During her very eventful week in New York, Summer encountered a few moments that served little other purpose other than to make her stop and wonder, just for a short time, what her life could be like if certain circumstances were different. One of these moments occurred on her second to last day there, as she stood at Steve's sink after washing a few dishes, watching her son teach Bucky how to play Angry Birds on the living room couch.
David taught by example, showing Bucky how to use the controls and what the object of the game was, and then he handed Bucky his tablet before watching eagerly over his shoulder. Bucky eyed the game with curiosity, a slight furrow to his brows as he tried to copy what David had done. Summer watched, neither boy paying any attention to her, and she smiled as Bucky's concentration visibly grew while he kept playing. Occasionally David would point something out to give him tips, and Bucky would nod his thanks, their conversation as silent as David himself.
And so, as she stood there with a small smile on her face, she let her mind drift to thoughts that she used to try her best to avoid. Thoughts like what life would be like if she hadn't been a single mother from David's conception on, if his father hadn't been a despicable loser, if she'd had someone to share things like first steps and other milestones with. God knew there had been times when she had needed someone, like during the struggle to get David's diagnosis and the even harder struggle to provide him the stability that he needed to function on a daily basis.
What a difference it could have made just to have a bit of encouragement on those nights where she felt useless, stupid, like a clueless kid trying to raise a kid with needs that surpassed her comprehension. Someone who she could have cried to and vented to, trusted and relied on when she needed to take a break before she fell apart.
Naturally, the next thing her mind did was imagine Bucky in Mark's place. In his current state, he wasn't the best candidate for fatherhood, but she imagined everything being different, meeting him under different circumstances and maybe even in a different time. Maybe she would have lived here, met him here, or maybe he would have been stationed in Virginia, just another soldier that she might have met and been charmed by in a far more conventional way than what had actually occurred.
David would have been conceived in love. He'd probably have giant blue eyes instead of brown ones. She wouldn't carry the stubborn, haunting memories that she did, and she would trust a whole lot easier.
Almost lost to her thoughts, she suddenly realized that Bucky had been staring quite intently at the tablet in his hands without making a move for quite awhile. He looked like he was piecing a puzzle together, in the midst of a serious analysis, and she tried to hide her smile as she watched him finally make his move. The sounds that she heard from the tablet and the slight grin on his face told her that his precise tactical plotting against the green piggies had paid off with three stars, and her heart warmed when she watched him share the grin with an excited David as he handed the tablet back. The boy had been stuck on that particular level for days.
Then Bucky's eyes met hers from across the room, and her heart skipped a little as she smiled at him before looking away, pretending to busy herself with the sink.
Of course, it never helped anything to think on impossible fantasies and how the past could be better than what it was, but she had her moments where she couldn't help herself. Watching Bucky beat a level of Angry Birds for her kid had done the trick. How could it not?
After a few more moments she spent idling to get her head back on straight, she headed to the couch herself, sitting on David's other side and giving them both a smile as she settled down on the cushions.
"So. Angry Birds. Addictive, right?" she asked with a grin, to which Bucky shrugged slightly. "You should download it on that shiny new phone of yours."
David immediately got bored with her intrusion into his previous fun, so he slid off of the couch and moved his gaming to the kitchen table. She didn't think much of it - he wasn't much for being sandwiched between two talking people. She turned her eyes back on Bucky and asked, "Can I see it?"
His eyes flashed blank. "See what?"
"Your phone," she chuckled, holding her hand out. He blinked at her before pulling the thing from the pocket of his jeans, and after she took it from him, she nonchalantly scooted herself into his side and made the back of her head comfortable on his right shoulder as she unlocked the phone. He tensed up a bit automatically at her sudden proximity, but she had figured out days before that when he did that, it didn't imply negativity. He simply wasn't used to such contact being a routine thing yet, and she could relate to that. After all, she still felt like she was back in sixth grade every single time he kissed her.
"All right," she sighed, "I'll download the basics for you. Certain apps you just need to have, at least at first. Angry Birds is one of them. It'll get boring after awhile, but it's a great way to kill time if you have to."
He relaxed as she went on, adding some life to his previously very bare, very new, phone. He had exactly two contacts, Steve and herself, and she had no idea what keeping in touch with him after she went home would involve. She hoped it was texting rather than phone calls, because just the thought of talking to him on the phone regularly made her start overthinking and stressing out. She always felt like she made an even bigger idiot of herself on the phone than in person, and that was saying something.
His right hand had taken to playing with her hair as she played with his phone, and every so often she felt his breath brush her ear, but she managed to stay focused on the task at hand. "Okay, so I've got you started there, what else... oh! I know what needs to happen."
He watched as she opened the phone's camera, and his voice was a rumble against her ear as he asked, "What?"
"You," she smiled, glancing up at him, "are going to take your first selfie with me. It goes with the territory of being in the 21st century."
His face was pure confusion. "Take a what?"
"A picture of yourself," she explained. "People go way overboard with selfies, especially girls, but it's easier to get away with it when someone else is in the picture with you."
"But... why?"
She sighed a little, angling closer to him and looking up again as she said, "I don't know, people are obsessed with themselves. It doesn't matter. I just want a picture with you."
He fell silent then, his confused expression melting into something softer. She then smiled brightly and held up his phone in front of them, chirping, "Smile!"
He didn't smile, however, and the resulting photo was hilariously terrible, between her overdone smile and his slight confusion, so she tried again. This time, she tried to appear more normal, but her nose caught an odd angle and looked enormous while Bucky had gone from looking mildly confused to mildly surprised, so she deleted that one and started over. She did this over and over, each picture looking just as bad as the one before, and eventually she just started laughing at each failed attempt. When she felt him start chuckling with her, laughing for the first time since their date at the start of the week, the same warmth that she had felt then flooded her all over again, and she almost didn't notice him snatching the phone out of her hand.
She looked up at him questioningly, but he merely shrugged at her before pulling her closer against him and holding the phone up. She glanced at the phone just as he pushed the button, and for the first time, a decent picture was taken at last.
He let her take the phone back to inspect the picture, and she fell silent as she stared at it. There was just the ghost of a smile on his lips, leftover from when he'd laughed a bit, and it just reached his eyes enough to soften them and confirm that he wasn't forcing it. She glanced at herself and didn't think she looked too bad, but she could have been cropped out of the picture entirely and still been perfectly happy with the results.
She started messing around on the phone again, and he asked softly, "What are you doing?"
"Sending that to myself," she replied, holding up the phone to give him a better view. "Here, watch how you send a picture. Just in case you ever want to send me one and torture me."
He watched and paid attention, his hand going back to playing with her hair as he asked, "Why would that torture you?"
She shot him a sideways glare and replied, "Don't play dumb with me. You know exactly why."
His eyes flashed in amusement, then flickered down to her lips as he asked, "Can I kiss you?"
Cursing her instantly and pleasantly knotting stomach, she glanced over at David to find him still at the table, engrossed in his games, kicking his feet back and forth as they dangled off the chair. She looked back to Bucky and nodded, murmuring, "Make it quick."
He obeyed, leaning in and holding her close with the hand that was already in her hair, kissing her somewhere between softly and roughly and as quickly as she requested. He didn't pull away without stealing a taste of her with his tongue, making her insides dance further, not even slightly used to it yet. It was a good problem to have.
After, she bit her lip and looked down to try to avoid the very direct eye contact that still made her squirm sometimes, and as she pretended to find his phone fascinating as it sat on his lap, she suddenly remembered one more thing she had to do on it and snatched it back.
"What are you doing now?" he asked, amused as she opened his browser and went to Google.
"Changing your background," she replied. The standard one that came with the phone was of water droplets, not a terrible thing, but the picture made her think of cold, rainy days. Bucky had dealt with enough of the cold, in her opinion, so a change was in order. The question was, what to change it to?
He watched in silence as she tried a few different options, eventually settling on something that looked like it came out of some calendar somewhere. It was a tropical beach at sunset, full of warm orange and red tones contrasted by the deep blue of a vast ocean and the softness of a sandy shore, and once it was done, she handed it back to him.
"Why'd you choose that?"
She shrugged, settling her head on his shoulder again and replying, "It looked warm."
Silence fell then, a comfortable one, and his hand drifted from her hair down her back, then to her waist where it lingered as he brushed his lips against her forehead. She let out a long exhale, closing her eyes briefly as she mentally came to terms with the fact that she really did not want to go home.
The apartment was nearly bare but for the basic essentials, as everything else had been packed away the day before and sent to a new location somewhere else in the city. Steve had been mostly gone since Bucky's run-in with HYDRA, apparently off chasing leads with Natasha or something, and Summer had been trying to distract Bucky while he waited for news. So far, she had been mildly successful. He despised being sidelined, but Steve had promised to let him come along when they actually found something worth checking out. In the meantime, Bucky had continued staying with her in her hotel, making them basically inseparable.
It was all still highly surreal, and she was pretty sure that once she was back to being on her own, she would be the most paranoid person in the world, but that wasn't the only reason why she was half-dreading going home.
But, life was what it was, and wishing she could stay was as productive as wishing the past had been different. She just hadn't anticipated leaving being as difficult as she knew it was going to be.
"Why doesn't he talk?"
Bucky asked the question quietly, sitting on a park bench next to Summer as David sat in the grass, hunting for bugs to inspect. Being outside wasn't necessarily the safest idea, but Summer had insisted, making Bucky their bodyguard for the day. At least the day was slightly warmer than it had been lately, due to the sun that was currently making a somewhat rare appearance.
Summer glanced up at him and paused for a moment before replying, "He's... do you remember the first day you spent with us?"
He did, but it was extremely blurry. His brain had been only partially functioning then, erratically at best. "A little."
"Oh. Well, now that I think of it, I don't know why I didn't think to explain it better to you," she said, her cheeks turning a slight pink. "I'm sorry. He's autistic."
He remembered that word, but he still had no idea what it meant.
"It means his brain works differently than other kids' brains," she explained. "Autism is really common now and nobody really knows why. It can range from mild to severe. David's considered more severe because he's nonverbal and some other factors, but he's done really well with therapy. He doesn't avoid all eye contact, and he does communicate, just not through words. The thing with him is routine. He needs it badly. That's why the last two weeks have been kind of stressful, but he's done a lot better than he would have a year ago."
He listened, falling silent for a moment before another question found it's way out of his mouth. "Where's his father?"
Her expression changed a bit, and he instantly wished he hadn't said anything. He had deduced enough from what she had previously said about the man to understand what had happened and why David existed, and he chose not to think about it, because it made him want to find the man and snap his neck.
"He's in Texas," she replied. "He sends me a check every month and that's about it. I prefer it that way."
He waited a moment before asking another question, one that made his jaw clench a little. "Did he go to prison?"
He saw her wince a little bit, her hands fidgeting in a way that expressed how much she didn't like talking about this. "No. He... well, we were both drunk. He was a lot farther gone than I was. I had just found out that my grandma was dying, and I wanted to forget and just be numb, so I got drunk with him. He didn't even remember what he did the next day. And I was in denial. By the time I snapped out of it, it was too late for... physical evidence."
He furrowed his brows. "Being pregnant wasn't evidence?"
Still fidgeting, she sighed, "I just knew how it would look. His dad was the sheriff's deputy and for some reason I thought that meant nobody would believe me. Plus, being drunk at the time and then waiting almost two weeks to come forward..." she shook her head. "I don't know. I should have. I wish I had. It was just really overwhelming and I was terrified when I found out I was pregnant. And then when I told him what he did, because he didn't remember, he..."
Bucky listened closely, prompting her on gently. "He what?"
"... He was genuinely horrified," she muttered. "But then he blamed me. Said I knew that he was lousy when he was drunk and that I should have known better."
She spoke in a very resigned, unaffected tone, but the more she spoke, the angrier Bucky felt.
"Anyway, so I told him that I was pregnant, and at first he acted like he would help me and be involved, even though I didn't want him to be. Didn't last very long. And the minute we knew that David was different, which was pretty early on, he left town, and I haven't seen him since."
He filed this information with the other bits that she had told him about the man, like the broken arm that he'd inadvertently caused and then didn't take seriously enough to take her to the hospital for, and after taking a breath, he asked, "What's his name?"
"Mark."
"What's his last name?"
She looked at him then, her eyes widening a little bit. "Why?" When he answered with a mere blank look, she smiled nervously and said, "Uh... I'm not sure that I should tell you while you have that look on your face. If it helps at all, I can tell you that my brother took a week off from med school after it happened to come home and beat the crap out of him. And he did a pretty good job of it."
Bucky doubted that. He could do a much better job himself.
"Really. It's fine."
Bucky shook his head slightly. "No it isn't."
She paused, then muttered, "I know. It just... is, you know? It's over. I don't think about it. Well, I have nightmares still, but I try not to think about it."
Connecting the dots in his head, Bucky furrowed his brows and asked, "The one you had the other night, was it..."
She stared off towards David as she nodded somewhat miserably. Her hands weren't fidgeting anymore but they were stiff and odd on her lap. "Yep."
He refused to ask her any more questions, knowing firsthand how recalling such things and being forced to talk about them was exceedingly difficult. But he thought back on watching her during that nightmare, how she had been seemingly struggling to breathe and fighting for air, and he didn't think he could stand to know the details of it.
Her forcibly lighthearted tone cut through the murderous thoughts in his head. "This is really crappy park conversation, by the way. Let's change the subject. Feels super nice today, doesn't it?"
She smiled uneasily at him as she spoke, and though he couldn't quite muster up one to give back, he did something that he wasn't sure he'd done yet, which was take her hand in his - the one that wasn't hiding from the world in his pocket - and simply hold it. It was usually her who gave the comforting touches, who would link their hands and let her touch pull him back from the brink, and he thought that it was only right for him to try to do the same for once, whether it did her any good or not.
They sat in silence for a few moments, until David came scampering up to his mother and held out his hand while giving her a toothy grin. She leaned forward to see what he had and then wrinkled her nose and said, "Oh, isn't that cool... but you know what, I think Bucky wants it more than I do."
Bucky looked at her in slight alarm, then looked himself when the boy held his hand out to him. It was just a fuzzy caterpillar. Wariness gone, he held out his right hand and let the boy dump the insect into his palm, and next to him, Summer squirmed away slightly, looking at the thing like it was something other than a harmless fuzzy creature and something quite distasteful.
He let it crawl over his hand, watching it curiously, then glancing to his side when he saw Summer lean forward off the bench to tie David's shoelaces. Her hair was off to one shoulder, the shoulder closest to him, and stifling a grin that still felt odd on his lips, he silently extended his hand towards her. David saw, and when he looked at Bucky questioningly, he winked at the kid. Then he stealthily let the caterpillar crawl from his hand to Summer's shoulder.
"Okay, done," Summer said, patting David's shoe and then straightening up, as Bucky watched the caterpillar creep from the top of the sleeve of her shirt to her exposed neckline. She showed no sign of noticing, straightening out David's shirt and then sitting back against the bench. Bucky kept an eye on her, trying to do so without being too obvious, at least until he saw her swipe at her shoulder as if to scratch an itch. Her hand froze when she brushed against the insect, and then she looked down and promptly squealed and jumped off of the bench.
Drawing the attention of almost the entire park - which, on second thought, probably wasn't the greatest idea he'd ever had - she screeched highly girlishly and smacked wildly at her shoulder, inadvertently knocking the thing right into the front of her shirt, which made her all the more hysterical. David was pointing at her and laughing like Bucky had never heard before, and he wasn't aware of his own smile and his own laughter until Summer finally got rid of the caterpillar and then turned furious eyes on him.
"Did you put that thing on me? You put it on me, didn't you?"
He shrugged innocently, not anticipating how enticing he found her outraged expression. Maybe he needed to provoke her more often. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She narrowed her eyes and then said, "Oh sure you don't. And stop biting your lip."
He paused. Was he biting his lip? He hadn't noticed, but apparently he was. "Why?"
"Because I'm trying to be pissed at you, and it's distracting. And stop looking at me like that too."
"Like what?"
"Like..." she fumbled for a minute, closing her eyes and then shaking her head. "Something I can't say in front of little ears."
He merely grinned in reply, and he knew it would disarm her. It did, instantly softening her features before she inevitably threw up her hands and then sat back down on the bench, refusing to look his way as she raised her eyebrows to the still-giggling David. "Traitor."
At the very least, he had lightened the mood. He kept his eyes on her as she tried her hardest to ignore him, but eventually, she broke out into a smile and her face reddened as she half-exclaimed, "Stop burning holes into me with your eyes!"
But he didn't stop, and the more flustered she got, the more she made him smile, and it was a feeling worth a whole lot more than he would have ever guessed before.
When Summer's last full day in New York arrived, she felt like she had blinked and then the week had gone by, and she supposed that wasn't far from the truth. She repacked what she had brought that morning, wanting to be ready for her 9 AM flight the next day, listening to the shower run in her hotel room's bathroom, trying not to imagine what was currently taking place in there and failing miserably.
It would be like a giant sugar crash when she got home, except with hormones instead of glucose. This was an entirely new experience, and when she stood in the middle of the room, chewing her lip and letting her imagination get away from her to the soundtrack of the shower and the mental image of the person in it, a sudden and unexpected kick to the shin from David snapped her out of it.
"Ow! What the heck?" she exclaimed, holding her leg as David chuckled at her and then ran off to get into something. She sighed and sat down on the edge of her bed, trying to get her head straight just as she heard the water shut off.
But it really wasn't so bad, she reasoned, because in just a day, she would probably be feeling more paranoid than anything else, so distractions were a good thing. And she'd never personally encountered such a stunningly effective distraction before.
She realized that she had been sitting and staring off into space for way too long again when the bathroom door clicked open, and she quickly - and poorly - tried to make herself look busy as the object of her fixation walked out into the main room. Though, she used the word "walk" loosely, since she had yet to figure out a word to aptly describe exactly how he moved from one point to another.
She tried to be subtle about watching him head towards the couch where his phone was, running his hand through his wet hair and making a t-shirt and jeans look absolutely ridiculous as he - strolled? No, that wasn't right. Sauntered? Better, but still not good enough. Was there a word in the English language fit to describe a man who walked everywhere like he was about to either go blow up national landmarks or go ravage some poor unsuspecting woman, maybe do the second thing on the way to the first? Was the walk something he learned in his training? In between weapons and fight training, did he have to do a "Intimidating, Threatening, & Sexually Appealing Walking 101" class that he clearly aced? Was her fixation on the matter a clear giveaway of the sudden tidal wave of frustration he'd caused within her in the last week?
All too late, she snapped out of her staring when Bucky turned around and looked at her, first quite normally and then with slight concern as he said her name. She shook her head and smiled stupidly before muttering something under her breath and then taking refuge in the bathroom, where she rolled her eyes at herself and wondered when she'd learn to act like a normal human being.
The day passed as quickly as all the others had, maybe even faster, and still mostly free of Steve just like the last three had been. David was a bit bummed out that his hero was always gone when they were at his apartment, but there wasn't much to be done about it. Steve had promised to be there to see them off, but short of that, they simply had to make do with Bucky. Summer was pretty sure that she'd survive.
The routine had become spending the daylight hours at the apartment, where she made Bucky feel at home again by feeding him her cooking all day, then spending the night back at her hotel. Since this was her last day, she figured she would make it extra special and make him the chocolate cake he'd been a fan of during his stay with her. He liked it just as much this time around, and then the three of them ended up in his room after an unintentional smoke situation with the stove forced them into clearer air while the living room aired out.
It was so domestic that Summer could almost forget the kind of people she was dealing with, at least until it was time to head back to the hotel, which was when she was suddenly faced with something that left her completely forgetting how to be a human being again.
She had walked out of Bucky's room first, David in tow, and when she heard familiar male and female voices coming from the kitchen, she assumed that Steve and Natasha had returned early tonight. Thinking little of it, she walked out of the hallway and then slowed down immediately at the sight of the back of a rather large blonde head seated at the table with the two people that she had expected to see. Then she heard a voice decidedly deeper than she expected and somehow vaguely familiar, and as she walked closer, Steve gave her a friendly smile and nodded her way.
In front of the stranger was a gigantic slice of the cake she had made, and when he looked up at her, she felt her eyes widen to comedic proportions. He wasn't waving a hammer around or wearing a big red cape - in fact, he looked deceivingly human in jeans and a black v-neck shirt with his long, undeniably glorious blonde hair tied back save for a few pieces - but she would have recognized Thor anywhere. Any good citizen of Earth would after he eternally changed the way that mankind thought of the universe.
"Hello," the Prince of Asgard smiled, and she smiled back in a way that she knew looked most likely terrifying, what with her eyes popping out of their sockets.
"Thor, this is Summer and her son David," Steve supplied helpfully. "They're... friends. And Summer, I'm sure you know who Thor is."
"Yeah," she half-laughed, more choking than anything, and at her side, David looked up at Thor with a wary and unbelieving expression before apparently deciding that the man was an imposter and losing interest while his mother continued to gawk. "I made that cake," she supplied, having partially no idea what she was saying.
"Ah! Then you have my most sincere compliments!" his voice boomed out, booming despite the reasonable volume of his tone, if such a thing was possible. "It is delicious!"
Her smile managed to get even stupider as she half-slurred a thank you, and then Bucky was suddenly in the kitchen next to her, eyeing the stranger with distrust.
"Bucky, this is Thor," Steve said instantly, and Bucky's expression relaxed a bit. "And Thor, this is my best friend, Bucky."
"An honor to meet you," Thor nodded. "I have heard many great things about you."
Bucky glanced at Steve and then did a slight double take when he saw Summer's still-awestruck expression. After looking at her briefly as if she was insane, he nodded to Thor. "Same here."
Summer was mildly aware of Natasha smirking at her unashamedly adolescent moment, and she almost started protesting when Bucky firmly grasped her hand and started leading her towards the door.
"Have fun, kids," Natasha called out, thoroughly enjoying herself, and Thor raised his hand in a slight wave, and the last thing anyone heard before Bucky literally dragged Summer through the door was her half-dreamily noting "He's so pretty" before the door closed in front of her face.
After, at the table, the three occupants sat in brief silence before Natasha broke it. "She's kind of cute. I see it now. You know, in a walking-disaster sort of way."
Steve shrugged and smiled. "Well, Bucky doesn't seem to be losing interest, that's for sure."
Looking mildly confused, Thor said, "I thought you said that he was frozen as you were until only a few months ago."
Steve nodded. "Yeah. Off and on. Mostly on. They only took him out of cryo for missions."
"And he already has a lady?" Thor asked in genuine surprise.
Steve inclined his head and chuckled a bit. "Bucky's... well, he's Bucky."
Summer bounced all the way back to the hotel, to Bucky's slight irritation. She was far more starstruck over meeting Thor than she had been over meeting Steve, though in her defense, she'd had time to prepare for meeting him as opposed to Thor. Still, Bucky didn't see the big deal over meeting the guy, and after one too many comments about how amazing he looked in the flesh ("Even with the super blonde hair!"), the Thor talk was officially grating on his nerves.
She would be leaving tomorrow, and it didn't seem fair that he'd already spent too long of a time that night listening to her rave about some alien who he didn't find nearly as remarkable as she did.
Once they were back inside her hotel room, shedding coats and flipping on lights, he decided that it was time to put an end to the incessant chatter.
"... And I really wish I'd gotten a picture. I wish I could tell my brother. He wouldn't believe me if I did. I mean, I've met, like, three Avengers now, and not even in a like off-the-street kind of way, but a -"
With one quick glance to make sure that David's attention was elsewhere, Bucky grabbed her wrist and spun her around and finally silenced her with a kiss that was just hard enough to drive his point home. She froze immediately, clearly taken by surprise, and when he pulled away, she looked up at him a bit dazed and asked, "I freaked out a little bit, didn't I?"
He shrugged, releasing his hold on her. "Thought you might need to take a breath."
"Sorry," she grinned a little sheepishly. "I was just... not expecting that. And it was Thor."
"Didn't seem all that great to me," Bucky remarked, walking around her to go sit on the couch he'd been spending quite a bit of time on the last few nights.
"Well, you're a guy, so..."
Deciding to stay silent for fear of fueling another Thor-fest, Bucky checked his phone for the time and noted that David's bedtime was fast approaching. The kid was out every night at almost the exact same moment each time, and the nice thing was the bit of time afterwards when he had Summer to himself. Since this was the last night he had for such a thing in the foreseeable future, he anticipated it a bit more than usual.
As had become the routine, he watched as both mother and child disappeared into the bathroom to get ready for bed. They would take about five minutes in there and then emerge dressed for bed, the kid probably in Captain America pajamas and Summer in mostly formless, unremarkable clothes, and then she would read him a story and he would be asleep in about another ten minutes. Bucky would watch, trying to remember if his mother used to do the same things with him, then give up when he wouldn't be able to recall a thing. But, by then, Summer would be guiding him by the hand to her bed, which was where he would make valiant efforts to control his rapidly growing instincts and innocently hold her as she fell asleep. It had become slightly routine by then, and he accepted it for what it was. Sort of.
His first clue that this night might deviate from his expectations was when she re-entered the room wearing far less than he had anticipated. She wasn't indecent, but the small pink shorts and very fitted white camisole was, to his eyes, a lot different from oversized shirts and what she called "yoga pants". He never looked up from gazing at her legs to see if she noticed his staring.
He shook himself out of it after she perched on the side of David's bed to read to him, and he shifted on the couch, letting out a silent sigh as he unconsciously raked a hand through his hair. He was starting to see his therapist's logic in advocating a long-distance relationship, because without distance, he was pretty sure he'd crack and fail very spectacularly at the whole waiting thing, if Summer allowed it. If she would or not, he had no idea.
He heard her gently beckon him up sooner than expected, and he looked up in time to see her smile a bit shyly and then make her way towards the other bed. He stood up too quickly, too eagerly, eyes instantly gluing to her hips as she walked, kicking off his shoes before following her.
The room was silent but for the low sound of the television playing some kids' movie in front of the beds, and Summer grabbed the remote to turn it off as he sat wordlessly on the side of her bed. The room darkened considerably then, illuminated mostly just by street lamps outside of the windows, but it was perfectly light enough to allow him to watch her leave the remote on top of the TV and then come to her side of the bed.
She sat and then started fiddling with her hair, tying it back to keep it out of her face as she slept, and then she looked at him and gave him a small smile. "Tired?"
He shrugged. He was the opposite of tired at the moment. But she had a morning flight to catch, so he assumed that she wanted to fall asleep relatively quickly. He shifted back on the bed, getting in the half-sitting position that he was now used to taking, and waited for her to curl up against him.
Their eyes met, and her mouth opened, but she shut it without saying a word, then drew up the sheets at their feet as she made her way to him. He held his breath when she laid a soft kiss on his lips, then drew back and ran her eyes over his face before kissing him one more time. Then she laid her head down on his chest, molding herself to him, and he closed his eyes as his left arm curled around her and held her there.
"So you're moving tomorrow?" she asked quietly, her voice a light rumble against his ribs.
"Yeah," he replied, letting his metal fingertips trace invisible lines across the top of her back, exposed by her top. She shivered a little from the coolness, but he was starting to think that she liked it.
"Is it somewhere super secret? Super secure superhero super hideout?"
He could hear the smile in her voice. "Sort of."
"Mmm. And here I'm just going back to the boring Virginia woods."
He almost reminded her that she didn't have to, but he knew it would do no good, since she believed that she did. She snuggled closer and let out a breath, and he stayed silent, a little - or a lot - frustrated that he was letting his last night with her just slip away like this.
Her breathing slowed some, and he clenched his jaw a little bit, cursing himself for letting her fall asleep like that. But, to his surprise, only a few moments after he had realized that the night was already over, Summer sat up with a frustrated sigh, her back to him as she ran a hand over her face. "I am so wide awake. I knew this was going to happen."
He sat up, away from the headboard, eyes a little wide with the unexpected development. Maybe he could salvage the night after all, whatever that meant. He had no plan, no words that he could think of saying, not even with their separation looming on the horizon. His eyes roamed from her hair to her mostly-bare shoulders, then to the parts of her back that he'd been running his fingers across just a moment ago, and he drew closer to her without realizing he was doing it.
"I don't like flying anyway. Now I'm gonna be a zombie all day tomorr- ahh..."
He almost grinned, the press of his lips to the back of her neck drawing the sound of surprise out of her as he flipped her ponytail over her shoulder and kissed the same spot again before trailing forward, towards her ear, while his right arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. She let her head fall to the side, giving him easier access, and her she steadied herself with a hand on his thigh as he took his time, not wanting to rush as he tried to savor the way she trembled under the his every kiss. He knew he would be replaying it in his head in the coming days.
He had just reached her ear when she turned her head towards him and caught his lips with hers, and she kissed him with zero restraint, angling as close to him as she could get in their current position. His hand on her waist slid down over her side, then to her hip and over the small shorts she wore before running languidly down her leg, past her knee and back up again while her tongue dancing in his mouth sparked a fire within him.
On its way back up, his hand ventured inward up her thigh, and she jerked a little before breaking away and covering his hand with hers, stopping him. "This is weird," she blurted out, panting a little, and at his confused look, she explained, "Not this, but doing this with David right there."
He frowned, looking around the room and trying to think. Since the room was rather small and there was really only one option if she really needed complete privacy, he untangled himself from her and stood up from the bed, dragging her with him by her hand. He had her inside the bathroom in a flash, and he closed the door by pushing her against it and picking up their kiss where they'd left it at. She moaned as the door clicked shut, closing them into pitch blackness. His right arm was around her waist as his left hand fumbled around for the light switch, and when the light scratch of her nails against the back of his head made him shiver, his left hand slapped against the wall, and he accidentally demolished the light switch, shorting out the wiring in the process and taking out the entire overhead light.
They both froze as the room was briefly illuminated by sparks before it fell back into darkness. Bucky took an instinctive step back, shoving his left hand behind him as if afraid that it would grow a mind of its own and then destroy Summer too.
"Hey, hey, it's all right," he heard her say in the darkness, along with her footsteps as they moved her to the sink. He heard a bit more movement, and then a small mounted light next to the bathroom mirror flicked on and bathed the room in a much softer light than the one he'd just taken out. She then turned around and wasted no time placing her hands on his shoulders and looking in his suddenly wary eyes as she said, "It was a light switch. Don't fall apart over a light switch. Please. Especially not tonight."
His eyes flickered from hers to the wall, where there was now a small crater where the switch had once been. Just when he was about to crawl back inside of his mental hole and never touch her again for fear of leaving a similar crater somewhere on her person, she grabbed his face and looked at him with a sudden fierceness that he wasn't sure he'd seen before.
"Bucky. Look at me."
He looked at her.
"Listen to me."
He listened.
"Your arm isn't gonna go away. It's always gonna be there. And that light switch probably isn't gonna be the last thing you accidentally destroy with it. And I don't care. Okay? I don't care. I mean it. Now can you please kiss me again before I explode?"
He struggled for a moment, but only for a moment. His eyes took in the determination within her own before falling to her cheeks, still flushed and warm, then falling lower to her chest, heaving with her breath and barely covered by thin material that was almost but not quite sheer. His right hand twitched, his mind calmed just enough, and with a muffled groan, he grabbed her and kissed her with hunger that he couldn't stand to suppress this time. He could feel her relief in the way that she melted against him, winding her arms around his neck and humming in gratitude as he had his way with her mouth.
First he pushed her against the bathroom counter, then a wall, and briefly the door again before nothing seemed to be working the way that he wanted to. She was clawing at his shirt and her hair was tangled all around his hand after he had ripped her hair tie out and freed it, and yet he couldn't figure out where to put her.
Ever helpful, she used all of her weight to turn them around and press him to the door, and his eyes opened when he felt her hands go to his shoulders and push down. She stared back with heavy-lidded eyes that made his blood run a little hotter and helped persuade him to follow her lead, sinking down to the floor as she directed. She followed him down, and both of his hands took hold of her hips as she straddled his lap and took his face in her hands.
His lungs strained for a satisfying breath of air and it was getting harder to not lose his head, but her fingers gently tracing along his face as her eyes flickered through all of his features made a lump suddenly form in his throat. He didn't know why it was there, but it threatened to set his nerves on edge. Then she spoke, a smile playing on her swollen lips.
"I know I went on and on about Thor tonight, but... God, you are so much better."
He might have laughed if she hadn't then smashed her lips against his and ground herself against him at the same time, flatlining his thoughts and drawing a sound from his throat that she swallowed down. Then he was reaching for every inch of her that he could and she was successfully pulling his shirt over his head, and her mouth left his to acquaint itself with places it hadn't been before.
His left hand tangled in her hair while his right toyed with slipping into the back of her shorts while she kissed her way down and across his chest, sweetly at first and then progressively more open-mouthed and lustful, making him nearly shake with need that he still wasn't fully used to. When she slowed down unexpectedly, he opened eyes he hadn't meant to close and saw that her pause was due to reaching the thick scarring on his shoulder, where flesh met metal.
The first time she had touched him there, months ago, he had shifted away and recoiled at the contact. Now he simply watched her, unconsciously licking his lips when she glanced up him a little bit cautiously before lowering her head and pressing her lips softly to the marks.
He shivered a little, and he couldn't pretend to be fully comfortable with that particular part of him being kissed, but she did it with such gentleness and almost reverence that it only served to intensify everything else he was feeling. She kissed down the line of scars until it disappeared into smooth skin, and his hand in her hair drew her back up as he looked in her eyes and saw something that was nearly beyond his comprehension: pure, genuine acceptance. It was a lot to take in, for a man who was a long way away from accepting himself.
She looked to him a bit uneasily, probably for fear of overstepping or upsetting him, but he eased her fears by pulling her close and kissing her. It was a slower and different kiss from the others, less frantic and more feeling, more vulnerable than he was entirely okay with. But he needed it, and if he needed it, then surely she did as well.
As the kiss eventually grew more intense, his left hand grazed over her shoulder, pulling down the strap of her top while his other dragged the hem up her torso while it slipped beneath the fabric and moved upwards with a caution that Summer apparently detected. She pushed his hands off of her and pulled away from his lips, muttering something that sounded like "frozen and deprived for a million years" as she gripped the hem of the thing and pulled it over her head.
His mouth was suddenly dry and he stopped breathing for a moment, faced with the realization that what he'd been imagining was underneath her tops for at least the last week (but longer than that in reality) was far inferior to what was now before him. As he stared, and before he could make his limbs catch up with his brain and the blood rushing away from it as quickly as possible, she took his hands - left one included - and placed them over her breasts, then held them there as he managed to look up into her eyes for a moment.
She looked nervous, eyeing him a bit shakily as her hands slowly fell away, leaving his where they were. If it was some inexplicable insecurity that he was seeing in her eyes, he thought it best to see it gone, giving the soft, perfect skin under his hands a slow and firm squeeze as he leaned forward and drew her into another kiss before whispering against her lips, "Lie back."
In hindsight, that might have been the point where she should have put on the brakes for a moment. After all, there was only so many different potential outcomes to the present situation with her underneath him, on the floor of a hotel bathroom, both of them topless and barreling headfirst towards something they'd both agreed to wait for only days earlier.
But as it was, Summer was only human, and she was absolutely on fire.
The floor beneath her was cold but Bucky on top of her was almost blisteringly hot, the skin to skin contact scrambling her brain while he kissed her, every inch that he could reach, with such frantic passion that she could feel his desperation. It mirrored hers, and now she felt as if she could at last understand why people let passion ruin their lives - it was the most intoxicating thing she had ever felt, and completely worth the risks she'd taken. Her comfort zone was gone and she had been more than prepared for rejection, but he couldn't seem to tear his lips or his hands away from her.
With her legs wrapped around his waist and one hand in his hair while the other grasped at the smooth skin of his back, she tried to keep quiet as he rocked his hips into hers and made her pulse race with the attention that his lips and tongue lavished on her breasts. It was entirely too much, a shock to her system and a bucket of gasoline on an already-burning flame, and she was pretty sure that all those reasons for waiting were totally irrational. What were they again?
Then he was kissing her lips again, and moving against her with a shaky but determined urgency, his right hand roaming down her chest to her stomach and then the waistband of her shorts, and as they hooked into the thin fabric and started pulling, she bit his lip and tried to ignore the weird song playing in the background.
Then she paused. Weird song?
It was her phone, she suddenly realized, freezing up a bit as the familiar strain of Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" all but blared through the air from her phone that she had forgotten was plugged in to one of the bathroom outlets from when she'd been getting ready for bed.
Bucky hovered over her, his eyes pleading with her to ignore her brother's incoming call, and she pulled him down for a kiss, deciding to at least try to comply with his wishes. But, he didn't know how persistent her brother was, and in the middle of the third call, she gently pushed Bucky away and muttered breathless apologies over and over as she scrambled to her knees and crawled the short distance to the sink, grabbing blindly at the counter before finding her phone and putting it to her ear with a shaky hand.
"What the hell, Paul! Do you know how late it is?!"
"It's not that late here. And you were supposed to call me back two days ago. I was worried."
She rolled her eyes, suddenly feeling chilly without a firm, warm man on top of her. She glanced his way and saw him, sitting disheveled on the floor with his hair an absolute mess on top of his head, eyes dark and lips perfectly swollen as he stared at her with such heat that it threatened to make her whimper, which she could not do right now. "My gosh, Paul, I'm fine. Seriously. Now can I call you later?"
"Why so anxious to hang up? Are you with your ax murderer?"
Feeling suddenly weird talking to him in her current state, she spotted her discarded camisole nearby and dragged it closer with her foot, then dropped it over her chest, fully aware that she was being ridiculous. She glanced at Bucky again and saw that he wasn't happy with the move, either. She also noticed visual evidence that his jeans must have been extremely uncomfortable at the moment, then gulped and replied in a too-high pitched voice, "I just really need to hang up now."
"Oh, hell, Summer, I hope you're keeping your pants on. I mean, I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, but -"
"Yes my pants are on!" she half-exclaimed, face suddenly burning. Bucky's eyes widened a little bit in confusion and she covered her face with her hand. "I am so hanging up."
"Wait, wait, wait - seriously, are you okay?"
She almost screamed in frustration, then peeked past her hand and almost dropped her phone when she saw Bucky crawling towards her. There wasn't much space to cross, but the way that he looked at her while he did it made her nearly choke. "I... what?"
"Ugh, you are with him. You should put him on so I can threaten his life."
"Uh..." was all she could manage, dying a little inside when Bucky grasped one of her ankles and then slid his hand up her calf before pressing his lips to the inner side of her knee. She let her jaw drop a little as he trailed his mouth upwards, along the inside of her thigh, and when he peeked up at her in the process, she made some odd strangling noise that must have sounded extremely weird over the phone.
"Summer?"
Snapping out of it, she batted Bucky's head away and fought off giggles trying to bubble out of her throat. "What? I'm fine! I told you I'm fine."
"I'm not hanging up until I get a name. If this guy's defiling you I need to know whose name is going on the tombstone."
Undeterred by her efforts to push him off, Bucky shot her a lazy half-grin and refocused his efforts higher, kissing her stomach while tugging on the top she was still clutching to her chest. She tightened her grip on it and smiled at him, trying to twist away, but she was basically pinned against the cabinets under the sink, and she had nowhere to go.
"Nobody's defiling me, okay? And you know I can't tell you yet, so I don't know why you're even aaah...asking." She slapped a hand over her mouth, having just been bitten just above her hipbone, and she playfully swatted the back of Bucky's head for making her humiliate herself.
"Oh God. I'm hanging up. I don't want to know what you're doing. Use protection. Ugh."
Then, at long last, Paul hung up, and Summer let her phone clatter to the ground. "You evil son of a -"
Her curse was swallowed in a fast, deep kiss, but some of her brain had returned to her in the last few moments, and she managed to keep it from fleeing away when he drew back to stare at her in that completely brain-meltingly hungry way that made her heart fall out of her chest.
Keeping in mind that only a short time ago he would have just stared blankly at her and been slightly afraid to touch her anywhere, let alone places that were new to his eyes, she was about one step away from doing her best Bilbo Baggins impression and asking dramatically "What have we done?" because it appeared that some kind of sleeping dragon had indeed been fully awakened.
"Bucky," she said more breathily than intended as he pulled her on his lap and started sucking on her neck, just under her ear where she was most sensitive. She closed her eyes and clutched his shoulders. "Bucky... please, stop for a minute."
To his credit, he listened and stopped immediately, raising his head and again making her gulp with the way that he looked at her. She steeled herself and said, "Not that I don't want to do this, because I do, like, more than I want to breathe, but I don't think either of us really want it to happen on a bathroom floor. In a hotel."
His eyes shifted from dazed with hunger to slowly-dawning comprehension of her words, and he blinked a few times as he looked down between them and seemed to return to himself, at least on some level. She also noticed that her top was crumpled against the door across the room, and she had no idea when he'd snatched it from her, let alone thrown it there.
"Sorry."
Her eyes snapped to his, and she quickly replied, "Oh my God, don't apologize. Trust me, I want to. A lot. I think more than I ever had in my life. And I kind of hate myself for stopping you, but... I don't want to rush and screw things up, you know?"
He nodded, though she had the feeling that it was more of an automatic response than a sign of his actual thoughts.
Her physical frustration had reached painful levels, and if it was that bad for her, she shuddered to think how he felt at the moment. She opened her mouth, spontaneously deciding to point out that she could still offer him a helping hand, but then she panicked and closed her mouth. It had been a really long time, and if she was terrible, she would cry, jump off the hotel balcony, and never forgive herself.
As she cursed her cowardice and thought to herself that this, her ineptitude, was why she couldn't have nice things, Bucky spoke and interrupted her spiraling thoughts.
"It would be easier to wait if you weren't..."
Her eyes widened a little bit, swallowing reflexively, hanging on his words and hoping against hope that the next ones wouldn't be something negative.
Brows furrowed softly, he slowly let his eyes roam over her, reminding her of how little she was still wearing, and a few moments passed where he searched silently for the right word. She held her breath until he said just above a murmur, "... Perfect."
First, her heart thudded erratically against her chest, and then she was pretty sure that she'd heard him wrong. But then it sunk in that she had not, and the way that he said it was with such a lack of agenda and really just a sort of innocence that she thought only he was truly capable of.
As complex and complicated as he was, on some levels, he was also incredibly simple. She couldn't doubt his sincerity, especially not when he raised his eyes to hers and she felt something inside of her break a little.
So naturally, she inadvertently tried to ruin the moment. "If you think I'm perfect, that's just proof that you need to date around some."
He looked at her, glancing down at her chest like he had been about every five seconds, still as subtle as a horse, and then he met her eyes again before replying, "Wouldn't change anything."
"You say that now," she babbled. "But then you'd meet someone actually confident and... girly, and experienced and... seductive. Basically Natasha without the scariness. Then you'd see how ridiculous I actually am. I mean, I can't even -"
He shushed her with two long fingers against her lips, and he might have been on the verge of a slight smile, but it was hard to tell. Then the fingers slid beneath her chin, tipping her head back, and she closed her eyes as his lips brushed hers. Sometimes she was pretty sure that half of her problem was just talking too much.
The next few moments were a bit hazy, a mix of arms and lips and slow movements, marked by a mutual reluctance to let the moment end. But, it did end when Bucky unexpectedly drew away to grab her top, then returned to help pull it back over her head. His hands lingered after the top was back on, and every brush of his fingers and look he gave her was nothing short of torture.
But, soon enough, he was standing and helping her to her feet, and in comfortable silence, they made their way to the bathroom door. Bucky threw his shirt back on as she opened stepped back out to the main room, and then it was a silent walk back to bed. As if she had a single hope of sleeping after all of that.
She crawled into bed first, then watched as he followed, taking up the position she had gotten him in the habit of in the last few nights. But, tonight, she thought that a change was in order, despite how fond she'd grown of falling asleep on his chest.
"Let's switch." When he looked at her quizzically, she shrugged and laid down next to him, head propped on a few pillows, then motioned for him to come and lay at her side. He stared at her for a few seconds before making his awkward way there.
She hid a smile at the unsure way that he lowered himself down and paused, trying to figure out how to even mildly comfortably do what she was asking, but she guided him with a hand on his shoulder to lay his head on her chest, and he followed her lead. Then he struggled next with what to do with his metal hand, since he was laying on his right side and he needed to put it somewhere, and she almost rolled her eyes as she took it and then wrapped his arm over her waist. It did feel a bit like snuggling with a very large, limb-shaped, expensive toaster, but it was a part of him. And she really thought that he should have gotten the message that she was perfectly fine with it after she'd made him grope her with it. Which had been a very cold but pleasurable experience.
She ran her fingers soothingly through his hair, helping him to relax against her and trying to memorize how he felt when they were this close. Looking up at the ceiling, she released a sigh and said quietly, "I wish you would fall asleep with me."
"I can't," was his slightly feeble reply.
"I know. But it would be nice." As she let her fingers continue to play with his soft, inviting strands, she added, "I can't imagine how exhausted you are. Please try to sleep tomorrow night."
He remained silent, his breath a light tickle on skin that wasn't covered by her tank. "Is it the nightmares? Could you sleep if you didn't have them?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
Still wide awake and still keeping her eyes on the ceiling, Summer next said, "You know that all I know about you is what I read online when you first came to my house. I only looked to figure out who you were and what happened to you. After that I've avoided reading anything else because I wanted to hear it from you, not the Internet." When he said nothing, she added, "I'm not asking you to give me details or say anything you don't want to. I guess I just want to understand better."
Silence stretched for so long after she spoke that she was sure that she had said something wrong. But then, to her relief, he finally spoke.
"I can barely remember the... before I fell. There's bits and pieces but they don't really fit most of the time."
She blinked slowly, then asked, "What about after? Is it easier to remember?"
"Yes."
Then she furrowed her brows, contemplating something she had wondered about quite a bit in the past. "Did they take your memory... a lot? Was it just once?"
Another few moments of silence, and then Bucky replied, "It happened after every mission."
Every mission... over the course of at least five decades?
She swallowed and then asked quietly, "How?"
She could feel the tension growing in his body as he spoke, but the fact that he was speaking and opening up at all had to be a good thing.
"... A chair."
She braced herself for what he would say next, the two simple words sending a chill down her spine.
They spoke well into the middle of the night, conversing on a level that they never had before, and for the first time, Summer got a clear picture of why and how Bucky had come to be what he was. Some of it made her stomach churn and her heart hurt, but whatever discomfort it caused her had to cause at least tenfold within the man telling her. And that made every word he spoke, as wrenching as they were, all the more special, because of how much trust she knew that it took on his part to share them with her at all.
And when she did finally fall asleep, it was in his arms, for the last time in the foreseeable future.
A/N: *clears throat* So... dat frustration, right? And it's not over yet. *evil laughter* Anyway, my usual thanks to you wonderful readers, followers, reviewers, I love you all and I can't thank you enough for taking the time to read these gigantor chapters. I do have something slightly unusual to mention here today, and I really didn't want to, but I decided that it was best to go ahead and tell you guys about a guest "review" I got and subsequently deleted this last week. If you read Breath of Life, then you may know the slight bit of drama that occurred with a number of anon reviews posted by someone claiming that I'd stolen a story idea from someone else, that I needed to delete the story, blah blah, which of course was not true. I started moderating my anon reviews, and the same anon reviewer went on to try to post many more reviews where they claimed to be outraged and offended that Summer's grandmother is depicted as a Holocaust survivor (apparently that's offensive?), that there are tons of authors on this site that I've ripped off who are reporting me, that I need to delete all my work, blah blah blah, y'all get the point. This has continued on with this current story, and now this same "reviewer" has taken to posing as an admin in the hopes of scaring me away (which is hilarious). Here is what they submitted this week, completely unedited:
"Attention:Team Damon,
It has been reported that you have threatened authors and used their ideas for your own published work without their permission, resulting in willful dishonest behavior on this site and to the loyalty of your readers.
Conveying with other authors on this site and using their ideas is a form of misconduct for which you are making yourself a threat to any new authors. This is allowed on FF. Also, reports of you incorporating real life history has been issued. The Holocaust must be respected in all forms and with no involvement in fictional stories.
You are hereby warned to refrain from publishing work on this site, failure to do so shall evoke appropriate action.
You are further advised to remove all work without explanation. Removing this memo will display that you are dishonest to your readers and followers."
Why am I posting this? Well, besides to prove my lack of dishonesty and give you guys a good laugh, I'm doing it to go a step further for this person and make sure all of you see what they have to say, not just those of you who might take a look at the reviews page. First of all, I haven't copied anyone, and that should be abundantly clear by now, this far into the story. Secondly, there are no rules on this site stating that real life history can't be incorporated into stories. If that was the case, I wouldn't be able to mention Bucky or Steve's involvement with WWII in any capacity, since that was a real life event. And anyway, Summer's grandmother in this story serves as an example of strength and perseverance, partially through her status as a Holocaust survivor. It's not showing the event or the people it affected any disrespect, which is something I would never do, because I am not an evil, soulless person. I ain't Hydra. Thirdly, the fact that this person is now trying to fool me into thinking that an admin would leave an anonymously signed review to discuss problems with my work is frankly insulting to my intelligence. Yes, I have had to edit my work before due to copyright issues regarding use of song lyrics and lines from movie dialogue used in flashback scenes of some of my stories. And the folks that I dealt with on that issue, from a sort of watchdog community on FF that reports to admins on the subject of copyright infringement, were lovely, fair people, and it ended up being a positive experience. My case thread is still posted in their comm, btw, if anyone wants the link, message me and I'll send it. I'm not hiding anything over here. I have never, ever, stolen ideas from anyone. I posted song lyrics at times and quoted movies. Very different things. Both against the rules, as I found out, but nonetheless very different.
So, I pose a question to you (actual) readers and reviewers - if you all would prefer that I do not continue to censor this troll's comments for the sake of full disclosure, then I will not, and I'll stop moderating the reviews. I'm fine with that. I defer to your guys' wishes. Honestly, I hate giving this person a shred of attention, but I decided that enough was enough with this last one. I'm just here to vent my fandom feels, seriously. It's just fanfiction. It's supposed to be fun. People like this suck the fun out of it. Or they try to, anyway.
So let me know what you guys think, and thank you for sticking with me and following this story. Some of you have been following me for a long time, across several fandoms, and I am incredibly grateful for that. I'll see you guys in a week with another chapter :D And lest I forget, my equally huge and sincere thanks to midnightwings96 for being totally awesome and incredibly helpful and just the best. See you guys in a week :D (sorry for the rambling lol)