Chapter Twenty-One
She stays with them for the rest of the day and Bucky tries to be normal, tries to move on, but he can't. He's dragged himself down into something like fear, something like depression, and he stays there and watches Natalia and Stevie smile from behind dead eyes.
She tells him she loves him that day and he almost doesn't hear.
"What?" He says, turning over to her, clawing back up to the real world from the deep, dark depths of his deep, dark memories. "What… Did you say?" Natalia looks suddenly uncomfortable.
"I told you I love you," she admits. She's holding Stevie, who's gone back down for another nap, drowsy from the medication, and rocking him. He can't seem to respond for a while, although she looks anxious to hear him reply.
He wants to be able to give her the answer she deserves, and the answer he wants to give. He wants to stand up and wrap her up in two arms and sing that he loves her too. He wants to buy her things and make her cakes and set off fireworks that spell out her name like in cheesy movies. He wants to kiss her so well she'll never ever want to leave him and throw her parties and drag her back with him to a big beautiful bed in a big beautiful house and make her happy. He wants to scream and announce to the world that Natalia Romanova just said she loves him.
Instead, he stares at her blankly for another solid minute and chokes out an, "oh."
"Oh?" Natalia says. "That's all you've got to say to that?"
"I, uh," Bucky adds. "I… Uh…" He's already sort of blown his chance to say, 'I love you, too', he thinks.
The color drains from her face and she looks down at Stevie, mopping up his running nose with a tissue.
"Forget I said anything," she says. "That was stupid of me."
He wishes words and emotions worked for him.
"No, I, uh, that's not what I meant to say, uh," Bucky stammers.
"Then what did you mean to say?" Natalia asks. He's not sure who's more desperate to hear him speak a solid sentence, her or him.
"I love you, too, you know," he finally says. "That's what I meant to say. I love you, too."
"Okay," Natalia says and she offers him a small smile. "I'm glad," she adds. "That's good." A few more quiet minutes pass.
"So, I love you," Bucky says and looks at her. "And, uh, you love me?"
"Yes," Natalia says.
"So uhm," Bucky says. "Would you like to, um, date? I mean, exclusively?" Natalia looks up at him and her face falls a little and he can see her searching for words, but her hesitation in answer enough. She wets her lips anxiously and the silence settles over Bucky's heart like it wants to break him. He thinks he holds his breath through the entire pause.
Finally, she responds with a choked "no," and looks back down at Stevie.
Bucky doesn't think he can take much more emotional exhaustion today and this is really a kicker.
"Okay," he responds in an equally choked voice and he has trouble taking air in and pushing it back out all of a sudden.
Geez, what's wrong with me? He berates himself in his head. That's how I try to ask a girl out? Hi, I'm Bucky Barnes and for the past seven years of my life, I've killed everybody. Would you like to date me?
"I owe you an explanation," Natalia whispers after a while. She's still avoiding his eyes.
"You don't have to," Bucky replies stiffly. "It's, uh, not a big deal, um. You don't owe me anything."
"My ex-husband's name was Alexei," she begins to tell him and awkwardly, he shuts up and listens. "He was a boy I knew from school and we got married when I was twenty one and he was twenty."
"Was he a good guy?" Bucky asks quietly. He thinks what she's telling him now must be important. She always says the most important things in the most casual of tones. That's something he's noticed about her. He thinks she does it because it helps to hide the pain.
"He was alright," Natalia says. She glances over at Bucky. "Nothing special."
"Nothing special?" Bucky says. He's a bit surprised. He had expected her to say she had been in love. She sighs.
"I loved lots of things more than I loved my husband," she says. "Dancing. Golfing. Key lime pie."
"You golf?" Bucky says again and she shakes her head.
"No," she says. "But that's the point, get it? I don't even golf. But I'd rank golfing higher than Alexei."
"Oh, I see," Bucky says. "Then why did you marry him?"
"We had a two things in common," Natalia says. "We were both in love with the idea of marriage and family, instead of each other, and we were both terribly alone in the world. So we got together." Bucky looks at her, waiting for her to continue. She sighs and brushes through Stevie's fine hair with her thumb. "It was a disaster, of course. And I don't want to repeat it. I want to be absolutely certain I love you," she says.
"Do you have doubts?" Bucky asks and she almost smiles. He can see it in the twitch of her mouth.
"Don't take it the wrong way," she says. "Because it's not about you. I just want to mean the words I say. I want to make this work. And, well," she looks down and lets out a breath. "To be honest, I'm not all that certain I would know what love was when I saw it. I haven't had a lot of it, you know."
"I know," Bucky says. "I understand."
"But I've thought long and hard about it," Natalia continues. She meets his eyes when she says this and he listens carefully. "I think I like you more than the idea of you, like I had with Alexei. If we could never have a family and you and me could never be normal and 'picket fence' or even happy, I don't think I'd care because I'd have you. I like being with you. And just you. You make me feel happy. And I like kissing you and putting my arms around you. I want to keep kissing you and putting my arms around you and being with you for as long as I can."
"That sounds like love to me," Bucky says.
"That's what I thought," Natalia agrees. "You make me overwhelmingly happy." Bucky looks at her and can't help but smile a little because of the sweet bluntness of her words and the over-seriousness of her expression. And the fact that she loves him. The fact that he, as broken and crumbling as he is, is able to make her happy.
"You make me happy, too," he admits and she finally cracks a bit of a smile, too. They're so close on the couch they're practically sitting on top of each other, thighs and shoulders rubbing together, noses just inches apart as they look at each other.
"Do you think we can make this work?" Natalia asks.
"What exactly do you mean by this?" Bucky replies.
"I mean, us?" She says. "Do you think we could be together successfully for a long time?" Bucky smiles again, looking down. Her phrasing makes him laugh, the way she discusses these serious things with such a straight face. She means business. It makes him feel like loving her.
"I think we could," he says.
She nods a little thoughtfully. Then, "you're my best friend, you know."
He snuggles up against her even closer and puts his head onto her shoulder and they both lay back onto the couch.
"You're my best friend, too," he says.