AN: For those with pets, hopefully you will sympathize with the affectionate cursing that Bucky directs toward his dog. I have referred to my pet on more than one occasion as a 'furry asshole' and he is the light of my life. Also, what happens with me has happened again. The final scene for this chapter became long enough for a chapter in and of itself so I divided it in two. I'll still post that part as planned on Sunday, so consider this an extended teaser.

And If I Call For You

Part Three

By: Wynn

Opening the front door to his house, Bucky blocks seventy-pounds of frenzied, hyperactive dog before he can knock over Darcy.

"Christ Jesus, let her come in first. Dumbass dog."

Marlowe just squirms in response, the prospect of a visitor overwhelming any criticism he hears in Bucky's voice. The coast presently clear, Darcy eases into the house, and Marlowe shifts into overdrive. He barks and his tail whips back and forth hard enough to take someone's eye out. The reaction pricks at Bucky, proof that Marlowe recognizes Darcy, that he'd missed her, his reaction to others joyous but not quite reaching this level of ardor. Bucky blocks another bum rush and blames the accidental clawing he receives for the sharpness of his voice, rather than his currently seesawing emotions.

"Marlowe. Sit."

He does. His tail still swishes at an epic speed, but it's contained, enough for Darcy to make her approach. She reaches out to pat him on the head. Her fingers curl around his right ear and she digs into his scritch spot, making Marlowe nearly melt into the floor in response. His tongue lolls and he gazes at Darcy in blanket adulation, and this sight too pricks at Bucky, compelling him to turn, to lock the front door and doff his coat before making his way into the living room.

He's not far enough away, though, to miss her whispered, "I missed you, too, bud."

Bucky clears his throat and shifts in place. He doesn't dare turn back around, not until he feels more like a pillar and less like a pendulum. "There's, uh, clean towels in the bathroom. Which is still, um, in the same place. Obviously. Or you could eat first. Ma gave me some leftover pasta. You can have some if you want. Or just ice cream. Or you know, whatever."

He closes his eyes at the word vomit. Darcy says nothing behind him, but he feels her gaze upon him. The weight of it compels him to move, to open his eyes and shift it off. He busies himself with straightening the stuff on the closest end table, a couple of books and a few CDs, before moving to the coffee table and the magazines and his iPod and the mostly full bottle of beer that he abandoned when he left for the mall. There's a blanket thrown over the back of the couch that could be folded and Marlowe's leash tangled on the other end table and a pair of his running shoes in a pile by the coffee table, but still Darcy hasn't said anything, and the discomfort that likely underlies her silence outweighs the unease driving his avoidance, so he turns and faces Darcy.

She still stands by Marlowe, one hand idly scratching his head. Her eyes, though, are on Bucky, fixed and frowning as she says, "Are you sure—"

"I'm sure." At her continued frown, he says, "I am. I'm just… I'm trying—" He stops then and a rueful smile twists his lips. "I'm trying."

Darcy continues to eye him. As before, in the alley, he can't read her expression. He blames Bobbi for that, for schooling her in "super secret spy shit" as Darcy once said, Bobbi former FBI. But the inscrutability vanishes a moment later as a smile blooms across her face, impervious to her deepening bruise.

"Look at us," she says. "Trying to be all mature and shit. Steve would be so proud."

Bucky laughs. He lifts a hand and rubs it across the back of his neck. "Yeah, he would."

They stare at each other, and as they do, Bucky knows that he's doomed. He should have called Sharon to pick Darcy up. Or Steve. He shouldn't have brought her here, not when she stated once more how she's no longer his concern, not when the first thing that he did when he touched her again is to caress her, not when his heart thumps like Marlowe's tail across the floor as he looks at her now, and not when six years have passed since they broke up, three since she slipped out of his bed to marry another, and nearly one since she left Bucky a second time, chafing under his overprotection, and nothing, nothing, nothing has changed, not for him, Bucky as in love with her as he had been the first time they met, Bucky sixteen and Darcy fourteen and she leaning against Peggy's beat up Honda outside of school, iPod in hand and belting out "Back in Black" at the top of her lungs.

Her brow creases as she looks at him, as his goddamn face displays the tragic turmoil in his heart in crystal clear Technicolor. Bucky averts his gaze. His hand trembles as he lowers it from the back of his neck. He shoves it and his other one into the pockets of his jeans, scuffs his boot over the already scuffed wood floor, and racks his brain for something to say, for some way to paper over his emotional faux pas.

As before, in the car, Darcy does it for him.

"I think I'll shower first. I feel kind of gross. Like parking lot and perp sweat."

Bucky nods, grateful for the distraction, for the relief of action, for being able to do something than just stand there, pried open and vulnerable to her inquisitive gaze. "I'll get you something to sleep in. Put it in the guest room for you."

Darcy nods too. Bucky eases past, not really avoiding her gaze but not actively meeting it either. Marlowe cottons on to the change in locale and charges up the stairs. Bucky pats him on the head when he reaches the top then turns to the left and heads to his bedroom. He hears Darcy enter the bathroom. As soon as she closes the door behind her, he sags, lifting his hands and covering his face. Only his sister Becca and Steve rivaled Darcy in her ability to affect him. Bucky sucks in a deep breath, seeking an even keel, needing it if he intended to survive the night with his sanity intact.

Marlowe pads in then. Bucky lowers his hands and crouches beside his dog, drawing comfort as he always has from Marlowe's warm presence, from the soft, steady love he exudes. He burrows into Bucky, circling around until he stands in prime position, his butt within easy reach for pets. Chuckling, Bucky reaches out and hits the sweet spot above his tail, making Marlowe squirm in ecstasy. The contentment continues until the shower starts. Marlowe straightens, his head cocked to take in the sound.

"You hear that? That's Darcy. You remember her, don't you? Yeah," he says, giving Marlowe a few last pets, "she's kind of hard to forget."

As if in response, Marlowe trots away, out into the hall to sit by the bathroom door. Standing, Bucky peers after him. The sight makes him sigh, for the impossibility of this being a regular occurrence for Marlowe, or for him, ever again.

Turning, Bucky crosses to his dresser. As he reaches for the first drawer, his eyes catch on one of the photographs spanning the surface, an old Polaroid of him and Darcy from a camera she dug up at some garage sale before he left for Basic. She'd said that he needed a few old fashioned pics to keep him company overseas. The more risqué ones he still has in a box in his closet. This, one of them together, a Polaroid selfie she'd called it, lies propped against one of him and Steve when Steve made Sergeant and another of him and his folks at his high school graduation. He stares at her smile, at his too, both big and bold and bright, if a little blurry, and his jaw clenches. Reaching out, he yanks open the drawer, only to stop again, the shirt on top a goddamn Army tee like the one she had to wear in the pictures, and the thought of her in it now, the longing that the image stirs, threatens to overturn him again.

His phone chirps before he does something stupid, before he plops down next to Marlowe to wait for Darcy, before he rips his hair out and runs screaming from his house, before he unearths the bottle of scotch in his cupboard downstairs and down the whole lot. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out his phone and answers, not needing to look at the caller ID to know who's calling.

"She's here, Steve."

There's silence on the other end as Steve processes. Then he says, his voice quiet, "Is that a good thing?"

Bucky releases another sigh. He shuffles back from the dresser and flops onto his bed, closing his eyes as he does. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Do you want it to be?"

Bucky opens his eyes. He lifts his free hand and draws it through his hair, everything within him on edge, hyperaware of the shower and the bathroom and Darcy within it. "Maybe," he says after a moment. "But it doesn't matter," he continues, letting his hand fall back onto the mattress. "I'm pretty sure she still hates me."

"Darcy doesn't hate you, Bucky. She's never hated you."

"Oh no, she did. Intensely. You know that's why she left town."

"I think she was more hurt than anything. But," he continues, "even if she did hate you, that was six years ago. She hasn't recently. And she doesn't now."

The last three words echo and re-echo in his head. Bucky shakes them off, refusing to latch onto this bit of hope. He's been down the road of hope twice before. Like punching Barton, he's not sure he can endure a third crash and burn. "Not hating's not really the basis for anything, Steve, much less a relationship. So it's… whatever. I don't know." He sits then and rubs his hand across his face. "She's okay, and I put out a fresh APB on Chesterson, and that's all that matters."

"It's not. It isn't," Steve says again, overriding his protest. "I like Darcy. I really do. She's family now, but she's not blameless in all that's happened between you two. And I don't— You don't deserve to be hurt again."

"Don't worry," Bucky says as he climbs to his feet. "She's fresh out of interns to marry."

There's a half second of silence and then Steve sighs. "Buck—"

"I've got to go, get things ready here."

Steve says nothing. His silence speaks for him though, voicing his protest at the evasion. But he doesn't push, another reason, as if Bucky needed another, for why Steve is the best man that he's ever known. "Call if you need to talk. Anytime."

Bucky makes a noncommittal noise as he moves back to the dresser.

"I'm serious, Buck—"

"I know you are. I know, okay? I—" He bites back his anger, swelling from the depths of the war and the lingering grip of the trauma upon him. No matter the years and the milestones, therapy and his promotion, buying his house and finishing his degree, even falling in love as much as he could with Jemma, the shadow hovered perpetually over his head, waiting for the wrong moment to drop. Expelling a long breath, he starts again. "This isn't— I'm not how I was. I'm better now."

"You are. You've come so far, Bucky. You're in a good place now, and I don't want that to fall apart for you."

"It won't. I don't want it to, and I don't think Darcy would either."

"Oh, so you agree now that she doesn't hate you?"

Bucky smiles at the bit of humor in Steve's voice. "Maybe. Tell Peggy I said hello, okay, and give the munchkin a kiss for me. I got a new toy for her, a little bear, that I'll drop off in the next couple of days."

"You spoil her."

Bucky snorts. "Like you don't. I've seen Sarah's closet, man. Not all that shit came from me."

Steve laughs at that. "No, it didn't. Bring the bear. She'll love it. Good luck tonight, and call me if you need to talk."

"I will. Thanks."

Bucky ends the call. He tosses his phone onto the dresser then peers down into the drawer again. The shower still runs, few things better to bruised and battered muscles than streaming hot water. And he means to select a shirt, to pull out a pair of sweatpants and thick woolen socks, Darcy's feet perpetually cold, but he can't, 'She doesn't now' running through his head like Sarah on a sugar high. Maybe she didn't hate him. She did come here, after all. Aside from Sif and Thor, she offered thin reasons for dismissing the other options. She could sleep on Sharon's couch and thus avoid her snoring, and a visit from Aunt Dee would make Sarah's day. Had she wanted to come here? Bucky frowns at the notion as he snatches a plain blue tee from the drawer. The idea still didn't sit well with him given her responses to him showing up during and after her two run-ins with Chesterson. Maybe she didn't want to come, but at least it seemed she wasn't outright opposed to coming, which was better than the former and better than her walking away. Bucky would take the progress, and maybe, maybe someday—

He stills the thought before it forms. Maybe someday, but someday was not today and, despite what Steve said, today is what matters, so he closes one drawer and opens another to rummage for clothes for Darcy.