45 days later
"So," Dr. Connor said, glancing at his notes that lay on his desk, "tomorrow you leave for D.C.."
Bucky nodded, unconsciously tapping his foot against the floor. The doctor now made house calls twice a week, and their sessions took place in an unoccupied office space near the basement level of Stark Tower. It was better than a closed butcher shop, if nothing else.
"Are you anxious about your first mission since remembering yourself?"
"No," Bucky lied, the foot tapping alone a giveaway of his dishonesty.
"Not anxious at all?"
Bucky withheld a burdened sigh and muttered, "I know you don't approve. There's no point in talking about it."
"It's not that I disapprove," the doctor said with a slight shake of his head. "I am simply... concerned that perhaps it would be best if you had a bit more time to prepare."
"I've been preparing for six months. I have been sitting around every day, talking to you twice a week, waiting for this to finally happen," Bucky pointed out. "There's no point in sitting around and waiting longer. I'm sick of it."
"I don't doubt it, but I don't want you going into this situation with unrealistic expectations of yourself."
Bucky scoffed, something he wouldn't have done a few months ago. These days, he didn't hesitate to express his annoyance or frustration with the well-meaning therapist in sometimes colorful ways. "Like what?"
"Well, firstly, you have to realize that this mission places you in a vulnerable position. You recall the last mission that you undertook, when you were still under HYDRA's control."
Bucky blinked and narrowed his eyes a little. "What's that have to do with -"
"Returning to the field places you in danger of temporarily reverting back to a state that would not be productive to your recovery."
"You think I'm gonna snap and forget everything again."
"No," the doctor shook his head. "I didn't say that. But the potential triggers you may encounter could affect your judgment and ability to think clearly. I want you to have a clear plan in place for what to do if this happens. You need to be able to take yourself out of the situation as quickly as possible." When Bucky had nothing to say to this, he added, "Consider for a moment if, after entering the location, you find a room containing equipment similar to the kind they used to maintain you and wipe your memories. What do you think your reaction would be?"
Bucky looked away for a moment. Pure, unadulterated, unchecked rage would be the most accurate answer, if he had to guess. "What's your point?"
"My point is, you should not underestimate the dangers of what you're about to do."
A moment passed where Bucky mulled over the doctor's words, unable to ignore the truth of them but finding a different truth to be of higher importance. "I don't know how to do anything else."
The doctor nodded. "Yes."
"And I want revenge."
"Of course."
"So I have to do this."
The doctor nodded. "And I understand that. But your revenge has to come second to the mission's objectives. You cannot forget that."
"I know," Bucky muttered in annoyance.
A brief silence passed, and then the doctor said, "I also want you to be sure to give yourself a break should something happen that you cannot control. This is a very serious situation and though you are currently quite stable and doing well, the balance is very delicate. And there's nothing wrong with that. Take this mission as a trial run."
Bucky nodded, his foot returning to mindlessly tapping on the floor.
"And I want you to take sleep meds the night before." Bucky opened his mouth to protest immediately, but the doctor raised his hand and added, "Two to four hours of sleep each night is not sufficient if you are going into the field. It isn't sufficient period, but it is especially dangerous for such a high-stress situation."
"The pills don't even work."
"There was one kind that did."
Bucky's eyes widened by a fraction. "They made the nightmares worse."
"I know. But I'm afraid it's worth the risk this time. I want you to take a dose the night before the mission."
Bucky's expression darkened and he tightened his jaw. That was not going to happen. The old man had no idea what those dreams had been like and therefore could shove that particular suggestion.
"Now," Dr. Connor sighed leaning back in his seat, "on a lighter note, can I safely assume that you will be paying your girlfriend a visit while you're in the area?"
Bucky blinked at the word "girlfriend", the weirdly juvenile connotation to it suddenly making him feel like he was sixteen at a soda fountain with some giggling girl. Then he blinked again, wondering where that particular thought came from. "Yeah."
"And how is that going?"
"It would be better if she lived here."
"But it's going well?"
Bucky shrugged to the affirmative. He'd had over a month to get used to texting as a means of keeping in touch with her daily, and it was still weird, but the alternative - talking on the phone - made him want to panic if he considered it. And apparently the feeling was mutual. So, they stuck to texting, and he nearly always let her pick what they spoke about. Topics ranged from the mundane to strange (what the hell were Internet memes and why did she think an angry cat was so amazing?) to mildly titillating, but the conversations spanned his full day and gave him something to do and enjoy free of pressure.
Then, a few weeks after she went back home, he worked up the nerve to badger her into sending him a picture. She spent the better part of the day protesting before finally giving in, sending a picture of herself with her face hidden behind her hand. He didn't complain because he could see her smiling behind her fingers, and when she tried to make him send one back, he got out of it by claiming that doing so would be a security risk, and she unhappily gave up after awhile.
And she still bugged him for a French-to-English translation at least once a week. He still wouldn't give it.
Maybe he finally would, after surprising her with his visit the next day.
"Do you have any questions or concerns you'd like to share?" Dr. Connor asked, straightening up his notes. "These next few days will be a pretty big step for you."
Bucky stared at the man for a moment and then asked quietly, "Do you think I'm gonna screw it up?"
The doctor drew a breath and replied, "I think that as long as you pay close attention to yourself and your reactions during the mission, and remember what you've learned during our sessions, you will do just fine. Better than fine, if your skills are what your files say they are."
Dr. Connor smiled at the last part, but Bucky's expression remained serious as he said, "I can tell Steve's afraid of me losing it or not being able to handle it. I don't think he wants me to go at all."
"I have no doubt that he is reluctant to see you face HYDRA," the doctor agreed. "But put yourself in his shoes. The last time the two of you were on a mission together, against the very same enemy, to be blunt, he watched you die."
Uncomfortably vivid flashes of that very moment raced behind his eyes, but Bucky forced them away as he glanced down at the floor. "I have to do it."
"And surely he understands that. Otherwise he would have objected to your coming along."
Bucky nodded, and both men sat in silence for a few moments. Then the doctor asked a question. "Do you think that you will screw up?"
On one hand - looking at the situation tactically - the answer was no. His mind and body had been itching for the chance to finally put their skills to use against the people that had both saved and mutilated him, and the chances of him actually screwing anything up was minimal. Storming an underground HYDRA base near D.C. was relatively basic. However, the mental strain of it all was what made him slightly wary. The worries that Steve tried (and failed) to hide behind smiles weren't something he could ignore, and the worries were far from unfounded.
"No," he finally replied.
He could do it, and he would. Otherwise, he'd lose one of the biggest pieces of what made him something, someone, and the thought of that was too frightening to consider.
He'd be fine.
Later, Bucky sat across from Steve at the table near the kitchen of their common living room, both silent and both staring at phones that they held with their arms resting on top of the table.
Steve was trying not to smirk as he typed on his phone, which meant that he was talking to Natasha, whose current whereabouts Bucky was not aware of. Bucky, meanwhile, was typing with his right hand, talking to the only other person in his phone besides Steve, and to his left stood the newest resident of their floor, watching the both of them with his arms crossed and a mock serious look on his face.
Neither of them paid much attention to Sam Wilson pondering the spectacle of two very technically old men sitting on their phones and texting like two modern teenagers, one who was slightly emo and the other who would have made the dorkiest jock in high school history. His eyes went from the stupidly-grinning Steve to Bucky's deadpan expression, then flitted back and forth before he couldn't take it anymore.
"You both know you're too old for this, right?" Sam said, making both men briefly glance up at him. He looked at Steve and added, "I mean, you look like a teenage girl texting selfies to her boyfriend, and you -" he glanced at Bucky, "I don't even know what's going on there, but -"
Steve gestured to Bucky and explained, "He's got a girlfriend."
Bucky glared at Steve and Sam raised his eyebrows. "You have a girlfriend?"
Steadily ignoring both of them, Bucky lowered his phone slightly while he waited for a reply from Summer. Sam took a seat at the table, between the two of them, and wondered aloud, "No offense or anything, but how is it that you have a girl and I don't?"
Bucky was on the cusp of very sarcastically answering the rhetorical question when Steve stole his moment and replied, "You remember the girl we picked him up from?"
"Same girl?" Sam asked, to which Steve nodded. "So those were hickeys on her neck! I knew it."
Bucky rolled his eyes. Steve shrugged and remarked, "If you knew him like I do, that wouldn't have surprised you."
Sam chuckled, then asked, "Hey, that Natasha chick - still talk to her?"
Steve glanced up and replied neutrally, "Yep."
"She single?" Sam grinned.
Now it was Bucky's turn to thwart Steve's response. "Who do you think he's giggling about?"
Sam glanced at Bucky and then at Steve with eyebrows raised even more than before. "Seriously?"
Steve smiled and kept his eyes on his phone. "Yeah."
"Damn," Sam sighed, throwing an arm on the back of his chair. "I guess the whole unfrozen super soldier thing must be a real turn on for the ladies. Tough market to get in on."
"Well, I'm sure there's one for a soldier with his own personal pair of actual wings," Steve replied with a grin.
"Oh, you mean the wings that he ripped off like they were made of plastic?" Sam asked, pointing to Bucky with his thumb, who glowered at the mention and stared so hard at his phone it was a wonder that it didn't shatter.
"The ones Stark made you are more durable," Steve shrugged. "He was happy to make them, by the way. Said he's been bored since he gave up his suits, so it gave him something to tinker with."
Bucky couldn't quite pinpoint why listening to the two men chat was grating on his nerves, but he began to suspect after awhile that it was the ease with which they spoke. It must have been the way two friends spoke when one of them hadn't once tried to kill the other with their bare hands.
He wasn't sure anybody spoke to him with that kind of ease. And the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him, which started to piss him off, because he didn't want it to bother him.
Steve, as earnest and heartfelt as he was, still acted like Bucky was a ticking timebomb sometimes, which wasn't something he could be faulted for, but still, the sort of casual laughing and chatting currently tickling at Bucky's ears was not something that ever happened between them. Bucky was still learning how to laugh again, and both he and Steve were still learning who he was after all of the unwanted events that had irrevocably changed him.
And that had never bothered him until he sat there and listened to Steve and Sam joke about girls and cars and whatever else came up after he intentionally tuned them out. Luckily, a distraction came before he could also detect a twinge of jealousy within himself and really start rolling his eyes at his own irrationality.
During Sam's initial interruption, Bucky had sent Summer a text asking what she was doing, which never got a very exciting answer but usually led to one conversation or another. This time, she answered with a picture. She was outside, on what looked like a park bench, most of her hair back in a ponytail that was dusted with fallen snowflakes, and she had a rather goofy look on her flushed face as she licked an ice cream cone held in a gloved hand. The words under the picture read, Ice cream in the snow because we're idiots.
Completely ignoring the words, he stared at the picture, unaware of how his mouth was falling open slightly until he snapped it shut and put the phone down with a sigh. He couldn't decide if she was diabolical or just clueless what his brain would immediately do with that image.
He looked up and noticed both Steve and Sam watching him curiously. He narrowed his eyes. "What?"
"Everything okay?" Steve asked.
"Why?" he snapped in reply.
"Your face," Sam replied. When Bucky turned his annoyed gaze on him, he shrugged and said, "Little red, that's all."
He decided then that Sam was only marginally less annoying than Natasha. He stood up without a word to go to his room and be alone with his frustration. Later he would choose to look on the bright side; by that time tomorrow, he would be in Summer's very surprised company, and a few days after that, he'd be hopefully picking off HYDRA agents, which meant that it would probably be the best week that he'd had in awhile.
After he left the room, Sam glanced at Steve and said, "He's a blast."
Steve shrugged and replied, "We're getting there."
One day later
Long distance was, well, a word she wouldn't say in front of her son but one that she'd grumble angrily into her pillow each night.
It had only been a month and a half since she had left New York, but it felt like much longer, and the distance was starting to get to her and make her do things. Things that seemed brilliant at the time but then instantly made her cringe after she did it. Like send Bucky innocently suggestive pictures - well, one picture - that he apparently had zero reaction to.
He had replied to her ice cream picture about twenty minutes after she'd sent it with a disappointingly neutral, Stay warm.
She was an idiot. That was her inescapable fate.
While she fumbled through that part of her life with her usual ineptitude, the other parts continued on the same as they ever did. She was still broke, still in college, and still trying to make a few dollars where she could with her writing but mostly coming up short. Paul still harassed her on a nearly daily basis, his theories on her secret lover's identity reaching ridiculous new heights each day but by some miracle never quite getting it right. The only thing that really changed was how she passed her time, which was embarrassing all on its own.
She spent an inordinate amount of time analyzing every word exchanged between herself and Bucky, and if there was a picture involved, she'd give herself a headache overthinking it so hard. Then, when her frustration (physical as well as mental) would start to reach epic proportions, it would all end up spilling over into literary vomit on her laptop. Quite literally, she would write out half-conceived ramblings and feelings in her head in the form of sort-of short stories that she would instantly delete most of the time. It was embarrassing. But she didn't know how else to get out her feelings and not go insane.
And it was all his fault, the stupid beautiful fragmented man too far away to touch but close enough to want so badly it hurt.
Which was embarrassing, she was pretty sure, for being only forty six days into a long distance relationship. Not that she was counting.
In any case, that forty-sixth day found her going about her usual daytime cleaning ritual and worrying slightly due to the fact that she had not awoken to Bucky's customary hideously-early first text of the day. Now it was well into the afternoon, and she still hadn't heard from him. She told herself that he was surely just busy with something and would text her eventually, while she tried to focus on the bad 80's music playing on her phone and the floor that she was cleaning.
David was sitting on the floor in the living room, working on his newest hobby, which was taking all of his toys apart piece by piece before reassembling them. He was quite serious about it, his little tongue sticking out as he used a small screwdriver to take apart a rather large toy truck of his, and Summer would smile at his deep concentration every time she peeked at him before going on with her cleaning.
The music (and her terrible off-key singing) was loud enough that she didn't hear a car door open and shut outside in her driveway, and in fact, she kept right on singing along with Foreigner about wanting to know what love is until a knock on her door made her instantly freeze.
It was automatic - ever since that one particular night nearly six months ago, hearing a knock on her front door sent shivers of fear down her spine. But, since she wasn't a fan of living in fear, she quickly leaned the mop handle in her hand against the wall and tried to think of who it could be. Then she remembered that a package she'd ordered online was due to arrive soon, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she walked to the door, where her taser and a can of mace hung on the wall next to it, just in case.
Unlocking the door and pulling it open was easy. Remembering how to breathe afterwards was not, because the very last thing she expected to see was the very man who had been making her worry all day with his silence, standing there in the cold, dressed in that stupid leather jacket she hated and a black scarf bundled against his neck, his hands stuffed in the pockets of dark jeans as their eyes met and her jaw dropped so hard it nearly snapped in half.
Maybe he was a hallucination and she'd used too much bleach on the floor.
She blinked, but he was still there. Still looked perfect. As opposed to her sweatpants and unbrushed hair knotted on top of her head.
Holy crap.
"Wh-... uh... wha-"
As she struggled to get a single coherent word out through her shock, something amazing happened. He smiled - widely, fully, happily - and then he took a step forward and she was suddenly in his arms. She threw hers around his neck and thought her pounding heart might explode as he kissed her soundly, turning her shock into pure heat that warmed her very fingertips despite her front door still being wide open and letting the wintry air inside.
He didn't seem to mind her unimpressive appearance in the least. There was metal at her back, pulling her as close as she could get, and flesh fingertips at the back of her head, tangled within her hair, and she couldn't breathe or think beyond his mouth as it devoured hers.
When he finally sucked in a breath of air, she drew one of her own and smiled as she brought her hands to his face, touching him like she expected him to vanish as suddenly as he'd appeared. "Why are you here? Why didn't you tell me you were coming? I've been worried all day because you haven't texted me!"
"Wanted to surprise you," he murmured, stopping her heart again with his stare before capturing her lips again. She had no defense and no desire for one, just questions that could be saved for later as she held on and kissed him back as he finally kicked the front door shut behind him.
Day forty six wasn't so bad, after all.
A thought occurred to her the next time he broke away to draw a breath. She'd seen a car in her driveway in that utterly shocking moment when she'd opened the door to find him on the other side. "How did you get here? Did you drive?" When he nodded she furrowed her brows and asked, "You know how to drive?"
His gaze shifted from heated and slightly dazed to mildly offended. "I can drive a lot of things."
To keep herself from smiling and making a stupid comment back to that, she then asked the next pressing question. "... That car isn't yours, is it?"
His only answer was a mere look before kissing her again, and she decided that she didn't really want to know anyway.
What led her to pry her lips away from his one more time was the sudden and unmistakable sensation of being watched. Her hands on his shoulders and his on her waist, she looked to her left and cursed very loudly in her head at the sight of little David, standing at the border of the living room and the kitchen, open-mouthed and quite shocked at what he was seeing. All he needed to do was drop the screwdriver in his hand to the floor and the moment would be complete.
Plunk. On cue, he dropped it, mouth still agape.
Well, he was bound to figure it out sooner or later anyway.
Bucky dropped his hands and Summer half-jumped away from him, smiling a little too widely and exclaiming, "David! Uh... look who came to visit!"
David looked at Bucky without closing his mouth, then looked back at his mother just before making a gross-out face and picking up the screwdriver. Then he turned around and walked back into the living room.
Well then. "Not how I planned on telling him, but okay. Could have been worse." She glanced at Bucky to find him still staring at her like she was some delectable beauty, and she touched her laughably bad hair before blushing and muttering, "I'm sorry - if I'd known you were coming I would have... showered... and... not worn this. Speaking of that, why are you here?"
He started to answer, but then Madonna started wailing about being like a virgin from her still-playing phone, and he furrowed his brows as he looked around for the source of the music.
"Uh... yeah, let me get that," she said, walking to the counter where her phone was docked and hurriedly turning it off. She also realized that Foreigner's ode to love had been serenading them during the whole dramatic scene a moment ago, and she thought that was absolutely classic. One just hadn't lived until they'd been kissed passionately by a guy dressed in leather to a cheesy 80's love song.
Then she turned back around and smiled. "So?"
"I'm here for... something."
"Something," she repeated. "Super top secret something?"
He shrugged. "I guess."
"Ah. So how long?"
"Couple days. I came early to see you."
She was disappointed and excited at the same time. A few days wasn't very long. But he'd gone out of his way to make more time with her. And that was something.
It was hard not to smile like an idiot. "I just wish you'd texted me. I'm a mother. I worry like one."
He looked a little surprised when she said that. "I didn't... sorry. I didn't think about that."
"It's okay," she smiled. "But I, uh... I should go change. And brush my hair. Yeah, I'll be right back."
She was so knocked out of her element and still completely thrown that as she made her way down the hall, tugging her hair down, that she was completely unaware of him following her and remained unaware until she walked into her room and was then suddenly pinned between her dresser and a hard chest. She let out a noise of surprise and then looked up just as he almost brutally claimed her lips again, making her whimper as her head spun from the way he kept surprising her.
All she could do was surrender, close her eyes and try to wrap her head around the fact that he was here, it wasn't her imagination, and that he was kissing her like it would physically pain him if he stopped.
When he did, he drew away only slightly, his forehead touching hers as he murmured, "I missed you."
How three, fairly common words made her insides flip and twist as they did, she didn't know, but she couldn't deny the way the sentiment warmed her from the inside out. She smiled, said it back to him, and then touched her lips to his one more time.
And when he finally let her go, a ghost of a smirk showing up on his lips as he left her to change and try to look more like a normal person, she sank back against her dresser and fought the urge to sink to the floor and melt into the carpet.
This must be what it felt like to be truly, genuinely, wanted.
What a feeling.
With a new 80's hit successfully taking root in the soundtrack of her head, she pushed off the furniture and walked with slightly wobbly legs to her closet, grinning stupidly and enjoying every bit of it.
Being back at Summer's home was more surreal than he had anticipated it would be. Every inch of the house held a memory, some of them chilling and others rather pleasant, and he had not realized how truly far he had come until he stood where he had once been.
Back then, back when he'd wandered to this forest-hidden little house after leaving Steve half-dead on the shore in D.C., he hadn't known his name, how to think, how to eat, how to even remotely function as a human being and not a singularly-designed machine. Now he had a degree of independence that stood in stark contrast to what he had known before, and he was healthy again, cared for, and the voices in his head didn't scream as loudly as often as they had back then.
Living was still a struggle, and to a point, he expected it to always be one. But seeing how drastic of a change six months could bring was enough to spark some real hope inside of him for the future.
And what would have happened had he ended up face-down in front of any other home but this one all those months ago?
These thoughts swam calmly through his head as the day passed before his eyes entirely too quickly for his liking. He found that Summer's days were much the same as he remembered, structured for her son's sake and constantly busy very much purposefully. It only took David an hour or two of eyeing him suspiciously - surely due to having caught him kissing his mother for the first time - before the child warmed back up to him, by which time all of three of them were out in the cold to let David have his usual playtime outside. The boy's peace offering was two armfuls of snowballs that he used wild hand gestures and smiles to communicate his wish for Bucky to show off how far and hard his metal arm could hurl the things.
Summer stood beside him, bundled up in a coat much heavier than his but still freezing as she watched him take a few branches off of some far-away trees with the snowballs.
"I think you're defying physics at this point."
He glanced at her and gave a slight smirk. David was beside himself with how cool he obviously thought it was.
"So can you hit... that one tiny branch right there between the two big ones on that bigger tree?" she asked, pointing out the branch in question.
He looked at her incredulously. "Are you challenging my aim?"
She shrugged but smiled a little. "Well, it can't be perfect every single time."
He gave her a pointed look and then glanced forward before throwing one of the snowballs about half a second later. When it hit its target perfectly, he looked at her expectantly.
"Yeah, yeah," she shook her head, still smiling. "Got it. Perfect aim."
"How's yours?"
She looked up at him and paused before replying, "Well, with a snowball, I guess pretty average."
"I mean with a gun," he asked slightly more seriously.
"Oh. I don't know. Probably not that great. I'm not terrible, but..."
He already knew that she wasn't terrible, since he'd once watched her shoot a HYDRA agent through the shoulder. But, to ease his mind, he decided to make an offer. "I can help you with that. If you want."
She stared at him for a moment and then asked, "You mean like... target practice?"
He shrugged. "It's probably a good idea... just in case."
She didn't need any further elaborating, nodding just before he set off towards her house. "Where are you going?"
"Getting your gun," he replied over his shoulder, almost grinning at the way her eyebrows shot up.
"We're doing it now?!"
That time, he allowed himself to grin. A matter of minutes later, he had created a makeshift gun range in her backyard, placing variously sized aluminum cans and a few other random items he could find on a number of tree stumps and low-lying branches a safe distance away. Afterwards, he walked up to her and handed over her gun, which she took while shaking her head.
"This is gonna be so embarrassing," she sighed while he watched her fiddle with the weapon. "I haven't used this since..."
He nodded, not needing her to finish that sentence. He still had guilt over the fact that he had been the ultimate cause of that night. After he saw her shake the thoughts away, he said, "Try the biggest can first."
She made David go inside the house then, for the sake of being extra cautious, and then turned her gaze to her target as she turned the gun's safety off and raised it up. He stood slightly behind her, watching carefully and not saying a word, letting her shoot how she naturally would the first time around.
She pulled the trigger and missed, but not by much. She groaned and lowered the gun in frustration, but he took a step forward and said, "First of all, it's your stance."
"My what?" she asked, glancing back at him.
"Your stance," he said, gesturing to her legs that were too close together. "You need to widen it to steady yourself." She followed his instruction some, but then he leaned down and positioned her himself with a hand on the inside of her left leg, just above her knee.
He felt her stiffen at his touch, and after he straightened up and told her to raise the gun, his hands then took her shoulders and rolled them back as his breath intentionally brushed her ear. "Posture."
"Is this just an excuse to feel me up?" she asked a little shakily.
"I don't need an excuse for that," he pointed out as his hand reached out to cover hers as they clutched the gun tightly. "Don't hold it so tight. Relax your grip."
"Might be easier if you weren't literally breathing down my neck and saying... things," she replied, though she didn't seem to actually mind it much. She forced her hands to relax slightly.
"Learning under pressure helps," he replied. "Now aim and take a breath."
She did as he said, and he was only half-aware of his hand on her waist, serving absolutely no practical purpose. "Then breathe out and gently pull the trigger."
A fraction of a second later, the can flew off of the trunk with a satisfying ping, and Summer grinned and relaxed against him, making him realize how close he'd pressed himself to her. She glanced over her shoulder and said, "Thanks, teacher."
His lips curled to match hers, something inside stirring at the teasing title, and before he could let her proximity distract him, he gestured to the other cans and said, "Now try to do that again."
He then took a step back and watched as she hit the next can, and then the one after that as well, pleasantly surprising them both.
"So if I hit all these, what do I get? A reward?"
His gaze turned curious. "Like what?"
Glancing over her shoulder again, she replied, "A translation you still need to give me?"
Of course. He looked from her to the remaining three cans, then back at her, a tiny smirk appearing on his face. "All right."
Her eyes widening gave away the fact that she had not expected him to agree. Then she smiled and settled back to the task at hand, and he decided to be generous and not cheat by distracting her, which would have been exceptionally easy. Besides, she didn't specify when he had to give the translation, should she be successful.
The first of the last three cans was a success, and so was the second. The third and final one happened to be the smallest and furthest, and Summer took her time aiming and readying herself before she took the shot.
And it missed.
"Ugh! Are you kidding me?!" she exclaimed, lowering the now-empty gun and bemoaning the loss of her reward. Bucky could only grin at how she slouched her shoulders and turned around, looking at him slightly hopefully and asking, "A for effort?"
"You should keep practicing," he replied neutrally.
"Wanna pay for my replacement bullets, then?" she asked, eyebrow raised. "I can't exactly afford to make a habit out of this."
"I can get you more," he replied with a slight shrug.
She nodded, then smiled. "My long-distance boyfriend slash arms supplier and weapons trainer. That's hot."
He gave her an amused look and then threw an arm around her shoulders, a part of him still not used to such casual touches but another part wanting them as he guided her back inside the house before her little red nose froze and fell off. "Glad you think so."
He just wished that he didn't have to worry about her ability to defend herself in the first place.
And that, dear son, is how one of the world's most feared assassins (and killer of one of our most beloved presidents) taught me how to be a better shot, while you watched from the living room window.
As Summer wrote her future autobiography in her head, she went about making dinner no different than she ever did, all the while wondering if she would ever stop thinking that all of this was completely bizarre. Totally awesome, but still bizarre. It was moments like these that made her wonder if finally coming clean to her brother could ever be anything but a gigantic disaster.
In between robotically cooking a recipe that she'd made so many times she could do it in her sleep, she stole glances at her kitchen table and tried to hide her smiles as she watched David pretend to tinker on Bucky's metal arm with his little screwdriver. She was already a bit overly hyper from the unexpected visit, and now her brain was running at a mile a minute, knowing how hard it would be for Paul - or anyone who wasn't already steeped into the world of SHIELD and HYDRA and superheroes and spies and all of that crap - to reconcile the Winter Soldier with the image that sat before her now, of a man lounging at her table and watching a child play with his arm with a small smile on his face. It was even hard for her to fully comprehend, and she had accepted him and all of his horrors quite awhile ago.
But she pushed the thoughts aside, the sake of being fully present during the short time she had with him. She watched him demolish dinner once it was done, then felt a little giddy at the domesticity of it all when the three of them ended up watching the first installment of Lord of the Rings in the living room. It was like the time he'd spent here before and yet nothing like it, because he was much, much more relaxed and, frankly, considerably saner, and she didn't think twice about cozying up to his side while David played on the floor at their feet.
Bucky seemed to pay attention to the movie as it played, while his hand played off and on with her hair, and she wished it could be like that all the time. Her nerves weren't so easily frayed with him close, and she felt a level of security that was never present when he was gone. It wasn't that she doubted her abilities to take care of herself should danger present itself, but she also wasn't so deluded as to think that she was anywhere near qualified to handle the sorts of risks that came with sort-of dating HYDRA's ex-human weapon. She'd already learned that the hard way.
When the movie had about thirty minutes left, the warm fingertips still playing with her hair shifted to her shoulder, where they gripped gently and then pulled her closer to his chest. His breath tickled under her ear as his lips brushed her skin and she half-whispered, "Hey now - audience..."
"He's asleep," Bucky replied, pressing his lips to her neck as she peered down at the floor. To her surprise, he was right. David was passed out with a Hulk fist under his head acting as a pillow.
"Have you been watching the movie or watching him so you could do this the minute he was asleep?" she asked, closing her eyes as she leaned her head to the side to encourage his kisses.
"Both," he murmured against her pulse point, sending shivers down her spine as he kissed and then suckled her skin with the clear intent of leaving a very noticeable mark.
"We can never finish a movie," she remarked, her fingers sliding into his hair as he left her neck and kissed his way to her lips. She kissed him first, her hands holding his face and brain going wonderfully blank as he started to pull her her into his lap.
As nice as it was, she did have a child sleeping uncomfortably on the floor, and she only let a moment or two pass before she broke away from Bucky's mouth and smiled. "Hold that thought."
She felt his eyes stay on her as she slipped off his lap and off of the couch, stepping quietly towards David and taking a breath before bending down and scooping him off of the floor as gently as she could manage. She glanced behind her once, on her way out, and felt her cheeks flush at the casual way he sat there, eyes nearly nonchalant in the way that they expressed what he wished to do to her, his hair a little messy, legs further apart than they needed to be, and all in all, she thought, the picture of sex on her couch. And she was pretty sure that he still wasn't actually trying to be seductive at all.
Heart fluttering, she carried her son to bed and made sure that everything was in order for him, flipping on his nightlight - which was, predictably, a Captain America shield designed to look like it had been thrown into the wall, with surrounding cracks and all - before switching off the ceiling light and gently closing the door behind her as she stepped back out into the hall. She noticed that her bathroom door was closed and the light was on, which was a little disappointing, because she had hoped to find Bucky exactly as she had left him. Instead, however, she wandered back down the hallway towards the kitchen, figuring she'd double check that everything was put away and turn off the lights while she waited.
How exactly she ended up picking up his scarf from one of her kitchen chairs and staring at it like it was some fascinating artifact, she wasn't sure, but the thing was sitting there next to where he'd left his jacket, and it ended up feeling as expensive as it looked. Where did he get this stuff? Did Steve furnish him with a credit card from the Bank of Captain America to fund shopping trips in NYC? For that matter, how did he even know how to dress himself as well as he did? Maybe Natasha had a hand in that, because Steve wasn't really the most fashionable dude she'd ever seen...
"Like it?"
She jumped and turned around, immediately letting out a sigh and muttering, "I'm gonna make you, like, blow a whistle every time you walk into a room. And yes. This thing feels like it probably cost you more than what I spend in groceries in a month."
He took it from her hands, staying silent as he straightened it out before draping it around her neck. "It didn't cost me anything."
"You stole it?"
He shrugged. "Came with the car."
"Which you stole." Then she paused and said, "This is probably a chick scarf, by the way."
"Then keep it," he said before using the two ends of the material to pull her against his chest and kiss her.
The kiss was short, but long enough for her fingers to find his hair again before he pulled away. She looked up at him, brushing away a few fallen stray locks on his forehead before noting, "You could use a trim, you know." When he said nothing to this, she added, "I can do it for you if you want. Unless you miss the emo look."
"The what?"
"Nothing," she half-smiled. "So what do you say? Trust me with scissors yet?"
Apparently he did, because a few minutes later, he was seated in one of the kitchen chairs and she was brandishing salon scissors that she used to trim David's hair once a month. She stood just in front of him, and she noticed that he looked a bit wary at the sight.
"I'm not gonna butcher your hair, if that's why you're looking at me like that."
He didn't reply, but leaned back and tried not to appear distrustful. She rolled her eyes. "All right. Shirt off."
He looked up at her for a moment before leaning forward and doing as he was told, tossing the shirt on top of the scarf that was back on the seat of another chair. Then his eyes met hers again, and she didn't miss the glint that was hiding behind his front of indifference.
"I hope you don't expect me to fall to my knees and swoon every time you take your shirt off," she said evenly, though that was sort of what she wanted to do.
She felt his eyes stay on her until she walked around him, setting down the scissors on the table as she examined the back of his hair. She was running a comb through it when she heard him reply, "If you were on your knees, it wouldn't be to swoon."
The comb stilled mid-stroke, and she felt her jaw on the verge of dropping for the second time that day. She was glad that he couldn't see the instantaneous blush on her cheeks.
She forced herself to recover quickly, resuming the combing and swallowing before replying, "Well, look who's got a dirty mind."
He didn't say anything, but she could almost feel the half-smirk she both loved and hated crawl across his lips. She picked up the scissors and put them to his hair, making the first snip and wondering how she was going to survive this particular development. Every single time she thought she had a good handle on what she could expect from him, he would do something like this and she would feel like she was back to square one and completely unprepared and unbearably excited.
She managed to hold it together and do a competent job of trimming his hair, at least until she got to the very front, which required standing in front of him and doing the nearly impossible job of focusing on his hair while his eyes bored up into hers. She persevered, cutting at the front pieces and biting her lip with the intense concentration that staying focused required. Halfway through, she felt fingers start playing with the hem of her shirt, and she made the mistake of looking down and letting her eyes meet his.
Trying not to gulp at the slight smolder she was faced with in his gaze, she looked back up and tried not to think about how she was standing between his legs or how he was now curling his two index fingers into the front belt loops of her jeans, or how close his face was to her chest, because she ran the risk of slipping and doing a hackjob on his hair if she did. His fingers tugged her closer and she held her breath, trying to finish as quickly as she could. Then his hands moved over her hips and then behind, down and over the back of her thighs, and with a huff she decided the cut was good enough and threw the scissors on the table, pressing her lips to his with a fury as he yanked her forward to straddle him.
It went from quiet lock-snipping to a whirlwind just like that, both of them devouring the other as Bucky quickly stood up from the chair, easily supporting her with his left arm alone while the other buried itself in her hair. Then he was walking her towards the hallway, and she was trying not to giggle against his lips as she clung to him, mentally scratching off being carried to bed while being kissed within an inch of her life from her list of things she had yet to experience.
He broke away when he reached her bedroom door, nearly taking it off the hinges before he stopped long enough to wrestle with the doorknob, giving Summer a chance to repay some of the havoc he'd wreaked on her neck earlier on his own. A few fallen hairs scattered on his shoulders caught her eye in the process, and by the time he got them through the door, she was blowing on his skin in an attempt to clear them away.
"The hell are you doing?" he asked in an amused but also confused tone, walking straight at the bed.
"I'm not weird, I'm just trying to - oomph!" he threw her on the bed and she smiled, "Trying to get the little hairs off of you."
Unconsciously biting her lip and scooting back slightly on her elbows as she watched him crawl on the bed after her, the thrill of the moment overcame her and she reached out and pulled him down to her as soon as he was close enough, moaning a little when their lips met in a fast, deep kiss. Then her head spun with surprise as he rolled them over, placing her on top of him and sending a curtain of her dark hair falling over both of their faces. He pulled it out of the way with one hand and pushed down on the small of her back with the other, leaving no space between their hips as she kissed him as hard as he kissed her and raked her fingertips down the planes of his chest. The hand in her hair moved it all over one shoulder and then slid its way down her back, then to her side, and finally under the front of her shirt, where it struggled momentarily with the one of the cups of her bra before touching her through it in defeat.
Then Bucky sat up and started clawing her shirt up, and she thought briefly about the last time they'd done this and the fact that they technically were not supposed to go much further than this, but she kept her mouth shut and let him take off her shirt and toss it to the floor. She kissed him as his right hand went to her bra clasp, and his inability to make the thing come apart made her vaguely wonder how much different modern ones were from the kind women had back in the olden days of his youth. He growled in frustration, and as she tried not to laugh, she felt an odd vibrating sensation coming from somewhere in the bed. At first she thought she was imagining it, but she quickly realized that she wasn't, and broke her lips away from his as her brows furrowed.
In her daze, she looked at his metal arm, the hand of which was currently planted on the bed, and her eyes widened as she asked, "Is that your arm doing that?"
"Doing what?" he asked with an annoyed edge to his voice, still losing his war with the elusive clasp.
"Uh... vibrating?" She blinked and then added, "Because if you can make it do that..."
His eyes were pure confusion until something suddenly dawned on him, and his right hand finally gave up its task before he shifted and reached into his back pocket and pulled out his ringing phone, the source of the vibration.
Hiding her slight disappointment, not to mention slight embarrassment over thinking what she had, she watched as he glanced at the screen and then rolled his eyes before cursing in Russian, which was a habit she was starting to find strangely hot. But then he muttered something about having to answer the call and she quickly nodded, untangling herself from his body and letting him get up. He was out of the room in the blink of an eye, and she let out a heavy sigh before falling face-first into a pillow. One of these days, they would manage to successfully screw around without an interruption, and it would be a freaking miracle.
After five minutes passed without a reappearance, she dragged herself out of bed and killed some more time with her usual pre-bed ritual, which took about ten minutes since she dragged her feet through it. But he still wasn't back by the time she was done, so she turned off the main light in her room and flipped on a small lamp by her bed and then crawled under the covers. She had changed into an oversized sleep shirt and not much else in an attempt to be somewhat alluring, and she played games mindlessly on her phone while she waited.
After half an hour had gone by, she started to worry slightly, but she stayed where she was and mentally replayed the night's events, from the as-always unfinished movie to Bucky's dirty mind to the rather tension-filled haircut, and after awhile, she rolled her eyes and abandoned her phone to stare at the ceiling.
Nearly an hour after he'd first left, she was half asleep when she felt her bed depress on the empty side. She turned over, looking up sleepily at the man who had finally come back, still shirtless but a lot more tired than he had looked before his phone had made an unwelcome interruption to their night.
"Everything okay?" she asked, reaching out and taking his hand to guide him down next to her.
He nodded. "Sorry."
"It's okay," she smiled, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand as he settled in. "I'm used to frustration, trust me."
He didn't seem particularly happy about that, but she scooted herself closer to him and asked, "I'm guessing you really do have something major going on down here. And you probably can't tell me much about it." When he didn't answer either way, she asked, "Do I need to worry?"
He shook his head. "No."
"Is this what you're gonna do now?" she asked. "Spy stuff, or... whatever it is you're doing? Avenger stuff?"
He made a face at the word Avenger, but after a moment, he admitted quietly, "It's all I know."
She nodded understandingly. "Guess I'll just have to get used to worrying."
He frowned at her words and then reached out for her. She ended up curled against him, her back to his chest and his right arm draped over her middle as he kissed just behind her ear. "I don't want you to worry."
"You can't stop me," she pointed out, leaning her head back to kiss his lips. She wasn't so tired that she couldn't have given it another go, but he had a slightly far-away look in his eye that had replaced the hunger that had been there before. But that was all right. "So how long exactly do I have you?"
"Tonight and tomorrow. I leave for Washington the next morning."
She had hoped that the "few days" meant three and would officially start the next day, so this made her chest clench a little bit. "And after that? Do you have to go straight back to New York?"
"I don't know yet."
She nodded again, taking a breath and then taking his hand in hers, bringing him closer as she tried to mold herself to him as much as she could. "Well, if I only get you for two nights, then you're sleeping with me and I don't care what you say."
A pause, and then a cautious, tired, "Summer..."
She looked over her shoulder again and gave him a silencing look. "I'm a light sleeper. If you have a nightmare I'll hear you way before you can accidentally hurt me."
He looked far from convinced, but she merely settled back in against the pillow they now shared and interlaced her fingers with his, as his hand rested over her belly. "Try to sleep, Bucky."
It took a few moments, but eventually she felt him relax a bit against her. She closed her eyes, the heaviness from a few moments ago returning to them, and she resisted the urge to purr like a cat when his hand gently left hers to run softly up her arm, down her side and then over her hip, where he paused at the touch of her bare skin where her sleep shirt ended.
Her eyes opened just a little bit, then closed when the pause ended and replaced by his hand lazily running up and down her legs. On the way up, he pulled her shirt up some, letting his fingers trace the outer edges of her underwear beneath it as he pointed out, "You don't usually sleep like this."
"Mm," she muttered, almost asleep. "I was trying to be sexy. Or something."
She was fast asleep, by far the most peacefully in weeks, by the time he murmured against her ear that she had succeeded. He followed her into slumber after awhile, hoping like hell that he wasn't making a horrible mistake.
A/N: Aaaaand the frustration deepens :D I have never written anything like this before, where this part of things gets (necessarily) dragged out and major frustration ensues, and I gotta say, it's kind of fun to write. I didn't think it would be, but I love it. Even though I kind of want to rip my hair out at the same time.
Anyway! My usual thanks to you wonderful, amazing readers and your reviews, follows, faves, and just for taking the time to read this story. You're all amazing and I love you bunches, and I am super grateful for your continued support. Also, my other usual thanks to midnightwings96 for being her amazing self and always helping me out when I'm stuck or need some extra motivation. :D See you all in another week! :)))