By the end of the first day you had come to realize that the sergeant, you father had taken to calling him that, was the least talkative person you had ever met. He spent all of his time focussing his eyes on his food or his work and when either of those were in short supply he opted for brooding silently in a corner, waiting for time to pass. You felt quite uncomfortable at first, but by the end of the week you had grown used to the sulking man, assuming that he simply wasn't used to having leisure time or hobbies.

In fact, the first sign of contact between the two of you had been on Sunday morning. As usual, the sergeant sat down at the breakfast table as the clock struck eight. His punctuality was somewhat unsettling at first, but now you quite enjoyed the predictability of the man. You sat on the other side of the breakfast table with the book Into the Wild propped up on your knees as you chuckled at a particular passage which perfectly illustrated the stupidity of impromptu-adventurers ignoring advice from locals. The sergeant's steel blue eyes shot up to find you at the sound of your laugh, and somehow you felt his gazing burning on your skin, causing you to look up. His eyes were focussed on the small smirk that was still playing on your lips. Then, you found his eyes move shortly to the book before he looked away and returned to his scheduled morning session of brooding in silence.

That evening you laid a small pile of books by his bedroom door, some of the essentials he had most likely missed out on in the last couple of decades. You selected some of your favourites and sensibly tried to avoid the classics about war, mind control and the books you would never share with a living soul. You settled on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Angels & Demons, Cosmos, The Hobbit and a personal not-so-classic favourite called Don't Run Whatever You Do, a book with stories of a safari guide and the dumb shit he sees tourists do in the wild. It was one of the books that would always make you laugh. You left no note, but simply left the pile propped up against his door before you walked to your room to grab some shower essentials. When you returned from your shower, the books had disappeared and the sergeant's bedroom door was closed, but you could see light shine from under the door.

The next day at breakfast the sergeant gave no notice of the books left at his door and focussed on his breakfast as your father instructed him on how the hayshed would be cleaned out and rearranged after the sergeant would finish fixing the tractor. You finished your breakfast, saving the last ration of bacon for Staples as you called him to you and headed out the door, failing to notice Bucky's eyes lingering on you for the shortest of moments.

Four hours later, you rolled up your sleeves and greedily drank from your bottle of water. It was surprisingly warm for a day in late August, causing the air to feel oppressively heavy with the small of the cornfields and cherries ripening on the tress. With the coming of autumn, the inhabitants of Lewistown will always start harvesting its famous chokecherries that grow all around this side of the mountain. This was one of the few things your hometown was famous for, prompting the town to organize an annual Chokecherry Festival. Even though the barn still needed a lot of work before it could host this year's Chokecherry Festival's annual dance, you were determined to replace the crumbling roofs of the cabins before the bad weather would start setting in.

You were working on the first cabin, stripping the roof bare till only the original framework was left which would carry the new roof. Chopping wood and stripping it was a lot of work, but you were determined to make the cabins as authentic as possible, which meant you refused to go to the hardware store and simply pick up the wood you needed. Your found the hard labour comforting and do wonders for your physique. You had been trained well and felt skilled enough to complete this project by yourself. Fixing the roofs in time would be a serious challenge, let alone finishing the barn in time for the Chokecherry Festival's dance. You were determined to see it through as such a large party would definitely be good for business and would really put it you the map with locals and visitors of the festival.

As you finished your bottle of water and put it away in your bag, you looked for Staples who usually rested his lazy head on top of it while he would take in some much needed Vitamin D. It wasn't until you climbed back up to the roof to continue chopping off any rotten stragglers, that you found the dog sitting by the tractor shed. Staples' eyes were focussed on the quiet dour man who was currently hauling the tractor's massive front wheel onto his shoulder, his muscles visibly straining under the immense weight. You gaped at the man's impossible strength as you studied his calm but angry eyes. Staples didn't seem very impressed by the his rugged appearance and waddled his way to him, pawing at the man's leg. You found the sergeant shake him off easily before he dropped the wheel of the tractor where he wanted it. Staples, insulted by the blatant refusal for affection, gave up and ran back to you, certain that you would not deny him his God-given-right to a good scratch behind the ears.

This routine seemed to be the norm for the next two weeks. You went out to work on the cabins every day, having stripped all the roofs bare by the end of the second week. You spent the next week dragging the chopped logs by hooking your grandfather's old wood peavey into the wood which provided you with enough grip to drag the logs towards the cabins. It was a long and arduous process, but you had kept insisting you didn't need any help. You somewhat regretted it as you felt your back start to ache by the end of the second week. Like before, Staples would join you each morning, spend his lunchtime harassing sergeant Barnes who had been tasked with cleaning the hayshed. Most of the sergeant's days were spent hauling massive bales of hay to the other side of the shed to be able to reach the back. The only change in the daily routine you guys had settled in, was that his eyebrows slowly grew less angry and he had taken to scratch Staples behind his ears anytime the dog pestered him for attention.

On the next rainy Saturday morning, you found yourself dragging up a particularly heavy log up to the cabin, straining to get it to move. You were pretty strong for a woman as you had worked on the ranch all your life, but this took a significant amount of effort. You methodically looped the rope around the left side of the log, pulling it up onto the first groove of the ramp you had built to pull the logs up to the roof, one groove at a time. It was a very old but efficient system.

You strained to pull the log up to the third groove and let it rest there for a while to catch your breath. After having pulled up the left side all the way up to the top groove, which was level to the roof you wanted the log to end up on, you untied the rope and moved it to the right side of the log which was still resting on the ground. This side proved rather difficult as when you pulled it up past each groove, you found it halted halfway, stuck.

You cussed, angered by the duration of this job and the fact that one log thought it was okay to hinder your progress. The audacity. You jumped off the roof and let your working boots land on the soppy grass. You placed your hands on the log, dug your heels in the ground and pushed. Your muscles strained and ached as you attempted to push the log up to the next groove. But then, by some horrible twist of fate, you felt the wet log slip under your hands, your arms shaking to keep to log up and away from your body and imminent death. Then, your hands completely lost contact with the wood and you shut your eyes with a scream, preparing for the blow.

It never came.

When you opened your eyes, you saw an expertly crafted titanium hand holding the log inches away from your face, preventing it from crushing your skull to dust. Wide-eyed and breathless you looked up into the two steely blue eyes that had avoided looking at you all week. Without flinching, he lifted up the log with one arm and settled it in the highest groove. You found yourself still staring, breathing heavily as you tried to shake off the thought of your breath with death.

"You should be more careful," he grunted before he disconnected his eyes with yours. You nodded slowly as you realized this was the first time you had heard him speak. You kind of liked the sound of his voice. It reminded you of bitter whiskey that would burn your throat, but always prompted you to take another sip.

"T-thank you," you breathed softly. He smelled of the hay he had ferried across the shed all day, of motor oil and Old Spice shampoo. It was an odd intoxicating smell which contrasted his dark appearance, much like bright his eyes did. He didn't reply but simply gave you a curt nod.

"Look out next time. This is dangerous work," he added before turning around to head back towards the shed and continue his work, Staples following at his heels. Traitor.

"Are you? Dangerous I mean?" The question had rolled off your lips before you had given it a second thought and you regretted it instantly. But the thought of the mere number of people supposedly killed by the man standing in front of you, is one you scrutinized. Barnes froze and you could see his muscles tense up, his shoulders gone rigid.

"Yes," he said in a low husky voice that sent shivers down your spine and other places you definitely shouldn't be feeling them.

"You don't seem that dangerous. Staples likes you," you retorted.

"Dogs are stupid, they don't know any better," he grunted harshly, as he turned around to face you with clenched fists and dark angry eyes. You took a step back, somewhat shocked by the harshness in his voice and the look in his eyes. He seemed to sense your apprehension as you watch him warily and appeared sorry for the tone of his voice.

"What kind of name if Staples anyways?"

The question surprised you as you saw the look in his eyes soften somewhat. The corner of your mouth lifted up in something that could resemble a lopsided smirk. His attempt to lighten the mood or appear less frightening amused you and only strengthened your conviction that he wasn't all that bad.

"We named him after the most important man in my mother's life—" you said dramatically. The sergeant's eyebrows furrowed in response as he was probably wondering whether your father was secretly called Staples.

"A man dearest to my mother's heart," you continued, "—platinum-selling artist Chris Stapleton."

He chuckled. A deep hearty chuckle which made his nose crinkle up slightly as he shook his head. You snorted and rolled your lips together as you often did after having a good laugh. Laugh lines appeared at the corners of his eyes and made you think of the picture in your father's study. Perhaps there was still some of him left. You both fell silent for a moment and seemed unable to continue the hearty conversation you had somehow ended up in, unsure of how to function in this new situation.

"Well sergeant- I better get back to it or these roofs will never be finished in time," you said awkwardly. He bowed his head slightly in recognition before you turned on your heels and made your way back to the cabin to start climbing back up to the roof.

"Call me Bucky," you heard him say before he stalked off to the hayshed to finish his work.

When you made your way back to the cabins the next day, you found Bucky hauling logs from the forest and piling them up in front of the cabin you had been working on. He didn't look at you as a small smile tugged at your lips and you observed him hauling the logs as if they weighed no more than a box of matches.

He had simply disregarded your continuous statements of self-sufficiency to your father and had decided to help you out. As you spent your day laying the timber on the roof, Bucky spent his lifting and hauling things for you without having to communicate. He simply knew when and where he was needed and worked in the brooding silence you were quickly getting used to.

The day after, Bucky was waiting for you again, sitting on a log as he scratched Staples behind his ears.