Summer awoke the next morning to the jarring sound of her phone alarm, ringing loudly from the table next to the bed and making her curse having stayed up so late the night before.
Alone in the bed, she half-fell out of it trying to grab the phone to make the horrible noise stop. Once she was finally successful, she let the phone drop to the bed and sat up, blinking heavily and rubbing at her eyes, while next to her in the other bed, her son did exactly the same thing, mirroring her perfectly.
As her brain slowly came back online, she registered the sound of the shower running in the bathroom, and then tried to piece together exactly why she felt like she'd only slept for maybe three hours at the most. It didn't take her long, and her eyes widened a little bit as the memories came flooding back - major half-naked making out on the bathroom floor, followed by a conversation that the word "heartbreaking" didn't do service to.
It was weird to want to blush and kind of want to cry at the same time. And way too early for either one.
Eventually, she dragged herself out of bed and started checking everything she'd repacked the day before, double checking that it was all where it was supposed to be. She was so wrapped up in trying to competently make sure that they were ready for the return trip home that she didn't hear Bucky emerge from the bathroom, didn't hear his admittedly silent footsteps behind her, and therefore almost jumped in surprise when a set of warm fingertips brushed her side and then slid across her lower back before disappearing. She looked up to see him walk past her, giving her a look that was altogether far too potent for seven in the morning, and she swallowed against her suddenly dry throat before turning back to her suitcase and trying to remember what she had been doing.
Oh, right. Going home and putting way too many miles between herself and the man who had sprung to life a whole family of butterflies in her belly with that one covert touch.
The last seven days had passed far too quickly and made too many things seem... deeper.
But, the morning left her little time to think much on those thoughts, and by the time she got herself and David dressed and ready, she realized that they were indeed missing a rather important item from their inventory.
"Tablet, tablet, tablet," she muttered to herself, zipping around the room looking for the thing that was instrumental in keeping David calm on a plane, but succeeding in only finding the charging cord. Then she stood in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, brows furrowed and thinking as both David and Bucky watched her with similarly blank expressions.
"Crap... where could it be? When was the last time he had it?" she half-whispered to herself, fully aware that she probably looked weird. Then her eyes lit up and she swung around. "Oh! Your apartment! We left it there!"
Bucky nodded, then stood up and grabbed her suitcase off of her bed. "Then let's go get it."
She nodded and grabbed her purse, figuring she'd catch a cab to the airport from Steve's place, and after one last sweep of the room, the three of them hustled out of there and on to the street.
As they walked down the street, Bucky carrying her luggage like any good gentleman from an era long passed, Summer held David close to her side by his hand and started to notice the protective way in which Bucky walked beside them. He stayed just slightly ahead of them, to her left side so that his left arm faced the world around them, and though his checks were subtle, she could see him constantly looking forward, backward, and all around, like he was waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows and try to take them down. Now that she thought of it, it was how he always walked with them.
Silently, she let her free hand fall away from holding her purse to her shoulder and let it find Bucky's right one. In light of his handy holographic cover being destroyed, he now wore a pair of black leather gloves whenever he was in public, so the cool material was what she felt on her skin as she laced her fingers with his and smiled as he looked down at her. He didn't smile back, but there was something in his eyes that made her think that he was liking her a whole lot more than she honestly ever thought he would. It was almost softness, something that one did not often catch a glimpse of in his often-chaotic eyes.
Their hands parted when they arrived at the apartment, which Bucky unlocked and then led them through. Then there was a loud crashing sound from the kitchen, and suddenly, for one very brief moment, everything moved very quickly.
At the sound, Bucky instantly threw Summer behind him with his left arm and seemed to tense in preparation for battle. Since the kitchen was right at the front of the unit, Summer could peer into it from behind Bucky's rather imposing figure, and after instinctively shielding David by covering his ears and holding him in a tight hug to her chest, she took a quick look. And what she saw was Steve Rogers, glancing their way with a horrified look on his face before quickly turning his back to them and furiously fumbling with... something. As she wondered what in the world was happening, Natasha's head materialized from right in front of where he'd been standing as she apparently rose up from the floor, and she was smiling and possibly discreetly swiping a finger against her lips, and suddenly Summer realized what they'd walked in on.
"Oh, sweet mother of... nope, no, not happening," she groaned to herself, turning around to hide her own embarrassment and shield David while Bucky relaxed but stared at the scene with an expression that gave away how utterly unimpressed he was. Natasha simply smiled at the intruders and casually leaned back against the counter while Steve finally turned around, which was also when Summer begrudgingly tried to turn back around herself.
"Hi!" Steve chirped, voice entirely too high and his smile entirely too wide. His face was also roughly the color of a strawberry, giving even Summer on her worst blushing day a run for her money. "I didn't think you guys would be here this early!"
"Obviously," Natasha added, smiling more when Steve winced a little at her interjection.
Summer smiled weakly at him, truly feeling his embarrassment, then glanced at Bucky, who looked a little confused at it all, but not because he misunderstood, since that was pretty much impossible. Desperate to put an end to the awkwardness, Summer matched Steve's high pitch and said, "Well, uh, I accidentally left David's tablet here yesterday, and -"
"Oh, right!" Steve half-exclaimed, still hilariously jumpy, opening one of the kitchen drawers and producing the thing. "Here. I found it last night and forgot about it, sorry."
He stepped forward to hand it to her, and she took it with a nod. "Oh it's fine, I understand. You're... busy." She cringed, then covered it up with a smile. "Thanks."
He smiled back. "No problem. So your flight leaves soon, right?"
She nodded, and a few minutes of desperate small talk ensued, where Steve tried to act as normal as possible and she tried to assure him through the pointless talk that nothing was weird at all. Bucky watched them go back and forth with an expression that said he thought they were both insane, between occasional, mildly loathsome glances at Natasha. In the midst of it all, the innocent and oblivious David simply stared and smiled up at his hero.
After the forced conversation was over, Steve excused himself for a moment, disappearing into the hallway of the now-completely furniture-free apartment. Summer shifted on her feet a bit, glancing up involuntarily at Natasha after a moment. The redhead gestured to a brown paper bag on the counter and asked, "Had breakfast yet?"
Summer opened her mouth to answer, but Bucky beat her to it, replying with something that was clearly in Russian. Then Natasha smirked and answered him in the same language, and Summer was utterly lost, looking between the two and feeling too American for her own good. But, if she had ever randomly pursued a career as a Russian interpreter, she would have known that Bucky's comment had been "Clearly you have," and that Natasha had shot back with "Jealous?".
Bucky made a face of distaste at Natasha and then turned away from her. Summer looked at the other woman in lingering confusion, and she simply smiled and gestured to the bag. "Muffins."
"Oh. Okay. Thanks," Summer nodded, pretty sure that the secret Russian conversation hadn't involved bakery items, but whatever. She'd always be a little clueless around these people, she had come to accept.
Thankfully, the odd get-together ended soon, with Steve re-emerging with a hat and jacket on, suggesting they all get her downstairs and into a cab before she missed her flight. She expected Natasha to stay behind, for some reason, but everybody tagged along out the door, and Summer felt the Twilight Zone feeling creeping back up on her.
Down on the street, Steve hailed a cab, then quickly began the process of telling David goodbye. Summer couldn't help but smile as she watched her son get to live out the ultimate childhood fanboy dream, and Steve was so genuine that she knew he didn't think it a burden or something he had to just endure. He seemed to have really grown a soft spot for her kid.
Bucky stood at her side, as always, and loaded her luggage into the trunk of the cab for her. Natasha was quiet, keeping an eye on things behind Steve, and after Steve finished hugging David goodbye, he straightened up and then immediately spotted a small group of kids staring at him from across the street. Summer followed his gaze, saw the kids and how they recognized him despite his brilliant hat disguise, and when she turned back around, Bucky and Natasha had vanished, seemingly into thin air.
She blinked in confusion, but then Steve was giving her a look that said "bear with me" just before he was promptly mauled by the kids.
Right. World's first superhero and major celebrity and all that.
She tried to slunk off a bit herself, and after Steve had graciously took pictures with the kids and signed all their stuff before sending them on their way, he turned back to her and shrugged. "Part of the job."
She smiled and nodded. "Yeah. It's easy to forget how huge you are now that I actually kinda know you."
"I take that as a compliment," he grinned.
"You should. I always used to wonder if you were really a jerk in real life," she rambled slightly, "and now I definitely know you aren't."
He laughed. "Glad I laid that idea to rest. Thanks again for coming out. I know traveling isn't easy for you."
"Thanks for making it happen at all," she replied. "I really do want to pay you back still."
He shook his head. "Nope."
She sighed, then was slightly surprised when he drew her in for a hug. Now she could say that Thor liked her cake and that Captain America had hugged her. Life was becoming ridiculous on a bizarrely awesome level.
Then something popped into her head just before the hug ended. "Can you try to make sure he starts sleeping?"
Steve drew away then, nodding to her. "Yeah. Don't worry about it. That's why I'm here."
She almost frowned at those simple words for how innocently profound they were. Bucky could literally be in no better hands.
It was then that she realized that both Bucky and Natasha had reappeared from whatever shadows they had been hiding in, and Steve took that as his cue to leave. "Well, have a safe flight. You've got my number if you ever need anything."
Summer nodded. "All right. Thanks again."
Steve smiled at her, giving David one last goodbye, and then he started heading back up to his empty apartment. Natasha followed him, though she gave Summer a look that was almost a fraction of a smile before saying, "See you around."
Summer suddenly remembered something. "Oh, your hair clip - do you want it back?"
Natasha shrugged from over her shoulder. "Nah. Keep it."
Summer nodded, glad that she didn't have to dig through her admittedly scary purse for it. Then she realized that only one person was left to say goodbye to.
She looked at Bucky, then David, then the waiting taxi, and suddenly it seemed a lot colder outside. She was at a loss for a moment, but then she gained some clarity and put a hand on David's little shoulder. "Time to tell Bucky goodbye, kiddo."
She thought it was funny that Bucky still appeared to panic a little wherever it came to either greeting or departing the boy. He looked at her in slight alarm, and she mouthed hug him with a small smile. He'd get the hang of having a little boy admirer one of these days, or at least she hoped that he would.
The hug was quick and sufficiently stiff, though not as much as previous ones, and she might have died a little when Bucky returned David's parting smile. Then she loaded David into the taxi, tossed her purse inside as well, and turned back around to face Bucky, feeling slightly nervous.
It only took one look in his eyes for it to hit her how much she really, really, did not want to say goodbye. It was like a rush of ice-cold water down her spine, and she genuinely shivered a little bit before sighing and trying to come up with something to say.
She settled on something that popped into her head at the last minute, while they'd been staring at each other in silence. Smiling uneasily, she said, "So. Since I'm leaving and all, how about a translation of that French stuff?"
His lips quirked up in a fleeting smile. "No."
She slouched her shoulders and rolled her eyes. "You're killing me here." When he didn't reply to that, opting instead to simply stare at her as if doing so would prolong her stay, she took a deep breath and reached out, pulling him into a tight hug.
Unlike some of their earliest embraces, there was no hesitation on his part to wrap his arms around her in turn. She closed her eyes at the comfort of the moment, feeling him breathe in the scent of her hair, wondering if she should have left him a bottle of her shampoo since he seemed to like it so much. Or maybe that would have been weird. Then again, last time they'd parted, she chopped off a piece of her hair and gave it to him, and that was probably weirder.
She would miss waking up every day knowing that she would get to see him. She would miss falling asleep on his chest, with the sounds of his arm whirring and clicking in one ear while his heartbeat thumped in her other. She could only hear the mechanical noises when the night was at its most quiet, as they were soft and easy to drown out, and it had become almost an almost lulling thing. Those sounds were soundtrack she couldn't hope to replicate at home without him.
He eased her hair back with one leather-covered hand and let his lips brush over her ear, and as her skin prickled in response, something occurred to her. Duh, she would miss him. That was obvious. She'd been missing him for nearly four months and now she was in for who knows how much longer of missing him. But was it wrong to want him to miss her just as much?
Drawing back a bit from their embrace, Summer looked up into his eyes and then down at his lips before placing one hand on his face and using the other to grip the collar of his jacket. Then she kissed him in a way that she hoped would leave a lasting impression. They had spent enough time in the last week doing this for her to know what he liked, what made noises pull from his throat, and what made his fingers tighten on her hips. A light, tingling scratch of her nails on the back of his neck, a firm swipe of her tongue against his, a little push of her hips into his, and he would groan in a way that made her want to slam her head into a wall. In a good way. And this time was no exception.
The taxi driver yelled just as they were on the verge of getting carried away, and Summer pulled away first, smiling at the interruption and feeling her breath leave her at the way Bucky was looking down at her. She kissed him again, more quickly this time, and murmured, "I'm gonna miss you even more this time."
He looked a bit pained when she said this, so she quickly added, "I want you to text me. A lot. I don't care what about. You can tell me what you had for breakfast for all I care. I just want to hear from you, okay?" He nodded. "And I want you to try to sleep. You can't live off of two hours every night forever. Eventually you'll just... shut down, or lose it, or..."
He kissed her, ending her sentence, and then brushed his lips against her ear again before murmuring quietly, "Stay safe."
She nodded. "I will "
"I mean it."
She looked up then, seeing the resolve behind his words, and she nodded again. "Okay."
Then he kissed her again, and the cabbie yelled again. She smiled and broke away. "I'm gonna miss my flight."
He nodded, but he didn't let her go, and she didn't want him to. She embraced him one more time, and just before she could tear herself away from his arms, his lips brushed hers in a soft, gentle kiss, and as it sent flutters through her middle, she knew it was the kiss she wanted to end the week with.
Her forehead gently leaning against his, she looked up at him and half-whispered another goodbye. He nodded, his jaw tight, and finally, he let her go. As she stepped backwards towards the car, she smiled and said, "I'm serious about the texting thing."
He didn't answer, instead shoving his hands inside his pockets as he watched her slide into the cab. All too soon, she had shut the door, and after she locked her seatbelt into place, she met his gaze once more, through the window. This time, it physically hurt put distance back between them. His eyes didn't leave hers until the cranky driver hit the gas and got them on the road.
After he had disappeared from her sight, she sighed and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. As much as she had prepared for it, walking away from him had ended up being a heck of a lot harder than watching him walk away from her.
The sound of sniffling pulled her out of her thoughts. She looked at her side and saw David's shoulders trembling slightly as he stared at the tablet in his hands, and her eyes widened as she automatically reached an arm around him. "Hey, what's wrong?"
He snuggled into her side, crying softly, and she could only assume that he was sad to be going home following his dream week. Hoping it wouldn't turn into a full-fledged meltdown, she held him close and soothed him in her best comforting mom-voice, watching the city pass them by and wondering, for just the shortest of moments, if maybe she really could consider coming here to live.
But the thought was short-lived. David's crying stopped before they reached the airport, and she supposed that it was the start to everything officially going back to normal.
And she had a bad feeling that normal wouldn't quite cut it anymore.
Bucky watched the cab disappear among identical vehicles as they cruised down the street, staring at the point where it had vanished until a sleek, long, black car slid to a smooth halt directly in front of where he was standing.
His attention snapped to the car, eyeing it suspiciously, until a hand lightly clapped his shoulder from behind. He turned to find Steve gesturing to the car. "Ready?"
Bucky nodded, taking a step back and waiting for Steve and Natasha to enter the vehicle first. She took the front seat, Steve took the back, and then Bucky sat next to him, closing the door and crossing his arms as the car started back up. He stared at the driver, some nondescript guy in a suit, and he found that he was not fond of being driven in a car by a stranger, regardless of if he knew who had sent the man or not.
"So, to warn you," Steve began as the car began its trek through the city, "Stark has this... artificial intelligence. It runs the tower, and it talks constantly and knows who everybody is, asks you questions, anything you can imagine. Nobody warned me my first time there, so I kind of... got scared the first time I heard it."
"Which was classic," Natasha added from the front seat.
"I'm sure," Steve rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I'm just giving you a heads up."
Bucky nodded, more concerned with other thoughts like if if was really a good idea to be living in a tower owned by a man whose parents he had personally murdered years ago. He understood that logically, as Steve had explained days earlier, the tower was the most secure building in the city, an ideal place for them to live and use as a base during the hunt for HYDRA, but that didn't help Bucky understand why Stark would allow him to stay there in the first place. He had never even met the man, but surely Stark knew what Bucky had done.
"You know," Steve added, "if she came around to the idea, I could ask Stark for a favor and see if he could get Summer a job. He's got tons of employees, and I'm sure he could find her something. Then she could move here. If she wanted to."
Bucky side-glanced at him, and before he could reply, Natasha sighed and asked, "Really, Steve?"
"What?" he asked with a shrug.
"You might want to stop and think first before you put a single mother and her little boy directly in the middle of all of this."
"It would be her decision. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything," Steve replied.
"All I'm saying is that she might be better off where she is."
Bucky glanced at Steve, wishing that the woman in the front seat would just go away with her inconvenient truths and willingness to speak them.
It was awhile before Bucky spoke, but eventually, he did. "She isn't safe there."
"She's safer there than she would be here," Natasha replied.
Steve sighed, interjecting, "Look, in the end, it's up to her. I've still got her house being watched. HYDRA's not gonna get to her."
Bucky wished he could believe that, but unfortunately, he found it hard to believe that anyone - himself included - was truly safe from HYDRA. But before he could express that, everything suddenly got rather dark, and he realized that they'd driven underground.
He tensed with an immediate sense of claustrophobia and unease, which Steve noticed. "It's all right. We're going in from under. It's the least conspicuous way in."
They drove through a tiny tunnel that led to another one, then another one, and eventually opened to an equally tiny clearing that contained only a lone set of metal doors. Still feeling distinctly on edge, Bucky's eyes swept over the dark cavern as the others filed out of the car, lingering behind them as they all walked to the doors, which apparently housed an elevator.
He was about one second from jumping back into the car and hightailing it out of there when the doors opened with a ding and a mechanic, distinctly British, voice sounded from within. "Welcome back Captain Rogers, Ms. Romanoff."
Bucky's eyes widened a little, but having been prepared for it, his mostly boring reaction to the AI left Natasha a bit disappointed that he hadn't jumped and yelped the way that Steve had his first time hearing it.
"JARVIS," Steve replied, returning the disembodied voice's greeting as he stepped into the elevator. Natasha followed, then the driver, and once Bucky got inside, the doors closed and the smooth ride up began.
"Good morning, Sergeant Barnes. My name is JARVIS and I will assist you in any way that I can during your stay here at Stark Tower."
Bucky looked up at the elevator roof narrowing his eyes slightly as Natasha grinned next to him. "Is it... an electronic butler, or..."
"Not exactly, sir. I run the security and communications within the building, and I have many other functions that I do not have time to list during this elevator ride."
At his lingering confused expression, Steve nudged Bucky and said, "In other words, he can't bring you a drink, but he'll tell you where to go find one."
"Essentially correct, Captain."
Masking how bizarre he thought it was, Bucky nodded and kept his features as blank as possible. A slight glance to his left alerted him to the driver watching him from the corner of his eye. He then turned his head fully towards the man and stared at him, almost enjoying the way the driver tensed just enough to be noticeable and swallowed nervously.
Then the doors dinged open, and before them was a sprawling, open room, filled with very modern couches and chairs and a paper-thin television the size of a theater screen. The walls were nearly all made of windows, and all at once, it felt too open and too closed. It was as strange as the robotic voice currently explaining to them that this was the floor that Tony Stark had ordered to be prepared for Steve and himself.
He followed Steve out of the elevator, stepping out on to the smooth flooring and looking to his right, seeing a rather large kitchen area there, all stainless steel and marble counters and weird gadgets whose functions he was clueless of. Ahead, on either side of the room, were two hallways, which presumably led to bedrooms that would probably be equally as weird as this room.
He ended up wandering to the windows, stopping just short of them and staring out at the city laid out before his eyes. It was so enormous, so huge, so different from what little could remember of it, just like everything else. It was one thing seeing it from the window of the apartment he'd just left and quite another to see it like this. But, something from somewhere inside his head told him that this was not the first time he was seeing the city like this, that he had seen it in its current state before, also from a high vantage point, but he actively tried to repress the burgeoning memory. Whatever it was, wherever it was from, he didn't want it.
Then there was the sound of the elevator dinging again, and an energetic, unfamiliar male voice filled his ears.
"Ah, Capsicle! You made it! Hey, Red. Didn't know you were tagging along."
"I'm not staying. Not yet anyway."
"Bummer. So, how come nobody called me during that mess in D.C.? Everybody forget about me? I could have helped."
Bucky tensed slightly as he listened to the conversations carrying on behind him, but he kept his eyes on the city.
"Well, no offense," Steve answered, "but I didn't know who to trust. It was a... rough week."
"Well, no HYDRA here. Not anymore, anyway. Found out I had a few rats on the payroll here, but the FBI's got 'em now. Did JARVIS give you the grand tour yet? Where's... oh. There he is."
Since the room had suddenly gone dead silent and Bucky could feel three pairs of eyes on him, he finally turned around. When his eyes landed on Tony Stark, his blood ran cold. It was like staring at a ghost, one that he was personally responsible for, and not one that he had any interest in facing.
For his part, Tony didn't seem any more fond of the moment. His previously jovial expression fell instantly into a blank, mildly vacant stare. It wasn't hostile or hateful, simply empty, and Steve was glancing back and forth nervously between the two men.
"Remember, Stark," Natasha said, breaking the silence, "it's no different from what happened to Barton."
If Bucky had known who and what she was referring to, he would have known that she was, in her own way, sticking up for him, but as he didn't, the words went over his head.
"Yeah," Tony said, his stare unbroken. "Except Clint didn't kill my parents."
In some bizarre, nonsensical way, Bucky was almost relieved at the words being said out loud. Nothing was worse than being tiptoed around. Clearly, Stark wasn't one to tiptoe.
Finally, Tony exhaled and looked away, raking a hand through his hair. "Well. Now I need a drink. Anyone else want one?"
"It's... nine in the morning," Steve pointed out.
"Perfect time for orphans housing their parents' brainwashed killer to drink," Tony replied, heading for the elevator. "JARVIS, give them the tour."
And then, as soon as he'd come, he was gone. Steve let out a sigh, and Natasha shrugged. "That went well, considering," she said.
"Who's Barton?" Bucky asked, trying to process the last few moments.
"Clint Barton's an agent who was brainwashed into fighting against us during the invasion of New York a few years ago," Natasha replied. "And a friend."
When Bucky seemed to want to ask more but didn't, Steve supplied, "He's better now. But it took him time."
Bucky nodded, knowing that Steve was trying to be helpful, and that even Natasha was. While one part of him was grateful, another part simply wanted, needed, to be alone now.
The strange British robot voice seemed to sense this. "Shall I begin the tour?"
Bucky's room ended up being way too large and way too open, one wall being made entirely of window, similar to the common room. He felt on edge the minute he walked into the room. What few belongings he had were in boxes, sitting innocently on the floor and waiting to be unpacked, all but swallowed up in the room's vastness.
Summer's home was relatively small, and Steve's apartment had been almost tiny. This one room was bigger than the entire apartment, and he stood there in the middle of it, scowling about this fact for longer than he cared to quantify. He supposed that he was used to living in small spaces. Since he'd lived in a cryo chamber for most of the last seventy years.
His breathing picking up a bit, he sat down on the edge of the bed - which was also huge - and closed his eyes, trying to recall what Dr. Connor said to do when he started feeling like this. Breathe. Focus on one thing at a time. Let the moment pass. Everything passes. Remain in control.
And that was how Steve found him, sitting uncomfortably straight on the edge of the bed, eyes closed and brows furrowed as he breathed in and breathed out. He tried to back away and make a silent exit, but Bucky had heard him approach before he'd even peeked inside the room.
"What?"
Steve stilled halfway out the door, eyes widening slightly in surprise. "Oh. Sorry. I uh... are you okay?"
How he was starting to loathe that question. Of course he wasn't, and who knew when he would be? "The room's too big."
Steve looked around and then inclined his head. "Yeah, it's pretty big. I can see if there's a smaller one we can move you into, or -"
"The very last room at the end of this hallway is approximately half the size of this one, sir," JARVIS helpfully supplied from overhead.
Steve smiled. "Well then. Want to go?"
Bucky nodded and stood, then frowned at the ceiling and asked, "Is there a way to turn that thing off?"
"Only Mr. Stark can turn me off, Sergeant, but if you would prefer, I can adhere to the 'speak when spoken to' protocol in your room."
"Yeah. Do that," Bucky said, looking around, trying to pinpoint where exactly the thing's speakers were.
"Certainly, sir."
"And don't call me Sergeant."
"Would Mr. Barnes be more to your liking?"
"... I guess."
The room at the end of the hallway ended up being much better than the first one, and he didn't have to fight to breathe normally within it. By the time that he was settled in and alone once more, he found himself sitting on the edge of another bed, a slightly smaller one, and as he wondered exactly what would happened now, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. His gloves, which he hadn't thought to take off yet, got slightly in the way as he reached for it, so he discarded them first before pulling the phone free and looking at the screen.
Landed safely. Miss me yet?
He stared at the text, panicking a little bit at the prospect of having to send something back. But, this was apparently how he was going to keep in touch with her, and he was going to have to figure it out.
What would he say if she were in front of him, asking him this question? He thought for a moment, then realized he wouldn't say anything at all. He would grab her and kiss her. And that was not helpful to his current predicament.
After staring blankly at his phone for an embarrassingly long time, he eventually managed to type out a single underwhelming word in response with his one hand that the touchscreen would cooperate with. Yes.
He immediately winced after he sent it. Even for an out of touch ex-assassin who had never texted before, he knew it was a terrible reply, but words weren't exactly his strong suit. This may end up being harder than he originally anticipated.
Then she replied, with one word of her own - Good. Then he squinted, examining the text more closely. Was that... a tiny yellow face blowing a kiss?
Then the phone buzzed again. I miss you too. After that, his eyes darted back to the little kissy face symbol, and as he continued to analyze it, a small smile bloomed across his lips.
She was ridiculous. And he really did miss her already.
A day later, across the country in California, a pale, red-haired doctor named Paul McAdams was trying his best to pry his two-year-old twin girls from his legs so that he could successfully escape his zoo of a house for a 24 hour shift at the city hospital. They giggled and only held on tighter the more he protested, taking ridiculously slow steps across his bedroom floor, looking at his wife sitting in front of her laptop and pleading, "Sarah! Help! These little boogers won't let go!"
"Welcome to my world," she replied with disinterest, scrolling through what he could see was some celebrity gossip site or another. "Ew. I can't believe I ever had a crush on John Travolta."
Paul rolled his eyes, trying to shake one girl off his legs and succeeding only in making her and her twin laugh all the more. "Who cares about John Travolta? Well, guess I'm just gonna have to stick these kids in a backpack and take them with me around all those sick, sneezing, coughing people..."
"Uh huh, sure."
Sighing again, Paul rolled his eyes and looked down at the girls. "I'll bring home candy tomorrow if you guys let go."
Immediately, the little girls released their death grips on his legs and reached up to give him hugs goodbye. After smushing them to death with hugs and kisses, he hurried across the room to kiss his wife goodbye.
"Why can't Captain America turn up here in Cali?" Sarah mused as he kissed her on the cheek, glancing at her laptop screen. There was a set of photos with headlines exclaiming that Cap was spotted in NYC the previous morning, and that it appeared that he'd found himself a girlfriend.
"Aw, Cap found a girl," Paul said, watching her scroll down. "You know they say that he's a... 95 year old... vir-... what the hell?!"
"What?"
Suddenly, Paul's hand sprang forward and batted hers away from the touchpad, then frantically scrolled up on a picture Sarah had just passed. It was a picture of the superhero signing stuff for fans, one clearly taken by one of the fans due to how close the photo was, and behind the Captain was a woman and a little boy. The image was a bit blurry, but the two figures were extremely familiar.
Stabbing at the left button, he quickly scrolled down to the picture of the woman hugging him, which was a much clearer picture, and his jaw dropped upon further inspection.
Sarah leaned in closer to the screen and widened her eyes. "That looks like... is that... your sister?"
He couldn't reply, because his jaw was still quite on the floor and was possibly stuck there forever. Yes, there was a lot of moderately tall brunette women in the world, but there was no mistaking who he was looking at. He was looking at his sister hugging Steve Rogers. His sister, who had just spent a week in New York visiting a semi-boyfriend that she refused to name and was incredibly secretive about. Suddenly, it all made sense.
And that phone call from two nights before where she had made some extremely disconcerting noises while trying to get off the phone as quickly as possible was now at least ten times more disturbing now that he had the name that would be going on the tombstone.
"How did she even meet him?" Sarah marveled. "And why wouldn't she tell you about him? I am so confused."
Taking out his phone and hurriedly looking up the photos on his mobile browser so that he could send them to the sister in question, Paul declared, "Oh, Summer. You are so... incredibly... busted."
Summer brought two things home with her from New York: a week's worth of memories that made her brain melt, and, thanks to the festering, germy cesspools of pestilence that were commercial airplanes, a raging case of the flu that she almost immediately passed to David. As a result, she spent her first morning that she woke up back in her own bed trying not to vomit and laying half-dead in it with her equally miserable little boy while they watched Disney movies.
She had awoken to the sound of an incoming text, which was from Bucky, whose sense of humor was apparently growing a bit. He'd sent her a very detailed description of what he'd had for breakfast, and it had made her smile and laugh before puking into the bowl she had next to her bed.
So much for the flu shot she'd gotten two months ago.
Since then, she had been in and out of it, forcing herself to get up and do the things she had nobody else to help her with, like wash out the gross bowl and get bottles of water from the fridge, then crawl back into bed and spend the next hour recovering from her efforts. Currently, she was half-watching Aladdin and mentally vowing to bathe in hand sanitizer the next time she travelled, and the pain in her head multiplied when her brother's ringtone blared in her ear.
Answering the call and draping the phone over her ear, she groaned incoherently. "Hnnngghhh."
"You are busted. Busted. You hear me? Busted."
"Okay, I'm busted. Now can I hang up and go back to dying in peace?"
"What's wrong with you? You sound like death."
"Flu," she muttered miserably.
"Oh. Fun. Well, anyway, you're busted."
"Cool."
"Do you realize that there's pictures on the Internet of you hugging your secret boyfriend in front of a cab in New York City?"
Her eyes shot fully open, and for a moment, the flu could just go to hell. She shot up with a rush of panicked adrenaline and half-yelled, "What?!"
"Yep. Ergo, busted."
She blinked rapidly, trying to make her brain function through the sudden panic and the giant headache she'd already had. "Uh..."
... Why would pictures of her and Bucky be all over the Internet? He'd been covered up. Not a single picture or lead from him had turned up online since he'd first showed up at her doorstep (and she had checked many times), so why suddenly now? Who could have recognized him?
"Why on earth did you think you had to hide dating Captain America from me?"
She blinked.
Oh.
Crap.
Well, at least that made more sense. Except whoever had snapped the photos - probably one of those kids who had been mauling Steve - must have missed when she'd had her tongue down Bucky's throat in literally the exact same spot only a few minutes later.
"Hellooo?"
She sighed, flopping back down to the bed. "I am not dating Captain America."
"Really, Summer? I have photographic evidence. You can't lie your way out of this one."
"Since when does a hug automatically mean dating?"
"It doesn't. Your secrecy and weirdness plus the hug means dating."
She groaned. "I'm not dating him."
"So you just ran into him on the street and said 'oh, Cap, you're my hero!' and decided to hug it out?"
"Maybe."
"All right. I'm putting my foot down. You've got to give me something here. Come on. You owe me that much."
She shook her head, realizing that he was right, to a point. She had to tell him something now. But she still couldn't tell him everything. "Fine. I'm dating his friend."
"Summer..."
"I'm telling the truth," she muttered. "I am."
"If that's true then why wouldn't you just tell me that to begin with?!"
She paused. "Because he's a... complicated friend."
"Famous friend?"
She hesitated. "Uh..."
"Thor? That guy with the wings? Tony Stark? The dude with the arrows? My God, if you're dating the Hulk -"
"None of them," she replied.
"Then who?!"
"I still can't tell you."
The muffled sound that she heard across the line sounded like Paul tearing his hair out. "I'm seriously about to freak out. How did you even meet this guy? And Captain America? What the hell?!"
"It's a long story."
"So?!"
She sighed and tried to sink down far enough into the bed in the hopes that it would swallow her up and give her an excuse to hang up. "I told you, I can't tell you much yet."
"Yeah, well, I think it's time to spill."
She paused, nausea creeping back up her throat. She swallowed it down but scooted closer to the edge of the bed closest to the bowl on the floor. "I'm dating a guy who happens to be friends with Steve Rogers. But it's complicated and I can't tell you everything yet. And you need to trust me and leave me alone about it."
"What, is he a spy or something? Is that why you won't tell me?"
"Maybe. Would that make you calm down and understand?"
"No. I don't want you dating a spy!"
She growled in frustration. "You're making my headache worse."
"How old is he?"
She stared for a moment. Of course, he was technically nearing 100 in a few years, but what was he in terms of actually lived years? "Twenty... eight... ish?" she guessed, basing her answer purely off looks because she had no clue how to calculate the actual answer.
"You don't even know how old he is?"
"I'm hanging up," she muttered, fighting another wave of nausea.
"Yeah, okay. Just keep in mind that the Internet thinks you're Captain America's mysterious new love interest."
Yep. Definitely gonna puke any minute. "Screw me."
"I hope he didn't. Whoever you're actually with."
She shook her head. "Not yet. Put your shotgun away."
He made a scoffing sound. "Oh no. Shotgun is permanently out now. How did you even get yourself into this situation?"
"I don't know," she half-wailed before succumbing to the nausea and throwing up again.
"Sure it's the flu and not morning sickness?"
Narrowing her eyes as she tried to catch her breath, she shakily held the phone to ear and muttered, "Go jump off a cliff."
For the first time during the conversation, Paul laughed. "You seriously sound like such hell."
"You're making it worse."
"Fine, I'll let you go. But my interrogation isn't over. Not by a longshot. I'm getting to the bottom of this."
She really hoped not. The truth wouldn't be all that hard to figure out. There was more than enough online about the mysterious and, according to those infamous leaked SHIELD/HYDRA files, not-dead Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier to figure out that he certainly fit the description of a complicated friend of Steve's.
After hanging up at last, Summer groaned and curled up into a ball under the covers. If she turned into some kind of Internet celebrity from all of this, she'd give herself permission to melt down then. She didn't have the energy to do it now.
She did, however, Google the photos, cringe at the highly presumptuous headlines, and then burrow back into her cocoon of covers with a miserable groan.
"Well. That's awkward."
Steve, chewing a very loud mouthful of a cereal so fortified with protein that it made cardboard look appealing, leaned forward across the table and peered down at the phone that Natasha had just slid to him. She watched in amusement as his eyebrows slowly rose up as he scrolled down.
"So I hug someone and that automatically means we're in a relationship," Steve sighed, swallowing and pushing the phone back to her.
"Of course," Natasha grinned. "And your adoring fans don't even know her name yet, but they're already posting death threats addressed to her."
He almost choked. "Death threats?"
"Mmhmm. If you kept up with your legion of female fans, you'd know that this isn't out of the ordinary. They're very specific about who they would approve you being in a relationship with. And they get very offended if a rumor pops up of you being with an undesireable."
Steve looked a little dumbfounded before eventually asking, "But they don't have her name?" When Natasha nodded, he added, "Good."
"Where's your trusty sidekick? Still in his room?" Natasha asked, leaning back in her seat.
"No, he woke up before me. I heard JARVIS telling him where the gym was so I assume that's where he is."
"Your assumption is correct, sir," JARVIS unexpectedly confirmed, and Steve jumped a little bit with his spoon halfway to his mouth.
Natasha smirked gleefully. "All this time and JARVIS still manages to startle you?"
Steve sighed and muttered, "Some things never stop being weird."
Her brief silence agreed with his statement. "He seems to be adjusting well to modern technology. Probably better than you did."
"I figured he would," Steve shrugged. "He liked that stuff when we were kids. Science and inventions, that sort of thing."
"While you doodled in your notebooks?" she asked with a small smile.
"Yep," Steve smiled back. Then he looked down, smile fading as he said, "I hope he doesn't mind the pictures."
"What pictures?"
They both looked up to see the man in question entering the common area, the damp state of his hair and clothes giving away just how long he'd been killing time at the gym. Steve had expected him to stay holed up in his room for at least a week before exploring the full contents of their floor, but apparently he'd been quite wrong about that.
"These pictures," Natasha replied, tossing her phone across the room towards him. He caught it effortlessly with his right hand.
His expression remained blank but darkened ever so slightly as he scrolled through the photos. After a few minutes where nobody spoke, he looked up and asked, "Her name... do they..."
"No," Steve assured him. "And they won't get it. Don't worry about it. Everyone will forget about the pictures in a few days. And the good thing is you're not in any of them."
Bucky nodded, tossed the phone back to Natasha, then made a beeline for his room.
Steve glanced at Natasha, then shrugged. "Well. Guess I had nothing to worry about."
But, after Bucky made the short trek to the end of the hall and shut his door behind him, he perched on the foot of his bed and felt... strange. At first he couldn't figure out exactly what the feeling was. It wasn't jealousy, because he had no reason to be jealous. No, it was something less intense than that, something... annoying.
There it was. He was annoyed.
He grabbed his phone and saw that Summer had already texted him about the issue. Seen the pictures yet?
As was becoming the norm, his reply was underwhelming. Yep.
But a simple "yep" wasn't good enough. Something else was trying to form into a coherent thought, a string of words that would express the odd things that he was feeling in that moment,
She lived in seclusion, yes, and her life in Virginia was fairly sheltered thanks to her son and his situation. But she would encounter other men from time to time. Whether she acknowledged it or noticed it at all, some of those men would find her attractive. For whatever reason, seeing a photo of the entirely non-threatening Steve hugging her had made him realize this.
Maybe she'd encounter a man who had all of his limbs and memories intact and didn't live in fear of accidentally killing her if he got too carried away with her. Maybe meeting such a man would make her realize how stupid she had been to get involved with Bucky in the first place.
And it was this idea that led Bucky to another sudden realization. If he was Steve, he would probably accept such a scenario due to the fact that the woman in question would be much safer and probably happier with someone simple and uncomplicated, and thus let her go, maybe even encourage her to go. He was selfless like that.
And maybe, in other situations, Bucky would be selfless too. Maybe even in most, though he really had no idea yet. But, when it came to this particular situation and this particular hypothetical scenario, and this particular woman, he realized that he was actually quite selfish.
He barely noticed his right hand typing out a new, short text and then hitting send, too busy trying not to be startled at the thoughts suddenly rattling through his head. It probably wasn't normal to want to go march into her house down in Virginia, throw her over his shoulder and then hide her away from the rest of the male population in his room like a caveman. Or was it? Was this how he had felt before over girls that he liked, back before everything went to hell? Was it a major overreaction, considering the fact that he didn't currently have competition for her affections?
Or maybe it was just that night in the hotel bathroom continuing to wreak havoc with his brain and... other things.
He ran his metal hand through his hair, phone dangling from his other one not particularly enjoying this form of torture. At first, it had been an exquisite relief to reclaim his physical instincts, desires that had been beyond his reach and denied him for decades, and it had been an awakening as significant as any other. But now, after just a week spent in her company, and that one particular night, it was as painful and frustrating as it was pleasant. More so now that she was gone.
He needed to figure out a way to get her to New York, permanently. For a lot of reasons. The only question was how.
After reading Bucky's eloquent "yep" response, Summer reminded herself to be patient with him and his texts as she sat up and forced herself to take a few sips of water. David was knocked out next to her on the bed, thanks to medicine, and she felt her own dose start kicking in after she laid back down and closed her eyes. Sleeping seemed like a great idea, especially after she'd made the mistake of going back to the Internet and reading the comments currently posted on the sites her picture with Steve was posted on.
Apparently, she was fat, ugly, old (old?!), wholly unworthy to even breathe the same air as Captain America, and needed to do the world a favor and kill herself. And those were some of the milder comments.
Not that she took it personally. She knew how girls were, specifically the ones who fixated over unattainable men and went way overboard with it online. But it wasn't exactly a confidence booster either.
Her phone buzzed, and she opened slightly bleary eyes to swipe her lock screen and read it. She had to blink away her suddenly blurry vision a few times to get a clear view of the two-word text.
You're mine.
The electric little flutters that shot through her stomach made it hurt a little bit more than it already was, but the pain was totally worth it. She read over the two simple words as many times as it took for the message to fully sink in, and when it did, she couldn't help but grin.
She was friends with Captain America. Natasha Romanoff's hair clip was in her purse. Thor complimented her on her cake-making skills. And a disgustingly attractive soldier/war hero/recovering assassin with eyes like two hurricanes had just sent her a text expressing a level of possessiveness that was as awesome as it was brand new.
In other words, she had the life that all of those angry Internet girls could only wish for.
And she was his.
Her reply text encompassed exactly how she felt in that moment. Hell yeah.
A/N: Okay, first of all, you guys are the best. Thank you guys so much for this week's reviews and your support! It means so much to me, and I am incredibly grateful to have awesome readers like you. You're just the best. :D Not much else to say today because I'm super busy, but I wanted to make sure I got this update out, so let me know what you guys think, and as always, big hugs and love from me :D see you all next week :D