing posters at every roadblock.
She knows every person whose photo is up is dead.
She knows it in her heavy heart.
Bucky slams the door in her face when she knocks on his trailer door.
She sighs, looking around his living quarters.
She's pretty sure he's squatting, but the people who lived here before are most likely dead.
She spends two whole hours sitting on the ground by his front door, picking at bits of grass and listening to the birds.
He bursts out of the trailer and sets off toward the woods, and Darcy is after him, but he doesn't give her a second look.
He starts collecting firewood.
Darcy had noticed the little pile of charcoal while she waited for Barnes to remerge.
"SHIELD wants you back," she says, and he snorts.
Darcy feels a sting of annoyance, wondering what makes it okay for him to be like this around her, when she didn't even know him.
She follows him around the dense trees, picking up her own sticks.
When they get back to the burnout pyre, Barnes starts building a fire, and Darcy stands by while she watches.
He's wearing a glove over his metal arm.
"Are you hiding?"
Barnes glares at her.
"You are, aren't you?" she fires, and he looks away. "Do you know how I found you?"
"How did you find me?" he murmurs, and it's the first thing he's said the entire time.
"Thor."
He pauses, jaw ticking.
"You remember Thor?"
He nods, curt.
Darcy's crying already, and wipes at her face, annoyed.
Bucky starts lighting little pieces and blowing on the kindling.
Soon enough the fire is healthy and glowing by the setting sun.
"I'm staying."
She says it – doesn't ask. Barnes just nods, somehow becoming quieter than ever.
She's the only other person in his whole world right now.
They sit and stare into the fire for hours – or it feels like it, anyway.
Darcy checks her phone a lot, wondering if Barnes even has a generator.
Knowing her luck, he doesn't and soon she'll have no phone until she decides to leave.
Because she's pretty sure she's not staying until he decides to leave.
She's also pretty sure he can barely stand her, because she's constantly reminding him of that day when he pulled her out of that café before it blew up –
"It's not your fault."
She looks at him face on for the first time in about three hours and he frowns, face twisting.
"I'm the reason you're here," he grunts.
Here instead of dead with everyone else, he means.
She shuffles closer to him on her knees, sure she's getting dirt on her skin and she doesn't know when her next shower is.
She places a hand on his metal arm, feeling the cool, hard outer shell of it beneath the fabric of his jacket.
She's trying to give him the same kindness he failed to give her back in the bar, when she jumped and he looked mortified.
Darcy still feels bad about that. She knows Barnes' story from what Steve told her –
Thinking of Steve now made her feel sick.
Barnes swallows, and she's so aware of him not retreating –
"Darcy."
He's never said her name before.
She shivers, and he inches closer.
She eyes him, waiting for him to stop, but he doesn't.
She remembers, when he first grabbed her in the city and the building blew all around them, and they ducked, his body covering her.
He had to pull her back away from the fires she saw, from the hole that used to be the café.
She looks at Barnes' – Bucky's – mouth now.
She brings her hand up to cup his face and kisses him briefly.
She hesitates, wondering if she's gone too far.
He brings her down for another kiss, deeper this time.
He tastes like smoke – or maybe she's just been sitting by the fire for too long.
She considers maybe Bucky isn't too bothered about how she tastes, either, because his tongue swipes over the seam of her lips and she opens for him.
She sighs. She allows herself to show her appreciation.
His hands are everywhere.
She's wearing a skirt because it's July and nothing feels good to wear anymore but a skirt is the second best thing to nothing.
His hand in already slipping up and under the hem of her skirt while the other metal one is under her shirt, his fingers splayed across her lower back.
She rides the wave of it, daring to bite a little on his lip.
She pulls back to see his eyes blown and dark, his lips wet and hair mussed.
"Not here," she says, and he just nods dumbly.
She wants to fuck him but figures being outside by the fire is too much. She won't come if there's just the hard ground beneath her ass.
She thinks of the last guy who screwed her back in the city with his black topknot and barista uniform and wonders if he's dead.
He's probably dead.
She walks away from Bucky back toward his trailer and opens it, looking around.
"There's a light. There."
Bucky points to the long cord above her head and she tugs it, and the flickering light reveals a mess only a lonely person could make.
The bed is unmade and the sheets look anything but fresh, but Darcy knows she's closer to wet than dry.
She lays down in the cramped space and Bucky settles beside her on the bed, taking off his shoes.
Darcy kicks hers off absently, aware of the heat of him beside her.
"Come here."
She tugs him back, kissing him hard.
He groans for the first time, and the sound goes right to her cunt.
He shoulders off his jacket and cradles her head in her hands.
It's close to affectionate and it makes Darcy pull back.
She pulls off her skirt, her shirt and her bra. She shimmies out of her underwear, all business.
Bucky just stares at her.
He turns away a little to take off his shirt and glove.
He pulls off his pants and boxers but Darcy doesn't see much of his cock.
There's an awkward pause and Darcy figures it's because they're both naked and they've barely said a thing.
What was the protocol?
Whoever said this was like riding a bicycle had clearly never heard of shared trauma.
He was the only other person who knew exactly how she felt, because he'd been there with her the entire time, and kept her safe.
Did she hate him a little for protecting her like that?
Maybe.
She looks at the scar tissue that littered his body. His muscles are smooth and hard, so chiseled it was close to being a crime.
That's sounds like something she would have said another time, when she wasn't so sad.
When her soul hadn't been sucked out with the rest of the world.
He knows her so well, and yet she's sure he doesn't even know her middle name.
She leans closer to him and encourages him to lay down with her, pulling at his arms and kissing him once more.
He lies on top of her, pressing their skin together and making her forget the city for a second.
She shivers again, and she sees him watching her, looking her body over like other men have.
He still hesitates.
"Darcy."
"Bucky," she murmurs back, and she realizes she's stroking his flesh arm with a finger.
She was affectionate in her old life, and she was always touching people.
She pauses, blinking a few times.
If she cries now, it's all over.
He reads her well, his hands gliding over her tits and flicking a nipple lightly to distract her.
He takes his pleasure from the look she gives him when he slips two fingers inside her, stretching her pussy as her hips roll.
She bites down on her lip when his thumb grazes her clit.
She hitches her leg over his hip and he gets the message, lining them up.
His look is a question, and she nods, and then looks down as his cock fills her.
She sucks in a breath, and says, unable to help herself, "Holy shit."
He kisses her again, gentle.
She pulls back again, attempting to sound a little distant, "Just don't come in me."
"Okay," he replies, and then she wraps her arms around him.
They rock together, and Darcy lets a moan slip out because he makes her feel so full and good –
"Oh, fuck," she whispers.
He slams into her while teasing her clit.
The grind of his pubic bone is intoxicating, and soon she's gasping, clawing at his back and writhing.
The sweat between them makes her chuckle, and her smile makes him smile a little, too.
Bucky's smile is small and muted but she stills sees it, and her chest aches.
"Bucky," she whispers, and then she feels it –
She's coming, clenching around him and shuddering. It feels slow and hard, like a heavy pulse and she cuts off her breath and then gulps again at the air, sighing.
He actually moans now and then pulls out, coming into his fist as his forehead presses to Darcy's shoulder.
When he recovers, he presses a kiss to the bare skin of her and moves away.
They sleep side by side, only touching by accident.
The next morning she wakes to an empty space beside her, but she sees him making coffee and he hands her a mug wordlessly.
She thinks she'll leave that day alone, but he surprises her, gesturing over at the shape hidden under a tarp beside the trailer.
It turns out to be his bike, and Darcy just stares at him.
"Since when?"
He shrugs. "Since you."
She decides she needs him.
