Three flights up and already out of breath Georgiana, paused on the landing halfway up the building for a break, balancing the heavy box that she was carrying on the step above her.
After the momentous screw up with student accommodation, she had been forced to take a cheap flat towards the outskirts of Bucharest that she hadn't even seen before moving in to. It had been advertised as a large, furnished studio flat, but that was being overly generous to say the least - a serviceable single mattress on a rickety bed frame, a fairly decent wooden table with mismatched chairs and a mouldy sofa had been all that greeted her when she had first entered her new flat the afternoon before.
Knowing that she had to make the best of it, Georgiana had got back into the Fiat Punto that she had driven over from England the previous day and headed to the nearest Ikea.
What she had failed to take into consideration, however, was the lack of a working lift in her new building - a lesson that she really should have learned yesterday when she had been unpacking her cases and boxes from the car.
Taking a deep breath, she heaved the box once more to half push, half carry it up the stairs, quietly cursing the burst pipe that had condemned the student house she was supposed to be in as she did so.
She managed to make it up two more flights of stairs when she heard footsteps behind her.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw James, her new neighbour, hesitating on the landing beneath her, watching her struggling with the box with distinctly narrowed eyes. He was wearing a heavy jacket over several layers, gloves and had a tattered baseball cap pulled down low over his face.
"Sorry, I'll let you go by," Georgiana said slightly breathlessly, awkwardly shifting to the side of the stairs as much as she could to allow him room.
He nodded and silently moved past her on the stairs, only to then pause a few steps above her, slowly turn back and look at her thoughtfully.
"Would you like some help?" he asked after a long moment, a note of hesitation clearly evident in his rasping voice, like he wasn't sure about what he was offering.
Georgiana brightened, feeling a rush of gratitude. "If you wouldn't mind, then that would be great," she said ardently as James descended the stairs towards her once more. "If you could grab that end -"
She cut herself off as he simply picked up the whole box that she had been struggling with, hefting it with impressive ease.
"Huh, wow," she said, blinking at him as he headed on up the stairs without a word - really she shouldn't be surprised, he had a broad shouldered frame beneath all the layers, with clearly muscled arms to match, so him being strong should really be expected.
"I'll get the door for you," she said, darting around him as they reached the top floor, unlocking it and holding it open for him.
James carried the large box into her flat and put it down in the middle of the floor, his eyes darting around and taking in the boxes that had yet to be unpacked.
"Thank you, that was really kind of you," Georgiana said with a smile at him, tucking a lock of auburn hair behind her ear and hoping that he wasn't silently judging her for the mess of unpacking. "I didn't think through the fact that this building doesn't have a lift when I went furniture shopping."
"Did you have anything else to bring in?" James asked without acknowledging her comment, his voice low and quiet.
Georgiana sheepishly rubbed the back of her head, wondering if she should just lie and say no or if it would be too much of an imposition for her to ask him to help with more boxes. "There is, umm, one or two more things still in the car, but it's fine, I can -"
James wordlessly turned and headed towards the door, jerking his head to indicate that she should follow.
She cut herself off and grinned at him, inordinately grateful for his help as she trailed back down the stairs after him.
For the next several minutes they systematically unloaded her car, with James effortlessly carrying the larger boxes himself without a hint of complaint while she took the smaller ones. He didn't seem to be one for conversation, but she did find out from a few questions as they descended the stairs that he had only recently moved to Bucharest himself and that he worked down in the industrial area.
Georgiana headed down the stairs one last time to get the final small box and lock up her car. She half expected to find James gone, vanishing into his own flat now that the work was done, but to her surprise she found him still in her flat, sat on the floor and scrutinising a set of assembly instructions that he had removed from one of the boxes with a deep frown.
She opened her mouth to tell him that helping her assemble the furniture wasn't necessary, but then thought that she would actually appreciate the assistance since there was a lot to do and he seemed inclined to stay and help. "Would you like a drink?" she asked instead, putting the last Ikea box down on the floor.
James glanced up at her, looking slightly thrown by the offer.
"I have tea, coffee, juice …" she continued, pleased that she had something to offer him since she had gone out to do a food shop when she arrived the previous day.
There was a brief pause. "Coffee," he said eventually, still looking at her with a slightly suspicious air.
Georgiana pottered about the kitchen, filling the kettle with water. "How do you take it?" she asked as she set it to boil.
He frowned at her, looking confused at the question. "Just … coffee," he said, speaking slowly and hesitantly, like he expected a trap somewhere in her offer.
"So black?" she checked, getting a second mug from her box of kitchen supplies that was only half unpacked on the island.
James nodded, still watching her warily.
She hummed quietly to herself as she made the drinks, coffee for him and tea for her. She was aware of James continuing to watch her out of the corner of his eye, like he was worried she might not make his coffee right, something which amused her since it was hard to get black coffee wrong. Finished, she carried the floral mug over to him. "Here," she said, offering it to him handle first with a smile.
He took it and nodded at her in acknowledgement before returning to the instruction manual he was reading.
Clearly he was a man of few words, but he was going out of his way to help her so she wasn't about to comment. "I'll start over here," she said, nodding towards a box of shelves that she had bought.
James didn't reply and she got the distinct impression that he wouldn't appreciate more questions from her, so instead she set her phone to softly play music to cover the surprisingly comfortable silence that settled between them as they worked.
Two days later Bucky was returning late from an evening shift down at the industrial area, only to freeze at the top of the stairs of his apartment building.
There was a plastic box outside his door, a folded piece of paper atop of it.
He stared at it for several long minutes, trying to determine if it was an IED of some kind. Eventually, he stepped carefully forward; he nudged the box with his foot, prepared to leap back if he needed to. Nothing happened, and so he slowly reached down to retrieve the piece of paper, which was written in a loopy, cursive hand.
Thanks for your help with the furniture, Georgiana.
Having no reason to doubt that the box wasn't from his new neighbour (after all, the residents had a key fob to enter the building, this extra security being another reason he had settled here) he cautiously reached down to pick it up, examining it carefully. It was heavy and rattled slightly when he shook it; clearly there were multiple objects inside.
He cast a quizzical look at his neighbour's door; it was late and there were no lights visible, so she was likely asleep. He didn't completely understand this offering and was not even completely sure that it was for him - he wasn't named on the note as the recipient, after all, yet he had helped her with her furniture and the mysterious box had been left outside his door.
He opened the plastic Tupperware box. Inside he found a batch of light gold, sugar coated shortbread biscuits, most likely homemade since the shapes were ever so slightly irregular.
The sweet smell of baking filled his nose and a memory suddenly struck him, making him blink and jerk his head with the sudden clarity.
"James, take these over the road to Mrs Thompson's house for me," his mother said just as he was about to go out, a floral apron tied around her waist and a tin in her hands.
"But Mom, Steve and I were going to the pictures," he complained, not wanting to go over to stuffy old Thompson's house when his friend was waiting.
"You can drop this off on the way," his mother insisted. "She helped alter Rebecca's dress and saying thank you is the proper thing to do. Manners are important, young man."
Bucky exhaled a long, shaking breath, staring down at the box of biscuits in his hand - he remembered that his mother used to bake Scotch shortbread, baked in a round rather than as biscuits, but the smell was the same.
That was one of the earliest memories he had reclaimed since escaping Hydra; he'd been a teenager, still in high school. Money had been tight and the old lady over the road had altered one of Rebecca's old dresses for a dance since they hadn't been able to afford a new one.
He'd known that he had a sister, but hadn't been able to remember her name until now.
Rebecca, his sister's name was Rebecca.
Feeling slightly overwhelmed by what he had remembered, he let himself in to his apartment, determined to retrieve his notebook and write down the new memories that had surfaced.
For the next several minutes he sat on his small, cramped sofa, hunched over the notebook and scribbling furiously.
Finished, he sat back against the sofa cushions and sighed.
Almost automatically, he turned to the front of the notebook, where the elastic was bookmarking a page. A painted picture of Captain America - Steve - stared up at him, stolen from the Smithsonian museum gift shop back in DC.
A part of him wanted to contact Steve, his friend, and have him help sort out his memories and broken mind. The other part of him wanted to just stay away from all of it, Steve, SHIELD and Hydra, to just eke out an existence here in this small corner of the city, quietly atoning for his crimes as best he could with honest, manual labour down in the industrial area.
His gaze shifted to the plastic box of biscuits sitting innocently beside him, the lid still askew from where he had opened it.
He'd never had sweet things when he had been living as the Soldier, living off hardly solid food, thin gruel and a cocktail of vitamins, supplements and mood suppressant drugs. Since taking off on his own after the events in DC he had never bothered to buy sweet things for himself either, since they were a nonessential item.
Curious, he picked up one of the biscuits that his neighbour had made him and turned it over in his fingers, the sugar dusting the leather of his gloves.
There was a chance that his neighbour had poisoned them, of course, but somehow he was inclined to believe not.
The Soldier's programming was telling him that eating food left by a possible enemy was foolish, but Bucky was trying to move away from his programming, to live life as a normal man rather than a machine.
A normal man would accept and eat biscuits from a neighbour.
What the hell, he thought to himself, feeling almost rebellious as he took a small bite of the biscuit.
It was sweet and buttery, crumbling in his mouth and coating his tongue with the rich flavour. It was sweeter than anything he remembered having, almost too sweet after his very bland diet, and somehow felt highly indulgent.
He could only manage one biscuit before the sweetness became too much for him, and so he put the lid back on the plastic box to save the rest of them for another time, quietly pleased with the offering.
It had been many years since he had tasted them, but he suspected that the biscuits his neighbour had made might just be better than his mother's.
It was an almost disloyal thought and he imagined that his mother would have been chagrined to hear such a thing, a notion that he found vaguely amusing.
The hour was late and so he lay down on the bare mattress, hoping that he wouldn't have nightmares. He wrapped himself in his sleeping bag and closed his eyes, the memory of his mother that he had reclaimed playing through his mind and the taste of sugar still lingering on his tongue.
Several days had passed since Georgiana had moved into her new flat in Bucharest and her course at the university had started, keeping her busy. She had met her coursemates and even befriended a few, joining them for drinks and study groups.
She'd settled as best she could into the new flat. The flat already looked much brighter and more welcoming than it had been, with the landlord allowing her to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls and the new furniture that she had bought fully assembled. It would still require a few more finishing touches, but it was starting to feel like home.
She hadn't seen anything of James, her neighbour, since he had helped her with her furniture, but the box of biscuits that she had left outside her door had vanished and so she assumed that he must have got them. They had been simple shortbread since she hadn't known what he had liked, but nevertheless she hoped that he enjoyed her small sign of gratitude.
Evening had fallen and Georgiana was doing some reading for her course, the remains of her dinner on the table in front of her, when a quiet knock came at the door.
Wondering who would be knocking rather than ringing the buzzer on the main door below, she headed to the door and stood on her tiptoes to look out of the peephole.
James stood in the corridor, the plastic box that she had put the biscuits in held in his hands.
She opened the door with a smile, noticing that he looked deeply hesitant about knocking on her door. "Hey there," she said cheerfully, happy to see him again.
"Hello," he said softly, then simply thrust the box out towards her without warning. She noticed that he was still wearing his gloves, though the baseball cap he had been sporting last time was missing, leaving his long, jaggedly cut brown hair just touching his collar. "Thank you," he added belatedly as she took the plastic Tupperware from him, seemingly remembering this nicety at the last moment.
"You're very welcome, it was the least I could do," she said, gratified the feel that it was empty. "Did you like them?"
James blinked at her, apparently surprised by the question. "Yes," he replied, reinforcing her impression of him being a man of few words.
"I'm glad to hear it," she said gently - he didn't seem all that comfortable with conversation at all, and so she decided not to ask him anything else.
He nodded once at her, clearly keen to be finished with the social exchange and already half turned to head back to his own flat. "Goodnight."
"Night, James," she called after him, still smiling as she closed the door once more.
Leaning back against her door, she opened the plastic box to look inside - her smile turned to a full grin when she saw that it was indeed completely empty and that he had even washed it up as well.
Her neighbour may not have been the most verbose or social of people, but he clearly was a good sort.
Leave a review, my darlings! I always love to know what you think of a chapter or what you expect / hope to see next.
I hope that you all had a very happy Christmas!
Big thank you to auntkia for betaing :D