A/N #1: Big fat trigger warning for mentions of rape in the first section of this chapter. Nothing explicit but it's major enough that I actually remembered to add a trigger warning for once in my life.
Groggily, Summer woke up to bright rays of the sun assaulting her eyes through their lids, and she groaned and buried her face into her pillow. She planned on sleeping for as long as possible, regardless of how adamant the sun was on waking her, but she froze and abandoned that plan when she felt a hand slide across her back.
Opening her eyes, she saw not typical neutral hotel room walls that she had fallen asleep in, but the familiar walls of her bedroom back home in Fall's Church. The sheets that she was burrowed in were her own, and as she slowly turned to see whose hand was upon her, she held her breath, unable to stop the grip of fear from overtaking her. Luckily, she still slept with her gun under the pillow.
But, as it turned out, when she saw who was sitting on the side of the bed, her fear dissipated and a small smile grew on her face. "Bucky. You scared the crap out of me."
He was dressed exactly as he had been on their date, and he gave her a half-smile as she shifted to her back. That was when she realized that she was also dressed the same way, boots and all, and with confusion, she looked from herself to the man sitting beside her. "What's going o-"
A single metal finger to her lips quieted her, and the chill of it sent a shiver down her spine as he shifted, leaning forward and placing himself over her. "Quiet. Trust me."
She furrowed her brows and felt clear and distinct unease unfurl from within, but then his finger left her lips and he kissed her with a fury that made her mind go blank.
Still, it didn't feel right. His kiss wasn't right, the words were not his own, and the way that his hands grabbed and pulled carelessly at her dress was completely off. Everything within her told her to be afraid of him, but this was Bucky; she had only feared him when she first met him. He had never hurt her, not on purpose, and this strange, sloppy aggression was not something she had ever experienced at his hand.
"Bucky," she said when his lips left hers to attack her neck while he yanked at the skirt of her dress, "wait, stop - please, I don't -"
He continued on anyway, and when she tried to push him off enough to get a few inches between them, he grabbed her wrists and pinned them next to her head. Another prickle of fear shot through her, then magnified when she looked up and saw the slightly crazed look in Bucky's eye. She noticed then that he didn't smell right, either. He smelled like cheap beer and cigarettes, which made no sense, because she was fairly sure that he was physically unable to get drunk, and he didn't smoke.
Somewhere in her head, she knew exactly what was happening, because she had relived this moment hundreds of times before, just not quite like this.
"I told you, be quiet. Trust me for once."
She struggled against his hold, to no avail, as she began to panic. "Bucky, please, you're scaring me -"
His metal hand closed over her mouth, muffling her voice and silencing her as he hummed shhh over and over while her eyes widened and began to fill with tears. His eyelids drooped slightly and his voice began to slur as he said, "You know you want it. You've made us both wait long enough."
His hand stayed over her mouth, and nothing she did to try to fight him off worked. She was helpless and stuck where she was, and the tears that fell from her eyes and the muffled cries of pain and fear did nothing to stop the man above her from doing what he pleased. She was trapped, a useless witness to her own assault at the hands of someone she had trusted. It felt like it went on forever, each second stretching into its own unique, torturous eternity, marked by blood and broken skin and the drunken grunts of a man she would forever hate following that day.
In his fervor, his metal hand unintentionally slipped an inch upwards and covered her nose in addition to her mouth. Fresh panic burst forth within her, and her cries became barely-heard screams as she slowly suffocated.
Her vision blurred, the ceiling fading from view, and though she felt herself losing consciousness, she never stopped fighting. She never stopped screaming, struggling, and clinging to the life she held that would never be the same once this was over.
With a mix of a scream and a gasp, Summer shot up in bed, sweat-soaked and hysterical until reality sunk in enough to convince her that it was over, the nightmare was over, and she was safe in her New York City hotel room.
It was well into the morning, almost noon already, and she looked down at her shaking hands as she breathed raggedly before lowering her head into them and trying to calm herself down. It had been a long time since she'd had that particular nightmare, and the fact that Bucky had played the part of David's father was a stark example of how particularly cruel and twisted her mind could be to her own self.
Breathing steadily in and out, consciously doing so, she winced at a tear that rolled down her cheek. She'd cried enough tears over that particular night, relived it enough for several lifetimes since it had happened over five years ago, and she did not want to waste anymore tears or thoughts over it. But, whenever she thought she had overcome it completely and was done letting it haunt her, something like this would happen, and she would be reminded that traumatic events were not something one simply "got over", perhaps ever.
One day, she was sure that she would have a whopper of all her nightmares, meshing that one and her other most common one, the night that HYDRA had nearly killed her and her son, just to make it as horrifying as possible.
But, despite the lingering horror and pain of the memory of struggling to breathe under a hand that had most certainly not been metal in real life, she calmed eventually and drew a deep breath as she lifted her head and looked around the room. David was still asleep, the room was bathed in morning light, and the street outside was as noisy as one would expect in NYC. She remembered why she was here, who she was here for, and the date that she'd had last night, and it sickened her that Bucky would ever be conjured up in a dream in such a way. Whatever his faults, whatever his past, he had no place in her nightmares, none at all.
Then she started to feel anger eclipse the horror. She had given Mark enough power over her for long enough, wasting time and energy hating him and letting what he did haunt her mind and push her straight into a breakdown when she had found out that she was pregnant from that night. He didn't get to have the slightest influence anymore, not here, not now.
With a determined sigh, she got up out of bed and walked to the bathroom. Her feet were still sore after the previous night, but she didn't notice as she made a beeline for the sink and proceeded to splash her face with water and metaphorically wash away the utter stupidity of the dream.
She grabbed a hand towel to wipe her face, then wondered why in the world her mind would even go there in the first place. The nightmare itself was one thing, but Mark was always Mark. Nobody else ever stepped in to fill the role of drunk loser boyfriend who decided to take advantage of his girlfriend at the worst possible time. And if an exception to that rule was to be made, why couldn't it have been someone random like an actor she hated, like Matt Damon, whom she irrationally despised for no reason? Why did it have to be Bucky, of all the men in the world?
Because your brain sucks, she thought as she looked at her reflection, unimpressed with what she saw. She was oddly pale and she could all but see the scenes replay behind her blue eyes, and it was just disheartening to think that these dreams may never leave entirely. Maybe they'd just evolve and find new ways of disturbing her and starting her days horribly, like this day, Exhibit A.
Suddenly feeling exhausted all over again, she trudged back to bed and climbed in, grabbing her phone off the nightstand as she did. Sitting with her back to the headboard, she opened her phone and found two unread messages.
The first was from Paul. Don't tell me you've never been hearin' of Sirius Black! He's a murrrrrrdererrrrrr"
She rolled her eyes but grinned anyway. While it was normal for him to text her random Harry Potter quotes, he'd been sending ones about murderers and Voldemort since her confession in California that she was, in fact, somewhat involved with someone, and that she couldn't tell him who it was or anything about him. Naturally, he thought she was in love with Patrick Bateman or a Potterverse equivalent of him.
It's too early for Stan Shunpike. And my week in New York is going fine, thanks for asking. After sending that reply, she moved on to the next message, which was from her vacation's funder.
Looks like it's gonna rain all day, so come on over whenever you like and we can make Bucky catch up on some movies or something. I didn't tell you this, but he's waiting very impatiently for you guys to wake up.
She smiled a little, then typed a quick reply that told Steve that David wasn't yet awake but she'd get over there hopefully within an hour or two. Then her phone buzzed with a new message from Paul.
Well, I figured I wasn't allowed to ask because of all the secrecy. I have a brilliant new theory btw. I've put all the pieces together and come to the conclusion that ur mystery man is none other than Loki. Admit it. Totally makes sense.
She spit-laughed, then shook her head and sighed a little bit as she typed her answer. Wrong again. Not that I wouldn't be all over that if he wasn't a psychotic killer. Although isn't he dead now? Vague reports of the former Earth-invader's death had been circulating ever since a giant IUD-shaped alien ship thing had appeared out of nowhere in London and Thor had saved the day awhile back, and later on Thor had been reported as confirming Loki's death in battle on some other weird planet. In fact, it had caused quite the stir, because Thor had used the words "died with honor", and Earth's inhabitants seemed to think that such a thing was impossible since they viewed Thor's brother as the very incarnation of evil.
Her phone buzzed. Psh. He's probably in Area 51 in cahoots with all the Nazis. And you are disgusting btw. Why can't you just have a crush on one of the good guys? Captain America's hot. I'm secure enough in my masculinity to say so.
She facepalmed and suppressed the urge to scream. Every fiber within her wanted to come clean, agree that yes, Captain America was indeed yummy but his complicated best friend was yummier and that's who she was being secretive with, but she couldn't. For one, he would overreact and probably call the FBI for her protection and ruin everything, and secondly, she didn't know how she would even begin to explain it, or what label to use to describe exactly what Bucky was to her.
Captain America's fine. But he's blonde. You know how I feel about that. Same goes for Thor.
In the other double bed, David began to stir, and she knew he'd be up soon. She was actually a bit relieved by the rain today. Better to save the sightseeing for later and give David time to settle in for the week, as much as he could, and staying mostly indoors was ideal for that.
Yeah, the greasy haired psycho is so much better. My sister is a freak.
She grinned and texted back, One word: Stuttgart. The footage with the suit and the hair and the scarf. Ignore the eye-gauging or whatever. Just saying.
A moment later: One word: psychotherapy.
She chuckled, putting her phone down as David got up and dragged himself to her bed before crawling up in her lap and closing his eyes. She hugged him, thinking idly about her brother and his accusations of her having the weirdest taste in men, ranging from fictional characters to malevolent aliens, and yes, it was true, to an extent. But contrary to what he liked to say, she did not like "villains", and she would not actually touch Loki with a ten foot pole. Paul just wanted her to find some normal, stable guy somewhere to fall in love with who would give her the simpler, easier life he wanted for her.
Which is why she kept her secret a secret for now. If Paul knew who she had spent the previous night dining with and dancing with and kissing, he would think her insane and be unable to look past the words Winter Soldier long enough to see the truth. And the truth, blossoming forth in her mind with even more vigor following last night, was that she very much did have a crush on one of the "good guys", even if the man in question couldn't remember much of being one.
He was good. And no nightmare, whether his or hers, would ever convince her otherwise.
"So I take it last night went well."
Bucky gave a non-committal shrug, drinking his coffee and trying not to glance at the clock on the stove. "Would have been better if Natasha hadn't been tailing us."
Steve paused from across the table. "Look, I'm sorry about that. But it was for your protection, too. She told me there was some kind of prank with some punks and a gunshot, and that you handled it well."
He set down his cup and shook his head slightly, thinking back to that moment. He'd been on the cusp of a flashback, a bad one that might have left him half-catatonic for the night, but Summer had pulled him back from it before he could lose himself. "Because of her."
"I assume you don't mean Natasha."
Bucky gave him an unimpressed look, and Steve grinned.
"Give yourself some credit. That's actually pretty huge. Make sure you tell Dr. Connor tomorrow."
"I'd have to tell him about her then," Bucky pointed out. "I don't think I want to."
"He already knows about her. You've told him the story. Right?"
"Some of it."
Steve paused. "Oh. Well, then maybe now's the time to do it."
"No point. I don't want the lecture."
"I doubt you've done anything worth lecturing with her."
"If I told him I went out on a date, in public, he would flip his wig." That made Steve smile, which made Bucky narrow his eyes. "What?"
"Nothing. It's just that you're starting to sound more like yourself every day and you don't even realize it."
Bucky didn't let it show, but little things like this were enough to make his day go by a lot less painfully than they would otherwise. Every time Steve said something like that, or he recovered a memory from his early years, he would feel a little lighter and more hopeful than he had the moment before. It wouldn't last forever, but being able to believe for a little while that he really was recovering his old self, one step at a time, gave him motivation to keep going.
"She seems to like you a lot."
Bucky looked down at his drink, unable to think of anything to say to that. After last night, after several hours of watching her blush and smile and light up at his smallest, most innocent touches, he could no longer doubt it himself, but he was no closer to understanding why.
And the sounds that she had made when he kissed her had been new. Having her lying down beneath him was new too, and it had given him a lot to think about when he got home. A lot. Granted, it was one of the more pleasant things he'd lost sleep over, but the level of desire he'd experienced following just a few moments of kissing was more overwhelming than he'd bargained for.
"Bucky?"
His head snapped up, and he realized he'd been staring off blankly like he did when much worse thoughts were getting the better of him. "I'm fine."
"You sure?"
He almost laughed. "No."
"What's wrong?"
He took a breath, but before he could answer, there was a knock on the door, and if his entire demeanor changed and instantly brightened, it would probably account for the way Steve smiled at him as he got up and headed to the door. Bucky had the sudden and inexplicable urge to stick his foot out and trip him in retaliation, but he ignored it and compulsively ran a hand through his hair, then frowned a little when the loud, shiny metal of his arm caught his eye. He wanted nothing more than to throw a hoodie on over his black t-shirt and disguise his hand, but knowing that she would prefer him as he was, and the fact that her son hadn't recognized him until he saw the hand, convinced him to be uncomfortable for the day. At least part of it.
Then he heard the door open and her voice carry softly into the apartment, and he spent a moment thinking too much about if he should stay where he was or get up to greet her. He ended up just twisting around in his seat in time to see her come inside and meet his gaze, a small smile reaching her lips when she did, and he didn't notice it, but he gave her the smallest of smiles back.
Annoyance flickered across his face when he watched Steve politely take her coat from her, the same one from last night, and he decided that for the rest of the week, when she came over, he'd answer the door himself so he'd get to do that.
Regardless of the rough start to her day and the nearly two hours that it took to get out of the hotel room, Summer had all but forgotten about it all by the time she was sitting in Steve Roger's living room, on the couch with Bucky next to her and the Captain himself across from them, while David flitted back and forth between the two men, unsure of who to harass the most. The oddest part of it all was how normal it felt, despite the fact that she was a nobody who was still in shock, months later, that she personally knew either of these men.
Bucky stayed mostly silent, but he seemed comfortable enough next to her, occasionally looking at her and making her breath catch when he did. Steve was good at making polite conversation with her, asking her questions about her backstory that she wasn't sure he didn't already know, but either way, he was easy to talk to and it kept the situation from feeling awkward or forced.
The highlight of it all, she had to admit, was watching David hand first Bucky and then Steve a toy each, then go back and forth between playing with both of them. And unlike before, Bucky actually legitimately played with him this time, rather than just awkwardly hold the toy and stare at it until David moved on.
He caught her smiling at him a few times, and when she would look away, she could feel his eyes stay where they were. Eventually, Steve began to take notice of this.
"So," he said, cheerfully, "Bucky said you might be up for showing one of us how to make a decent homemade dinner?"
"Oh," she chuckled in mild surprise, "uh... yeah, I mean, if you wanted to take a chance on my cooking -"
"He says it's great," Steve replied, nodding at Bucky.
She glanced at the man in question, then turned to him more fully and said, "Well, all right, then. What did you like most that I made?"
He thought for a moment, then answered, "I liked your meatballs a lot."
"Yeah you did," she smiled, remembering that particular night. "You ate like fifteen of them. Or twenty, actually, I can't remember."
"Sounds great," Steve interjected. "If you tell me what you need for it I'll run to the store and get it."
"Uh... well, what do you have here?"
A few moments later, Steve was showing her around his kitchen and what food and spices and such things he had in stock, and she was surprised that he had as much as he did until she realized that she had no reason to think of him as a typical guy with no clue how to cook anything.
"All right, so, let me a make a list," she said, getting out her phone to type one out, then stopping when Steve scratched his head, then made another suggestion.
"Actually - how about you leave David here with me and you and Bucky go instead?"
She blinked, looking up from her phone and immediately launching into a refusal. "I - no, no, I can't keep asking you to watch him for me, really -"
"You haven't asked," he grinned. "I've offered." Then he glanced towards the living room, and she followed his gaze to Bucky, who was making extremely quiet wooshing sounds as he flew David's small Thor toy through the air for him. She filed it away in memories to recall if she ever wanted to smile like an idiot and melt a little. Or a lot. "The thing is," Steve continued in a more hushed tone, "I'm trying to get him out more, give him more... normalcy, I guess. And I don't want to be in the way the whole time you're here, either."
"You're not in the... oh," she trailed off, suddenly getting it. "Okay. I didn't bring much of David's things, though..."
"The store's two blocks away," Steve replied. "You won't be gone long. He'll be fine." Then he paused and asked in almost a whisper, "If anything happens while you're out, call me." He paused again and asked his next question in a tone that suggested he despised it. "Do you carry any weapons?"
Her eyes widened a bit but she replied, "I have mace and a taser in my purse. Couldn't bring my guns with me."
He nodded. "You won't need to use them. Just... pay attention to any signs that something's triggering him, and call me and try to bring him home right away if something does."
"You mean like... if he starts staring or speaking Russian or something? That's what he did before."
"Yeah, or if he seems like he suddenly doesn't recognize you anymore."
Her eyes widened a bit. "Does that happen a lot?"
He shook his head, "Only once so far. There were certain... keywords they used, ways that they programmed him. I told him one night that if he wanted, he could be an asset in the search for leftover HYDRA agents, and... it was a long night. Don't use the word 'asset' around him."
Luckily, that wasn't very high on her vocabulary. "Okay. Anything else I need to know?"
He shook his head, then replied, "Just that I'm really glad you came."
She fidgeted briefly, unsure of how to respond, ending up going with, "I really am gonna pay you back for all of this one day, I swear -"
He furrowed his brows while shaking his head, waving her off. "I wouldn't take your money if you tried to give it to me. Now go before Bucky accuses me of trying to steal you from him."
She smiled and turned, mostly expecting the suspicious side look she was getting from Bucky as she left the kitchen following her hushed conversation with Steve. Cheerfully, she walked up to where he was seated and asked, "Want to take a walk to the store?"
He looked at her, then at Steve who sat back down across from him, then back to her. "What?"
She smiled. "Walk. To a store. With me. Do you want to?"
He looked like he was about to ask why they were going instead of Steve, but then he quietly nodded and handed Thor back to David before getting up and heading to his room. He didn't look particularly happy about it, but she tried not to think much of it as she got her coat on and then waited on the couch.
When Bucky came back, in the jacket she hated with a passion with a black hat smashed over his head and his hand disguised, he came to a wordless halt and waited for her to lead the way while half-glaring at Steve. Steve only smiled cheerfully while Summer grabbed her purse and told David she would be back soon. He barely acknowledged her and kept playing.
"Okay, let's hurry up before the rain starts again," she told Bucky as he followed her to the door.
They were barely in the hallway with the door closed behind them before Bucky deadpanned, "So what was Steve whispering to you about?"
She froze for a moment, but only for a moment. She knew that he would ask, and he had every right to. He also had the right to the truth, and if she was really his friend and whatever else, the right to have her not dance around the truth when it came to these things.
"Just some pointers to make sure I don't say something stupid and make you snap and kill me while we're out."
Of course, he already knew what they had discussed. The question was merely a test to see how she would answer, and he was relieved by her honesty and lack of eggshell walking. It was bad enough to be a ticking timebomb, to an extent, without being treated like one as well.
She started walking ahead of him, down the stairwell in her flat shoes that didn't constrain her the way that those boots from last night did, and he followed after her. "I didn't snap last night."
"Yeah, but I guess since we don't have a babysitter this time he thought I should have a warning," she shrugged as they reached the next flight of stairs. "But I'm not worried. It's just a grocery store."
He didn't reply, falling into step beside her as they turned out on the sidewalk, under a gray sky and a chilly breeze. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she shivered a little and then shoved her hands in the pockets of her coat, then let his eyes wander down to her legs, outlined well in fitted dark jeans and holding his attention for a bit before he moved his gaze back up and settled on the hair she wore loose over her shoulders.
"You should watch where you're walking."
Snapping out of it suddenly, he met her eyes and saw a grin on her lips. He thought about looking away and reminding himself that staring generally unnerved people, but then he remembered who this was walking next to him and replied, "You should be used to it by now."
"Well, maybe from you, but trust me, nobody's ever stared at me like that before in my life," she said. "You're the first."
He thought for a moment on how to answer that, wondering why or how exactly that could be true. "I doubt that," was his final underwhelming response.
"You realize that the closest thing to male interaction that I had for five years was when the UPS guy would knock on my door or I'd get a guy cashier at Walmart?" she replied, giving him an incredulous look.
He shrugged. "Before that, then."
She fell silent then, and he looked at her cautiously. She ended up shrugging and answering, "Nothing much to talk about there, either."
This was starting to hurt his head a bit. He was not blind or otherwise impaired in ways that would make him perceive her incorrectly, so he knew that she was every bit as attractive as he saw her to be. And his habit of analyzing everything and everyone around him had identified at least six men who had looked at her with interest during their date the night before. And one more man since they'd left the apartment.
His hand itched to grab hers, to put off the attention, but he kept it in his pocket.
"I'm sure you had the opposite experience back in your day."
He narrowed his eyes and almost objected to the veiled "old man" joke, but the grin she flashed was disarming, and he merely shrugged. "I guess. I only remember bits and pieces, so it doesn't help much."
"Help with what?"
"Knowing what the hell I'm doing."
The market was within sight, and Summer replied quietly, "Well, you could have fooled me."
When her words registered with him, he turned to look at her just as she flashed him a smile and ducked into the store. He followed her inside and felt his lips curl just a little bit, especially when she reached back and grabbed his hand as she picked up a grocery basket and headed into the aisles.
Steve's ideas weren't always terrible.
Shopping with Bucky was a bit similar to shopping with David, in that both of them apparently liked to touch things and stare at different items for too long and end up making her almost leave them behind on accident. She found herself leading Bucky by his hand, finding him rather cute as he took everything in and asked her questions about things like what exactly gluten was and why labels would possibly want to brag about something not having sugar.
"Why hasn't Steve taken you to a grocery store before?" she asked, though not complaining about being his guide on his first trip to one. She'd grabbed almost everything she needed and had the basket balanced on her arm after shaking her head at his offer to hold it for her.
Bucky shrugged. "I think he orders food in bulk or something."
That, she could understand. "Does it get old eating that much? Seems kind of exhausting."
"Sometimes."
"I mean, I remember being pregnant and hungry all the time, and it was the worst. I gained like fifty-five pounds and looked like I was smuggling hobbits in barrels under my shirt." Then she looked back at the confused look on his face and sighed. "I was gigantic is what I mean."
He didn't have much to say to that, and no wonder, she thought to herself, because what kind of freak follows up a hot date with tales of pregnancy weight gain while grocery shopping? May as well describe the joy of labor and C-sections and really get him in the mood to whisper more French in her ear. Yes, she was totally on the right track.
"Where?"
Snapping out of her self-ridicule, she looked up to find him walking at her side now, a hint of last night's playfulness in his eye, and she asked, "What?"
At her confusion, he looked away and shrugged. "Never mind."
Grabbing several giant cans of tomato sauce from a shelf, she furrowed her brows and tried to remember the very last thing she'd said, and it took her way too long to remember that it had been I was gigantic. And then it made sense.
Poor guy, she thought while hiding a smile, hearing her talk about barrels under her shirt and being gigantic and immediately going there, and she couldn't blame him. On the bright side, maybe she hadn't totally ruined the atmosphere with the brief pregnancy talk. Now if she could just catch on to these things when they were being said and not five minutes later, maybe she could keep up.
She sighed as they headed to the checkout lanes, knowing it was bad when one began to have trouble keeping up with a guy who was in his mid-nineties and had only a fraction of his memories in his possession. Maybe it was time to step up her game a bit.
Whatever that meant.
It was like being back at her home again, at the same time not. The familiar scent of her food cooking coupled with the child currently stuck to his side brought him a comforting sense of familiarity, even if he wasn't used to the boy being quite so attached to him and it was a little bit strange.
At the moment, David was using his arm as a platform for a battle between Iron Man and a villain he didn't recognize, some guy in a purple suit and green hair, and oddly enough, Bucky didn't mind. The kid was fearless.
What he was starting to mind was the pleasant conversation coming from the kitchen, and the sight of Steve helping Summer cook and doing all of her chopping and mincing for her. Were these the kind of things that he was supposed to offer to do? Probably not, because as good as he was with a knife, he'd be helpless if he was supposed to put one to a vegetable. Maybe this was what he was doomed to spend the week doing, sitting quietly while acting as a human sized toy while Steve got all the good conversation and interaction.
Iron Man was losing to the green-haired bad guy, laying on his back on Bucky's forearm while the bad guy started creeping closer. Glancing at David's very concentrated expression, Bucky then started shifting the plates in his arms around, and the motion knocked the bad guy off his arms and to the couch cushions. David gaped and then beamed, clearly finding the arm to be the coolest thing ever. Then he made Bucky do it again, and again.
Eventually, Steve's phone rang and he retreated to his room to take the call. Around the same time, something on TV distracted David long enough for Bucky to slip away from the couch and wander into the kitchen.
As usual, Summer didn't notice him, because his footsteps were as silent as ever. The kitchen was small, just big enough for the basics with a very small island providing extra counterspace, and there was not a lot of room where she was, between the island and the stove. He glanced at the island, then at her, and picked up a spoon on the counter and let it clatter back down in the hopes of not scaring her with his sudden presence.
She jumped anyway, then blushed a little and smiled when she turned and saw him standing not far away from her. "Geez, you scared me. It's almost done."
She was stirring a pot and her hair was thrown up in the same clip as the night before, and he was about to step closer and do... something, though he wasn't sure yet, when she suddenly whipped around with a spoon in her hand and a smile on her face.
"Can you taste and tell me if it's a good as what you remember?"
He looked at the spoon, then her, and leaned down to take the offered taste. After, he looked back up at her to find her bottom lip between her teeth, and the sudden urge to grab her and bite it for her made him forget what he was about to say.
"Good?" she asked quietly, maybe even slightly timidly. He nodded, only half-comprehending her question, then felt suddenly bereft when she turned back around and went back to stirring. Was that much stirring even necessary?
A quick glance around found David still occupied and Steve nowhere in sight. With little thought as to whether it was good timing or not, he took the last remaining step between them, leaving less than an inch of space between her back and his chest, and though she stiffened and started stirring with renewed vigor, he knew it wasn't because his proximity was unwanted.
He would always prefer her hair down, but up like this, it gave him a clear view of her lovely neck and a few very light, barely-there freckles that were just beneath her ear. He counted them, then before he could think twice about it, slowly leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to them.
She dropped the wooden spoon she'd been stirring with immediately, and when he kissed her again, trailing down slightly, she breathlessly mumbled, "You're... I'm gonna... gonna burn... something..."
Rather than pull away, he slipped his hand on her waist and drew her gently against him as his kisses gained zeal, neither of them noticing how Steve reemerged from the hallway, took one look into the kitchen, and then slowly backed away, going back the way he came.
She couldn't breathe or think like this, let alone cook. Did he do these things on purpose?
After she dropped the spoon, feeling like he was sucking all the air from her lungs just by lightly kissing along her neck, she leaned back into him and looked into the living room, her single coherent thought being that she still didn't necessarily want David to see any of this. But David was oblivious, and her gaze was torn away by a hand on her jaw guiding her head to the side, while his other one still held her close by her waist.
Heart thudding, she looked up into intense blue eyes and then down at lips that were so close to her own, almost brushing them, and shivered when he reached behind her head and slid his fingertips into her hair before pulling her closer as her eyes fell shut.
Then the oven timer beeped noisily, she jumped with an embarrassing squeak, and Bucky reluctantly moved away to let her get herself together enough to turn off the timer and get the meatballs out of the oven. Her nerves were suddenly on edge and she momentarily forgot what the next step of the cooking process was as she glanced behind her. He merely leaned against the island, watching her with mild amusement, and she wondered if he had any idea what he did to her brain with so little effort.
As she turned back to the food, trying to remember what she was supposed to do next, Steve reappeared in the hallway, cautiously peered towards the kitchen, then walked out nonchalantly when he saw that the coast was clear this time.
Bucky eventually had a modicum of mercy and left her to finish up dinner without having to feel his eyes on her the entire time, and by the time everybody was seated and eating, Summer could almost cry for how distracted she still was from a couple of soft, unexpected kisses that he had clearly meant to scramble her brain with.
To her relief, the food turned out exactly as it always did, which was very well, and there was something particularly satisfying in having Captain America praise your cooking. Someday, when she could speak of these things, she would point out to Paul the fact that the world's first superhero liked her food even if he liked to nitpick at it and doubt that it was edible.
After everybody was full, Steve got a text that had him up and out of the apartment at impressive speed after giving the appropriate apologies, and still seated at table, Summer looked to Bucky questioningly after the front door closed behind the super soldier. He shrugged. "He does that."
"... Super secret business or...?"
He shrugged again. "Doesn't really tell me. Probably Natasha though."
"Oh." Well, then. The likelihood of Steve still being a "95 year old virgin" kept dwindling more each day she spent in New York.
In any case, now Summer felt the burden of figuring out what to do with the rest of the night fall to her by default. She only had so many options.
"So, movie?" When he only shrugged at that suggestion, she asked, "Did you ever get around to finishing Star Wars?"
"Not yet."
"We could try to finish it now," she suggested.
"I didn't mind not finishing it."
She smiled a little, thinking back to that particular night in Virginia, and then glanced over to David, who had finished eating quickly and was now wrapped up in his tablet on the couch. "Well, just so you know, my rule still applies. About when David's watching."
"Sorry."
He didn't look particularly sorry. If anything, he looked rather happy with himself. "I saw him playing with your arm earlier. I hope that was okay."
He shrugged, but his expression became a bit more serious. "It was fine."
She smiled warmly, then got up and motioned for him to do the same. "All right, come on. I'll get you into Star Wars if it's the last thing I do."
A few hours later, Summer couldn't believe it. She was sitting on the couch, with David's head in her lap as he had fallen asleep way before his bedtime, and on her other side, Bucky was also asleep. Of all the ways she expected the night to go, this was not one of them. And she was fairly sure that Bucky was never going to finish the movie.
Credits rolling on the TV, she gently pried David from her lap and stood up, then peered at Bucky's sleeping form. He was sitting up, arms crossed, head straight back against the couch, and the only part of him that looked remotely relaxed was his face. Still, there was nothing peaceful about the slumber, that much she could tell, and she was a little taken aback that he felt secure enough around her to just doze off like that. Then again, he probably hadn't meant to.
She called his name softly a few times, but he didn't budge. After spending one too many minutes marveling at how long his dark lashes looked against his skin, she decided to leave him be. She couldn't imagine that he slept much better these days than he had before.
Suddenly alone for all intents and purposes, she wandered off to the bathroom, wondering how long David could sleep without completely ruining his bedtime later. On her way out, she chuckled at the array of hair products that littered the counter. But, for two frozen old men, they did have some good hair, so it wasn't surprising.
Then she wandered back into the hallway, and an open door to a bedroom in front of it caught her interest. Later she would wonder what had possibly possessed her to go peek into it, given that she had no idea who the room belonged to and that even if she did it was still rude, but she poked her head inside anyway.
She flipped the light on for a better look, curiosity getting the better of her, and she knew right away that she'd picked the right room. The mostly barren state of it and the stacks upon stacks of books next to the bed, plus the rather abused-looking sheets, were clear giveaways that it was Bucky's room. She would have turned off the light and walked away had she not spotted the book he'd left her home with on the table next to his bed.
One peek wouldn't hurt, right? After all, she had given up her own bedroom to him for a month, so one look around his wasn't that big of a deal.
crept towards his bed, and when the book was within reach, she opened it and skimmed through it, smiling when she found her lock of hair still within the pages. She wondered why he had it on a piece of furniture rather than with the vast stacks of other books as she closed it, placing back where it had been and intending to turn and leave the room. But, when she cast one more glance at the books on the floor, the corner of what appeared to be a folder caught her eye from near her foot. It was half-shoved under his bed with its contents partially spilling out, like it had been thrown there, and upon closer inspection, had Russian writing on the cover.
It would have been a good time to leave and forget she'd seen anything, but after a cautious glance to the open door, she knelt down and slid the folder out from under the bed.
If it was what she thought it might be, she didn't really want to see what was inside. She had quickly given up trying to research more of his history and deeds from within HYDRA after learning the basics from the Internet leaks during his first week in her home, because it was his story to tell her if he wanted and it wasn't fair to him to learn it a different way. It was enough to know that he had been controlled and brainwashed into murdering HYDRA's enemies. She didn't need to hear any more details unless he felt the need to confide them to her, if that day ever came.
So why did she look? She instantly wished that she hadn't. One turn of the cover later, and she was staring a picture of him on ice. A smaller picture of him from the 40's, in his Army uniform, was paperclipped to the bottom of the page, and her eyes flitted between the two before settling on the larger one, the one that she knew she never should have looked at, because she would never forget it and she already wished that she could.
It didn't make her feel pity for him. It pissed her off.
She closed the folder, returning it to its previous position, her chest tight as she tried to shake the image off. Then she stood up, turned around, and froze at the sight of Bucky leaning against the doorframe, watching her with a mix of caution and curiosity.
Well, crap.
"I'm sorry," she instantly said, feeling her cheeks heat up with embarrassment and guilt. He didn't look particularly angry, but now she felt like a big fat rude jerk. "I just... I don't even know what I was thinking, honestly, I just... I don't know. I'm sorry."
He responded to her elegant-as-ever speech by holding up his hand briefly, silencing her as he walked inside the room. She fretted as she stood there, not knowing what to do with herself, still feeling terrible and absolutely stupid. All she got out of the deal was a visual that she never wanted to see, but what else had she expected from a Russian file that was half under his bed?
"If you wanted to see my room, you could have just asked," he said finally, standing near his dresser, glancing at her with an expression that was still free of any anger.
"Yeah, well, I'm an idiot, so," she shrugged. "I should probably go before I do something else stupid."
She took a few steps, but a question from him gave her pause. "Like what?"
"...I don't know, but I'm sure I could manage something."
She didn't really want to leave, however, so she remained where she was, fidgeting with her hands, until he spoke again. "I can't read that file. I've tried and I can't."
She knew he didn't mean that he literally couldn't, since he spoke the language. "Maybe you shouldn't." When he looked at her questioningly, she blinked and added, "I mean, don't listen to me. I don't know anything. But reliving things... sucks." Her mind flashed to her dream from that morning, then quickly shoved it away.
He stayed silent, and she took the opportunity to take a good look at him. He really did look exhausted, but she supposed that she hadn't really registered it because she had never seen him not look exhausted. Maybe it was clearer now after seeing the old picture of him in uniform, from a time when sleep had surely not been so much of an issue.
"How are you sleeping?" she asked softly.
He scoffed dismissively. "I'm not."
"I figured. That's why I didn't try to wake you. Although at this rate, you're never gonna finish that movie," she joked, trying to lighten the conversation. He appreciated it, but he didn't quite smile back.
At this point, before, she might have given him a reassuring touch or even a hug, but now everything seemed trickier. Also, she was in his room, and they were as close to alone as they were going to get tonight.
Eventually, something shiny on top of his dresser caught her eye. Based on the shape of it, it could really be only one thing, but how in the world did he have it? "Are those..."
He followed her gaze to his dog tags, then picked them up and looked at them before handing them to her. "Yeah. Steve stole them from the Smithsonian."
She took them carefully, reading his name and information on the silver tag. It really was something that these things had survived all those years somehow, a relic from better days that she wished she could have known him in. Then his words slowly registered in her head. When they did, she looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. "He stole something?"
"He said he was returning them to their owner," he shrugged. "Didn't want to admit that he stole something."
She smiled at his remark and then handed the dog tags back to him, but instead of opening his palm to take them, he gently took her wrist in his grip and pulled her closer, which made her stomach flip. He raised his other hand, the left one, and opened it, so she dropped the chain into it, and he didn't let go of her wrist as he placed it back on the dresser.
She felt the urge to start babbling take over when his hand left her wrist to reach to her face, moving a piece of hair behind her ear. "I still really want to know what you said in French yesterday."
He smiled his maddening little half-smile and glanced down at the floor - or was that her shoes? - before replying, "It still applies today."
"What's that mean?" she asked just as he tried to pull her in for a kiss, but she managed to resist - barely. "No. Nope. I won't kiss you until you tell me what you said."
He narrowed his eyes in a way that told her that he didn't believe her, then leaned in only to end up kissing her cheek. He pulled back and looked at her with a mix of amusement and irritation. She tried not to smile and held her head up. "I mean it. Not until you tell me."
He replied by taking her waist in both hands and turning her, pushing her against the dresser and taking her by surprise. He held her there and then brushed her hair aside before pressing a kiss to the side of her neck, and she couldn't help but whine a little. "That's cheating!"
Cheating or not, she didn't stop him, and instead grasped his hair and shoulder while trying not to moan like some floozy as he took his time kissing everywhere that he could, from the top of her neck to the bottom, over her collarbone and across the few inches of her chest that her shirt didn't cover, then back up and to the other side of her neck, to her ear and then across her jaw, and finally, the corner of her mouth. She was panting by the time he got there, and having felt a few flicks of his tongue a couple of times along the way, she opened her eyes and breathlessly muttered, "You're such a liar." When he stared at her in slight confusion, she explained, "Saying you don't know what you're doing."
The half-smile made a brief reappearance, and then he leaned in to kiss her, but she still resisted, pulling back before his lips could touch hers. He huffed in frustration, and she smiled, proud that she hadn't given in yet. "Tell me what you said first."
"No," he replied, staring down at her lips and breathing hard himself.
"Why?" she half-whined, getting to the point of desperation in wanting to know what he said. He didn't answer, trailing kisses back across her jaw to her ear, and when she felt the gentle nip of his teeth and her resulting shudder, she knew she wouldn't hold out for much longer. "Can I at least have a hint?"
Returning back to her lips, he licked his own and then appeared to think for a moment before replying, "You'll blush even more than you are right now when I tell you someday."
Someday? She was about to start whining again, but then he claimed her lips in a kiss that swallowed her words and her breath whole and then, if that wasn't enough, he utterly knocked her off of her own personal axis by unexpectedly lifting her up on top of the dresser and eliminating the very concept of space between them.
She smiled against his lips, having always wanted to be picked up and ravaged on top of something, and now she could finally say that she had been.
He knew that she didn't know what she was doing to him, that she couldn't have a clue how every whine and soft, almost imperceptible moan that left her throat hit him in places that were alive and well again and driving his every move. She was wrong about him being a liar, though, because whatever he was doing, it wasn't a result of thinking but of feeling, and that was what made it so uniquely freeing.
If having her underneath him the night before had been a revelation, then having her pressed against him with her legs around his hips was a life-changing epiphany. Nothing was satisfying, and nothing filled the growing ache from within, but instead, every kiss and every touch and every sound out of her mouth only drove him to want more. And, it was apparent that something had unlocked within her as well, because her hands were more exploratory than they'd ever been before, and the sensation of her squeezing her legs around him and grinding against him shorted out whatever parts of his brain had still been functioning until that point.
He was barely aware of his own movements as he picked her up again and this time carried her to his bed, where he dropped her and immediately and climbed atop her, barely giving her the chance to breathe before he resumed kissing her into oblivion. Her hands drew up the hem of his shirt but he wasn't thinking clearly enough to discard it, focusing instead on his right hand as it ran down her side, then along her stomach, slipping gently up her shirt, making her tremble slightly as she broke away for desperately needed air.
"Bucky," he heard her call barely above a whisper, and though he looked down at her, he didn't decipher the slight uncertainty starting to grow on her face. Instead, he kissed her again, and he let his left hand brush some of her hair from her face as he did.
She shivered a bit from the coldness of the hand, and he only let it linger for a moment before he began to draw it away, but he made the mistake of looking down at it, and that was enough to drastically alter the course of the night.
His metal thumb had just barely grazed the side of her neck, and when he saw it happen, his brain flickered similarly to the hologram he disguised his hand with in public. His movements stopped, his eyes lost focus, and he was no longer watching himself touch a woman that he had grown to care for. Instead, he was watching himself crush the throat of a very different woman.
The flashback had no context, and the woman had no identity beyond that of a mere target. The length of the memory was short, only long enough to contain the scream and gurgles of the woman as he killed her with just his hand, and the look of horror in her eyes as the life had left them.
His head split with pain, a fog descended, and he lost track of what was real and what was not. Everything blurred together, and for a few moments, he simply was not there.
The next thing he knew, he was crouched at the foot of the bed, blinking as he suddenly came back to reality, gasping for air as if he'd just broke water's surface, and Summer was in front of him, though at a safe distance, watching him with slightly fearful and very concerned expression.
He stared at her without seeing her. His mind was trying to bridge the giant gaps between the throes of passion, the flashback, and where he was now, but the pieces were all jagged and ill-fitting, like parts of them were missing and preventing him from comprehending what had just happened. He couldn't remember leaving her, getting off of her, and curling up the way that he currently was, and one horrible thought managed to break through the haze and lingering head pain enough for him to focus on Summer and get a string of words out.
"Did I hurt you?"
His own voice sounded small and pathetic to his own ears. To his relief, she shook her head. "No, you didn't, not at all. One minute you were... fine, and the next you were just staring and then you got away from me so fast I thought I'd done something wrong."
At least he hadn't lost himself to the point of reliving the flashback and hurting her, or killing her, in the process, but he still could not breathe evenly and the fire that had been coursing through his veins only moments ago had been replaced with pure, unyielding ice. She was fine this time, but maybe next time she wouldn't be. And she would be so terribly easy to kill and defenseless if this scenario ever repeated itself.
"You should go," he muttered.
"But... I'm fine, I just... is there anything I can do to help?"
He shook his head, wishing she would just leave so he could stew in disappointment and self-loathing in solitude.
He stared at the floor as she got up, and he didn't look up when she spoke again. "That was a little too much for me too, just so you know. Which wasn't your fault. It's a long story. But... I don't know, I guess we should cool it a little bit."
Then her face entered his line of vision, and he controlled the urge to shove her away by refusing to meet her eyes instead. "Hey. It's okay. I'm okay."
It took her longer to leave since he refused to acknowledge her, but eventually she left his room, leaving him to sit and not move as he stared ahead and let the encroaching shadows of his mind take him over, knowing he could only fight it off for so long anyway.
After texting Steve almost immediately, Summer sat in the living room and resolved not to go until Steve was back. Bucky being alone in the apartment wasn't an option. She just wished that she'd had the brainpower to slam on the brakes a bit when it was obvious that Bucky was losing himself to the point of danger in the midst of his... fervor. Better yet, she should have made him slow down after he'd tossed her on his bed, because she owed it to both of them to be honest about what she was and wasn't ready for.
He just had an ability to scramble her brain and leave her to think of these things a little too late. She wasn't used to this. At all.
So she waited, sitting uneasily on the couch, blaming herself for the whole thing and, despite her best efforts, thinking back to the dream that she had started the day with.
In her opinion, If anything, tonight only proved that the dream really was as stupid as she had originally thought. The fear in his eyes when he'd asked if he had hurt her was enough to break her heart. But he hadn't hurt her. He had jumped off of her long before he could have. And even if he had, she would have forgiven him, because certain realities came with caring for a damaged, tortured ex-POW with severe PTSD, and in the end, despite all of the other horrors, that was what he was.
She would just have to learn better ways of helping him, and for now, save the clothes-ripping and ravaging for later, when they were both better able to handle it. Until then, maybe it was best to simply do all that she could to help him avoid sinking into that familiar despair that she knew he was deep within inside of his room.
A/N #2: I just noticed how this chapter is an angst sandwich with fluff in the middle. Sort of. ANYWAY. THANK YOU to all of you wonderful reviewers, followers, & readers for reading the story that set this one up and continuing along to this one :D I love you all and I am super grateful for the response to the first chapter. As always, let me know what you all think, and I'll see you next week! :D