DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein. Also, I don't own American Ninja Warrior, or any of the 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' books or movies (aside from the fact that I have a copy of all the Riordanverse books except 'The Dark Maze' and both DVDs), or the play.
WORD COUNT: 1629
"You know, I was under the impression that, of the two of you, you were the one with a shred of self-preservation instinct. I mean, really, you were there when Nat and Pepper gave Steve the whole 'Parachutes Are Not For Wimps' Speech. You took over the 'Parachutes Are Not For Wimps' Speech! So, really, I'd honestly like to hear an explanation for this!"
Darcy gestured emphatically at the knee-to-toe cast currently encasing Bucky's left leg.
Bucky groaned, looking extremely miserable in his infirmary bed. "I jumped off a roof and misjudged the strength of a flagpole I was going to use to slow my fall. Damn thing snapped clean off, and I broke my leg landing on the sidewalk. You happy?"
"Hardly. But I'm going to enjoy the irony of Steve giving you a safety lecture, so ask me again once he's finished."
Darcy really was in somewhat better spirits after Steve's lecture was over, even if Bucky argued with him every step of the way, calling him a hypocrite, and the pair of century-old super-soldiers temporarily reverted into a pair of squabbling kids (one poor medical intern walked into a doorframe staring at them as he passed by).
Bucky's spirits, on the other hand, were brought down even lower when the doctor sentenced him to a full week of bed rest. He was only allowed to leave his bed for bathroom breaks, and even then, there had to be some level of supervision (Bucky drew the line at anyone actually being in the bathroom with him). For someone as active and paranoid as him, seven days straight of being stuck in bed were going to be seven days in hell.
Darcy, who was assigned to supervise him and make sure he actually obey the doctor's orders, was inclined to agree.
Day One wasn't so bad. Darcy brought her laptop in with her and got Bucky caught up on all the TV shows they'd been following together. Well, most of them. There was no way she was going to torture a bedridden Winter Soldier with American Ninja Warrior. It wasn't that he disliked the show, not at all! It was the fact that he couldn't drag her down to the gym and show her how he would have tackled the course that would have driven him insane.
She also showed him the first 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' film adaptation, about which he had some pretty strong opinions that mirrored hers pretty well. ("Wait, did they write out Clarisse?" "Why are the pearls suddenly Persephone's thing?" "Didn't the writers know the Hydra doesn't show up until Book Two? What happened to Echidna?" "I thought the author went out of his way to not make Hades evil!"). She didn't even bother showing him the second film. ("Seriously, the first film has no cliffhanger but gets a sequel, yet the sequel ends on a cliffhanger and no third movie will ever be made. Which is probably a good thing, if the movies are just going to diverge even more from the source material.")
Mostly, he slept, thanks to the painkillers the doctors had prescribed him.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner in bed was also a bonus. Darcy was an excellent cook.
Day Two also featured a lot of sleeping, then Darcy pulled up a full video of the Percy Jackson stage musical. ("A much more faithful adaptation of 'The Lightning Thief', plus singing!")
Multiple card games were played, of every variety – Solitaire, Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Poker, Gin, War, and a ridiculously one-sided card fight that involved Darcy ducking behind other pieces of furniture while Bucky winged cards at her head after he caught her cheating.
Yes, that's right, it was one-sided in favour of the guy stuck on his ass in bed with a broken leg.
Day Three was a Friday, and Friday was Poker Night. Tony made the mistake of gloating about how having one less assassin at the table would give him a better chance at winning. So Natasha and Clint conspired to have Poker Night moved to Bucky's room in his and Steve's apartment for that week.
Tony found himself waiting in the common area for an hour straight before he finally gave up and asked J.A.R.V.I.S. where the hell everyone was. The look on his face when he walked into Bucky's bedroom to find all the Avengers seated in chairs around the bed (which was covered by a piece of cardboard as a makeshift poker table) was hilarious. Everyone – except, of course, for the three assassins with their perfect poker faces – burst out laughing. Tony pouted for a bit, then grabbed a kitchen stool and joined the game.
Similarly to Day Three, Day Four – Saturday – had its own weekly event, namely Ladies' Night. The plan was for Steve to take over 'babysitting' while Darcy went out, but apparently Doctor Fucking Doom had his own plans.
Steve had to bail (and so did Natasha, for that matter), and while Ladies' Night otherwise went on as scheduled, Bucky got stuck with Tony's intern, some teenager named Parker, keeping an eye on him. To his credit, Parker was quiet and more concerned with finishing his homework, although he also seemed to be more than a bit terrified of the irritated assassin.
Eventually, Bucky got bored and started tossing around a little red bouncy ball. Parker didn't particularly enjoy the distracting noise it caused, but Bucky kept doing it, if only to see how long it would take the kid – if ever – to ask him to quit it.
The next time the ball got within arm's reach of Parker, the intern snatched it out of the air without even looking and went back to his physics homework without uttering a single word.
He was just an intern, right?
By Day Five, Bucky Barnes was officially stir-crazy. He had read what felt like every damn book in the Tower, had caught up on every show he cared to watch, and frankly, he was just tired of watching movies. He hadn't gone down to the gym since before his last mission, and now he had five days' worth of restless energy built up and ready to explode.
Darcy wasn't doing too well, either, for multiple reasons. The main one being that she was bearing the brunt of Bucky's frustration, which in turn frustrated her. Plus, all the time she spent watching Bucky was time she wasn't spending watching Jane. By the end of Day Three, she'd been fielding calls from the temporary lab assistant subbing for her, who was stressed to the point of tears over how Jane was refusing to eat because she was too busy doing Science! Darcy had needed to calm the poor guy down before coaching through the delicate art that was Jane-wrangling.
All that frustration came to a head on Day Six. Bucky was back at it with the rubber bouncy ball, only this time he threw it so hard, it left a crack in the wall. But it wasn't even the damage he was doing to his own apartment that set Darcy off, because she was took busy trying to read, decipher, and transcribe some of Jane's notes to look up. But after a full half-hour of being distracted by the constant thunks and smacks, she finally huffed, stood up, and marched over to him.
What followed was a shouting match that could be heard even through the soundproofed walls of the apartment. When Steve and Natasha finally intervened, Darcy was in tears, and Bucky was fighting them back himself.
The pair was immediately separated. Natasha met little resistance from Darcy as she herded the younger woman out of the apartment, texting Wanda and arranging an emergency retail therapy session (Pepper and Maria were otherwise occupied). Meanwhile, Steve just sat down and waited until Bucky calmed down enough to start taking about it.
As they were nearing the register at Store Number Three, Natasha's cell phone pinged with a text message from Bucky:
Put it on my card. I'll apologize to her in person whenever she feels ready to talk to me again.
On Day Seven, there were more tears. But they were the good kind, the kind that come from lots apologies and explanations and – most importantly – forgiveness. The couple fell asleep just holding each other, feeling more comfortable with each other since the whole mess started.
The week of bed rest was finally up, although Bucky still had to hobble around on crutches. Any residual frustration was channelled far more productively, however, as he got to partially resume his responsibilities of training the new recruits, if only from the sidelines. Anyone who claimed that the un-brainwashed former Winter Soldier was no longer terrifying was dead wrong, because he was still able to make one overconfident rookie cry despite the fact that he was still visibly injured.
He didn't see Darcy for a whole day, but that was due entirely to the fact that she was busy catching up on all her missed duties over the past week (her poor temporary replacement was probably going to need therapy after that week).
On his second day of freedom, Bucky arranged for a nice picnic lunch, just for the two of them, in a quiet spot on the grounds of the Avengers Compound. Both enjoyed the fresh air and the food, and both were smiling as Darcy helped him to his feet and insisted on carrying everything back inside.
Bucky's complaints about the 'Percy Jackson' films are just a few of my own – I'm particularly annoyed about Hades' portrayal. Nothing against the actor's performance, but in the books, author Rick Riordan emphasises how Hades isn't evil, he just got the short end of the stick and is bitter about it. The movie crumpled that up and cheaply portrays him as a power-hungry death god who wants to overthrow his brothers if given the opportunity. Riordan relies on the original texts and plays that gave us our understanding of Greek mythology, without necessarily following along with the tropes commonly featured in modern adaptations, but the film seemed to deliberately go in the 'Hades = Greek Satan' direction in spite of that. But the stage musical is pretty good, and more faithful to the books ( (slash)watch?v=1bTWWgPbSsw).
As you can see, I have Strong Feelings about this topic. I literally wrote a college paper on how 'Troy' strips all the godly elements out of the Epic Cycle (it's not just based on 'The Iliad', no matter what the back of the DVD says). It honestly was one of the easiest papers for me to write, simply because of my interest in the subject matter.
Coming Up Next: 'Drugged'. I had fun writing this one!