Chapter 4: Trust me

Summary: Everything's going to be fine... right?

With each day that passed, Bucky moved a couple of steps further down the road to recovery. There was the odd step back again, but for the most part he was doing well.

The process of unblocking his memories was working out as Jemma had hoped, with many of his early memories having returned and not too many so far from his Winter Soldier missions. He still had some mood swings, but no more delusions, and he hadn't tried to hurt anyone in over a week now.

Jemma was steadily reducing the hormone levels in his daily injections as his own endocrine system resumed its normal functions, and she was planning to talk to Coulson tomorrow about moving Bucky out of the cell and into some staff quarters.

She had supplied whatever she could get her hands on to keep Bucky and Steve entertained, but she was getting the impression they were both pretty over being cooped up in that small space. They passed the time reading, watching movies, playing cards, even working out and sparring, as much as the dimensions of the room allowed.

Bucky's recovery was at a point where Steve now felt comfortable leaving him on his own for a few hours at a time. Jemma didn't have the first clue where he went when he did, but on one occasion he returned with Agent Romanov and Sam Wilson, the man who had helped take down Project Insight.

"Bucky, please meet the friends of mine you tried to murder," Fitz said conversationally as they overheard the stilted introductions through the security feed from the cell. He and Jemma were sitting at the counter in the lab replacing a heat sink on a transducer. The Hub was in a much better state than it had been after the Hydra attack, but there were still a few systems not yet operating at full capacity.

"Bit awkward," Jemma agreed. She reached past him to mute the audio and give Bucky and his guests some privacy. "He's nothing like that anymore, though." She switched her hyperspanner on and directed it at one of the welds on the old heat sink. "His progress has been amazing. I'm fairly certain that at this point, even if something triggered his programming, it's degraded beyond the point of being able to control him anyway."

"But you don't know for sure, do you?" said Fitz, stopping what he was doing to look at her with his patented Fitz Is Concerned About Simmons face. "Just don't let your guard down, alright?"

The hyperspanner's laser beam stuttered. She turned it off, tapped it against her palm and turned it back on again. Now probably wasn't the time to mention that she'd been into the cell without the Captain present several times in the last few days.

"Okay," she said easily, giving the spanner another go.

She mustn't have sounded convincing enough because Fitz was still looking at her. "Promise?"

While Fitz had been even more excited about the cybernetic limb than she was, Bucky had been in a somewhat less receptive mood the day she'd taken Fitz in to meet him. As a result the two of them didn't get on as well as she might have hoped.

"Promise!" she insisted, jostling him playfully with her elbow until she got a little smile out of him. She dropped the faulty tool she was holding onto the counter. "This spanner's busted. I'm going to put the kettle on," she said, getting up. "Cup of tea?"

Now that his visitors had left, Bucky was lying face down on the bed, generally trying to ignore the weird feeling that had come from sitting down and attempting to make idle conversation with people for whom he still had an active kill order. The decaying programming presented as little more than a faint buzzing in the back of his mind so it was easy enough to ignore, it was just... weird.

The glass door to the cell slid open to admit Steve, who had been showing their visitors out. "Have you seen the news?" Steve asked, brow furrowed.

Bucky glanced at the untouched tablet on the table and shook his head. He pushed himself up off the bed and swiped a bottle of water off the table, unscrewing the cap and taking a drink as he waited for Steve to share whatever he had to say.

"There's been an earthquake in California," Steve said, coming to a halt in front of Bucky. He crossed his arms over a chest that was deflated by the worried hunch of his shoulders. "Dozens of people trapped, maybe hundreds. They could use my help, but..." he fixed his troubled eyes on Bucky, "just say the word and I'll stay."

Bucky calmly screwed the cap back on the bottle. "You kidding? Of course you should go, I'll be fine."

"You sure? I can be back within a few hours if you need me—"

"Yeah, yeah, calm down, hotshot, you're not that indispensible," Bucky said, and some of the worry lines on Steve's face eased into a small smile.

He pulled Bucky in for a quick, firm hug. "I'll be back in a few days."

"Go save some lives," Bucky said, waving him out the door. "I'll look after this place while you're gone."

The door slid closed behind Steve and the locking mechanism engaged with a muted clunk.

Bucky took a deep breath and put the water bottle back down on the table so he couldn't crush it in hands that wanted to ball into fists.

He'd be fine. It was just a few days. Sure, it would be boring as hell, but his nightmares were nothing like they used to be and he no longer needed someone around with Steve's strength to make sure he didn't hurt anyone. Hopefully.

He forced himself to take another slow, deep breath. Everything was going to be fine.

"Macaroni cheese," Jemma announced as she came through the door carrying a tray with two bowls on it. She'd taken over Steve's food delivering duties while he was away. Two bowls meant she was joining him for lunch, just like she had for dinner last night and breakfast that morning.

"It's the lunch lady," Bucky commented, countering his smart-assery by pulling a chair out at the table and waiting for her to sit before taking a seat himself.

She narrowed her eyes at him, but it was good natured. "I have two PhDs, I'll have you know."

"You know, that doesn't surprise me one bit," Bucky replied as they started in on their pasta, knees practically touching under the tiny table.

They ate in relative silence for a bit, and it was only when Jemma pulled the black elastic hairband out of her hair and held it out to him that he realised he'd probably just tucked his hair behind his ear three times in as many minutes. There was one piece in particular that kept falling in front of his face.

"Would you like a hair band?" she asked.

He hesitated, not that he could say why. Maybe because he didn't have a memory of ever using one before. Maybe because it felt strangely intimate to be given something she was just wearing, even if it was only in her hair.

"It's fine, I have plenty more back in the lab," she said, misinterpreting his hesitation.

"Thanks," he said, taking the hairband and pulling his hair back into a rough ponytail. The movement felt familiar enough, so maybe he had done it before. "I guess it's still going to be a while before I can get to a hairdresser."

Apparently Agent Coulson had immediately shot down any suggestion of Bucky moving out of the cell and into regular quarters before Steve returned. Bucky couldn't say he blamed the man.

"I could cut it for you," Jemma offered, gently shaking her own hair out around her shoulders.

She often wore her hair out, but it was always smooth and straight or in perfectly arranged waves. The slightly tousled look she sported now stoked his desire more than anything else had in he didn't know how long. Suddenly his brain was offering up images of his hand sliding through her tresses in the moments before he kissed her, of how her hair would look spread out beneath him on a pillow, or when she woke up after spending the night beside him.

He covered up his rush of hormones by eyeing her sceptically instead. "And I should trust you why?"

"Because I'm a woman of many skills," she informed him between mouthfuls, "and one of those skills is cutting hair. I do Fitz's all the time."

"Fitz?" said Bucky. "That boyfriend of yours who keeps giving me death stares?"

"Oh, he's not my boyfriend," she assured him. "He's just protective." And it was probably just his imagination that made it seem like she said it a bit too quickly, the way girls did when they wanted you to know they were available.

She left with their dirty dishes once they were finished lunch and returned twenty minutes later with scissors, a comb, a couple of towels and a few other items.

"I'll wash it for you first," she said, dragging one of the chairs over to the sink on the other side of the room.

"What are you trying to say?" Bucky asked in mock offence, strolling after her.

"I'm saying that hair is easier to cut when it's wet," she said matter-of-factly. Then she added, a glint in her eye, "And that you're a filthy hobo." She urged him towards the chair with a gentle tug on his arm. "Now sit."

He smirked, but he did as he was told, sitting in the chair that had been positioned so his back was to the basin. He tugged her hairband out of his hair and put it around his wrist for safekeeping. There was something comforting about the gentle pressure of the elastic snug against his skin.

"Head back," she instructed, placing a rolled up towel between the edge of the sink and the base of his skull as he tipped his head back. "That's probably not the most comfortable position, sorry." She gave him an apologetic smile as she set out the rest of her equipment.

The mild discomfort of holding an awkward position was of little consequence to him. As a sniper he'd had to stay perfectly still for hours on end, so this was nothing in comparison. The challenging part was sitting there with his throat exposed, soft underbelly unprotected.

He had no fear of Jemma and her dainty pair of scissors, it was something more instinctive and less specific buzzing through his veins. Perhaps it was the remnants of some sort of self-preservation protocol, but before he was an assassin he was still a soldier, so maybe it was just a combination of instinct and training.

He laced his fingers over his stomach like he didn't have a care in the world and looked up into the face of the person who was responsible for pretty much everything good in his life right now.

"So how did a girl like you learn to cut hair?" he asked, because it gave him something else to focus on, and an excuse to watch her while she worked.

"My sister is a hair dresser." Bucky heard her turn on the faucet and a few moments later he felt the warm glide of water over his scalp. "I memorised her study guide one afternoon while I was helping her prepare for her exams. There's a lot of chemistry in hairdressing, you'd be surprised."

Once his hair was wet, the sound of running water stopped and he heard the plastic click of the lid of the shampoo bottle. Bucky's eyes slid closed as she began to massage the shampoo into his hair. The light scrape of her fingernails over his scalp felt so good a soft 'mmph' escaped him before he could catch it.

"Feels good, doesn't it?"

Bucky opened his eyes to see her smiling a gentle, enigmatic smile at him as she worked the weightless mass of lather through his hair.

He closed his eyes again and suppressed a goofy grin. "The fifty-cent cuts from the barber on the corner had nothing on this."

The scalp massage was so heavenly that it took him a minute or two before he noticed the way she was leaning lightly against him. Her stomach, hip and thigh pressed softly against his shoulder and arm as she worked.

He kept his eyes closed and focussed on how good it felt to have another human being so close, and a pretty, girly one at that. He drank in the heady, comforting warmth that seeped into him from every point of contact.

He could smell her perfume from here, something sweet and fruity, and it felt like all his senses were overflowing with Jemma. She was so close he could slide a hand up her thigh, maybe cup her ass. Not that he would. If his newly returned memories were serving him correctly, he was usually a lot smoother than that, and in any case, he had no plans to put the moves on her.

Just because she returned his harmless flirting didn't mean she was interested in anything more. A girl that smart and beautiful and kind must be turning down men left and right, she didn't need to resort to the likes of him, a brainwashed WWII vet with more blood on his hands than could ever be washed away. She was all he had until Steve got back, he couldn't risk making things weird between them. The best plan was to just enjoy this while it lasted.

She rinsed his hair and lathered it up a couple more times, taking her time on the last round to give him a serious head massage. She pushed her fingertips through his hair and over his scalp with a pressure that had him biting the inside of his lip to keep from moaning in pleasure.

She rinsed his hair a final time, towelled it dry and instructed him turn his chair around so he was facing the mirror.

"Just a trim, or shall we chop it all off?" she asked as she combed it out.

"I don't know, what do you think?" he asked.

"Oh, don't ask me, I have ulterior motives," she said, a sly grin pulling at one side of her mouth. "I actually find long hair on a man very attractive."

"Long it is, then," he said, letting her see his cocky smile in the mirror.

She broke his gaze and, though she was still smiling, he swore she was blushing just a little as she set to work. Before long he fell into the rhythm of it, the way she pulled the comb through his hair almost to the ends, followed by the staccato snip-snip of the scissors.

She was about halfway through and he was just thinking about how there were worse ways to spend an afternoon, when she said, "What do you think you'll do once you've finished your delta-ray treatment?"

Bucky caught sight of his own expression darkening in the mirror. "I don't know."

He'd been contemplating this himself and kept coming up empty-handed. His place had always been at Steve's side, but Captain America could hardly have an ex-Nazi assassin as his right-hand man.

In an attempt not to be a complete tool about it, he tried to force out a few more words. "I don't know... where I fit in the world anymore."

Jemma was beginning to look like she regretted asking the question. She stayed quiet and he was glad; he didn't need her false optimism.

They finished the haircut in silence.

AN: Thank you, as always, for reading :)