Lying on his back with his eyes clenched shut and jaw slackened as he breathed heavily through his open mouth, as if he'd just finished running a lap around Manhattan, Bucky woke up to a new day in an entirely unexpected and entirely welcomed, particularly perfect, way. As the fist he'd made in his own hair with his metal hand loosened along with every other muscle in his body, the woman responsible for his current state suddenly found her sudden burst of bravery utterly gone now that she had... done what she decided to do upon making a detour to his room a few moments earlier, but she knew there was no way he'd let her slip away and act like nothing had happened.
She didn't want to sit up from her place down near the middle of his new bed and make eye contact with him, because she was irrational and ridiculous like that, but she did it anyway because she knew she had to. When she did, she watched his eyes move from the ceiling to lock with hers before he drew a deep breath, still panting a little, licking his lips before he croaked out in a gravelly, sleep-laden voice, "You... why did you... do that?"
"I, uh... well, I... should I have... not?"
He closed his eyes and shook his head, the hand in his hair pushing it away from his face - it was long overdue for a cut, but she liked it being longer than usual and he liked that she liked it - before he answered, "No, no, but I... I just..."
They were hopeless, she decided. Sometimes these things went perfectly and he said things before, during, and/or after that made her entire body heat near the boiling point, and other times, these things still went perfectly but their mutual lack of general communication skills made her want to hide under a blanket and be embarrassed for a week. This was shaping up to be one of those times.
And thus began her mental self-ridicule.
Ugh. Why did you have to go and try to be all seductive and spontaneous and do this to a guy with sleep issues. He's probably mad you woke him up. What if he had just fallen asleep a few hours ago or something, only to then suddenly wake up to his idiot of a girlfriend apparently mistaking him for a Popsicle -
"Summer."
Her name on his lips and warm fingertips on top of her hand made her snap her eyes back up and refocus on the man lying in front of her. "What?"
"Stop thinking."
"I'm not."
"You are," he countered, voice still a bit sleepy. "But you shouldn't. I just... wasn't... expecting this, that's all."
"I... think that's the general idea of what I just did," she replied, hiding a small smile.
He sat up a little, his wayward hair falling back into his eyes with the motion, and he mirrored her small grin as he said, "That was... amazing."
Her eyes widened a little and her face instantly brightened. "Really?" she asked dumbly, as if his gasps and soft and not-so-soft groans hadn't already told her as much. There was also the fact that he'd been cursing - she assumed it was cursing - in another language the entire time, and by the rough and arousing way that it had sounded being growled and hissed by him, she assumed that it had been Russian. And by now, she was well aware that he really only lapsed into the other language when he was either really angry or really... what he was a few minutes ago. So really, it should have been no surprise, but, being her, it was.
He blinked a bit, shirtless and generally wrecked-looking as he looked her over with a sense of reverence in his eyes, like he was beholding something that deserved a monument built to it. "Yeah. I didn't think you'd do something like that."
Her brief smile collapsed back into a frown. "Because I'm... boring?"
His eyes widened and a twinge of horror appeared on his face. "No! No, not that. You're the... furthest thing from boring," he said, grinning a little at the end. "What I meant is, I don't always... wake up peacefully, and you know that, so I wouldn't have thought you would... take the risk."
"Oh," she sighed in relief. "Well, what happened was, I was up early and got breakfast done while David was still asleep, so I came and peeked in here to see if you were awake yet, and..."
He raised an eyebrow slightly, clearly intrigued in hearing the rest of the story. "And?"
She clamped her mouth shut and wished she hadn't said anything. "And yeah."
"Yeah?" he repeated, faint grin reappearing at the corner of his lips.
"Yup," she nodded.
"You peeked in, and... what?"
She narrowed her eyes at him a little and then moved to get off of the bed to escape, but it was no use, because his hand was wrapped around her wrist and pulling her right back down, and halfway into his lap for good measure as he grinned at her immediate groan at being thwarted.
Still burning her with his gaze, he kissed the side of her neck softly as she closed her eyes for a short second before muttering, "... I had an idea and I went with it."
"What gave it to you?" he asked, now kissing along the parts of her chest not covered by the v-neck shirt she wore.
"... I might have had it for a long time and been trying to work up the nerve to do it," she admitted, against her own will. It was no use trying to avoid it - she was a horrible liar and he'd drag it out of her anyway.
He looked up at her, one of his hands curling around her waist and pulling her a bit closer as he said with full sincerity, "God, you're perfect."
Before she could melt, he was then kissing her heatedly and in a way that let his intentions be immediately known, and she was helpless to do anything but let him have his way with her until she remembered suddenly that the food she'd made was getting cold downstairs. "But," she half-gasped, pulling away as he followed, "breakfast -"
"Didn't you just have it?" he asked in a murmur an inch from her lips. Her face instantly colored in a bright blush, and she suddenly wanted to both slap him and utterly devour him. Again. The jerk.
"... Maybe," she choked out, "but you haven't and -"
"I'm about to," he said before his arms around her shifted and she was suddenly on her back, underneath him, smiling and as red as tomato when he started kissing her again. She decided that she was quite glad she had decided to be brave when she'd glanced inside his room and found him sleeping blessedly peacefully, lying on his back with his sheets half-cast off around his waist and generally the picture of tempting half-nakedness and intriguing opportunity. She'd almost talked herself out of it twice before she'd thrown caution to the wind and crept silently inside, hoping he wouldn't wake up in a panic and mistake her for an attacker. Not that an attacker would attack in the way that she had been, but still.
He had her clothes halfway off when her eyes flew open and she gasped after breaking away from his lips, "Muffins!"
His brows furrowed and he muttered breathlessly, "What?"
"I have muffins I have to get out of the oven before they burn," she explained, hands going to his shoulders to move him off of her, but he kissed her again and resisted her efforts.
"Just leave them," he half-pleaded, making her whine a little in frustration as she pushed at him again, successfully this time.
"I can't, they've got expensive stuff in them," she said, kissing him quickly before scrambling off the bed as soon as he moved enough for her to do so. Fixing her clothes as she got to her feet, she smiled at his disgustingly attractive disheveled state and said, "I'm sorry, I totally forgot about them. But later you can, uh... finish... whatever it was you were about to do. To me."
"I think you know," he muttered, unconsciously - or maybe very consciously, she had no idea sometimes - licking his lips as his eyes roamed along her body.
"Right," she said, a little too high pitched. "So... rain check. Definitely rain check. Because... rain check."
Wincing at her repetitiveness, she then flashed him a smile and disappeared into the hallway, closing his door behind her. She lingered near the door for just a second, taking a breath and trying to calm down with an idiotic smile on her face, while Bucky sat silently on his bed, staring at the door and eventually grinning and shaking his head before flopping back down on his pillow.
And thus began another day on the farm.
Two weeks into their stay, things were sliding into a routine and starting to feel distinctly better. Summer and David's things had been sent over from the tower on their fourth day at the farm, and now that David had all of his belongings and was becoming familiar with the new place and new surroundings, he was largely back to normal - or at least, his normal. And Summer, for her part, was starting to remember why she liked not living in the city.
In the mornings, she and (usually) David strolled through Clint's chicken coops and picked up eggs that she'd either store or cook or both, and in the afternoons, they would go on walks or go down to a little creek nearby or she would find them little tasks to do with the animals. David had never been particularly fond of animals - any animals - but the more she took him around the chickens and the goats and the other various creatures Clint continued to add to his collection, the more comfortable around them he was slowly becoming. He wouldn't touch anything, but just being within six feet of an animal without freaking out was a considerable accomplishment.
Besides that, she and Clint took turns making the dinners while breakfasts generally became her domain, but the amount of people they had to feed changed daily. Natasha was staying there with Steve, technically, but she was hardly ever there, and Steve himself was gone a lot. Summer knew why, knew that they were preparing for something or a mission following the assault on the tower, and she also knew that Bucky had agreed to be a part of it. He disappeared with Steve a lot more often these days, and it wasn't uncommon for Summer, David and Clint to be the farm's only (human) occupants for large chunks of the day.
There was one day, a week and a half after they'd arrived, that Steve and Natasha were off doing God knows what all day while Clint disappeared soon after, leaving the whole place in Summer and Bucky's hands, and that had been one of her most favorite days so far, because they'd turned the living room into a dance floor and had their first real evening to themselves in longer than she cared to remember. She liked living with people, and it was a welcome change from her solitary days with David in Virginia, but having a day with just them was so refreshing that it had sparked some new thoughts in her head. Thoughts about long-term living situations and certain people that she didn't want to live away from again.
These thoughts swam in her head as she got the muffins out of the oven just before they could start to burn, along with the more scandalous thoughts that she was to blame for following her... wake-up call to Bucky. Trying to ignore the latter lest she turn into a tomato again, she again found herself wondering exactly how long she would keep living this way, with the Avengers, whether in the tower or on Clint's farm, or wherever. She couldn't keep doing this forever, and a part of her did miss having her own space and her own house that she could keep as messy or as clean as she wanted. Maybe it wouldn't be anytime particularly soon, but it was worth putting at least some thought towards what would happen when she would decide that it was time to get her own place again.
Would Bucky come with her, or would he stay with Steve and just come over? Was it assuming too much to assume that he'd want to stay with her?
But, as she removed the muffins from the pan and put them on a wire rack to cool, she found herself vividly picturing what having her own place with him would be like. David would have his own room, just like back in Virginia, and they'd have their own, and there would be no more of her slipping in and out of his room every night, almost never spending the entire night together because the constant changes meant David didn't feel secure enough to sleep through the whole night on his own very often. He would feel secure, he'd have more stability. She'd get to sleep - or not sleep - with Bucky every night, in the same room, and wake up to him every morning.
It could be wonderful. But she didn't know when it could happen or if it even would, so she shoved the thoughts away and then stepped away from the muffins, heading towards her room upstairs to get David up.
That morning, it was her, David, Bucky, and Steve who manage to eventually assemble around the breakfast table, Clint beating them all to it because the smell of the freshly baked muffins had lured him even before the men who literally ate enough at each meal for a moderately sized family. If nothing else, living with the Avengers had taken her confidence in her cooking and baking skills to ridiculous new heights.
She and David were sitting and happily eating when Bucky made his way out, his hair wet and even darker looking on his head and a black t-shirt clinging to him in ways she wouldn't complain about. He sat next to her, on the side that David wasn't occupying, and she tried to smile normally at Bucky when he did but the somehow suggestive way that he grinned slightly at her made her face burst into flame all over again.
"... Muffins," she waved at the pile of confections sitting on a plate in the middle of the table, pointedly looking away from him and hiding a smile of her own. He made a faint noise of acknowledgment and snatched one of the muffins, not taking his eyes off her as he did.
Steve watched this from across the table, as did Clint, and then they glanced at one another, seemed to silently agree that they just didn't want to know, and went back to eating.
"So," Summer cleared her throat once her ears stopped burning, "Anyone have any plans today?"
"Therapy," Clint muttered, not looking up. "And a few other things."
"Meeting Nat in a few hours," Steve said. "It's about the attack, so I was hoping you'd come with me," he added, looking at Bucky, who looked up in mild surprise as if he'd been thinking about something else entirely and was trying to figure out what Steve said.
"... Okay," Bucky agreed before pausing. "But someone should stay here with them."
"I'm fine," Summer shrugged him off. "Go have your Avenger meeting."
Bucky frowned, however, and looked down as he said, "But..."
"This place is as safe as it gets," Clint assured him. "You have no idea the lengths I've gone to keep it off the grid. Literally off the grid."
"The tower was supposed to be safe," Bucky pointed out.
"Stark's tower has a giant 'A' on it and is the place everyone knows to look for Iron Man and his buddies," Clint replied dryly. "Why do you think I didn't live there like everyone else?"
Undeterred, Bucky shook his head and said, "I just don't think she should be alone."
"She is sitting right here," Summer pointed out ungracefully through a mouthful of muffin before swallowing and adding, "and I will be fine for a few hours alone. Seriously. I will."
Bucky remained unconvinced, but Steve then decided to try to steer the conversation towards more pleasant topics, as he often did. Bucky and Clint got along quite well in general, but since neither of them ever minced words, especially with the other for some reason, Steve tried to be the buffer of cheeriness when they'd start talking about attacks or HYDRA or aliens with pointy blue sticks and inexplicably English accents.
Summer, for her part, just tried to keep the food flowing and keep her opinions about Loki's insane attractiveness despite his, well, murderous rampages, to herself, at all costs. It was one thing to sound like an idiot in front of Natasha, but after she stumbled upon Clint a few days before using pictures of Loki as target practice outside, she tried to keep the awkward comments to a minimum.
Conversation remained light, forcibly, for the remainder of the meal, and Clint was the first to get up and start wandering to other tasks. In the midst of Summer having to hand-feed David to make sure he ate every bite of his food, she glanced up and saw Clint grab a pill bottle from a cabinet above his refrigerator. He then dumped two almost comically large pills into his hand, and her jaw drop as she asked, "You don't have to actually take those, do you?"
"These? No," he shook his head. "These are for one of the goats."
"Oh," she said, almost in relief. "I was gonna say, because those are the biggest pills I've ever seen. I can barely swallow a Tylenol."
"You seem pretty good at swallowing to me," Bucky said nonchalantly.
Steve choked on a sip of orange juice, Clint's mouth twitched in amusement, and Summer almost stabbed Bucky with her fork as she glared at him with wide eyes.
"What?" he asked, his face the picture of innocence. "I meant with food. And drinks."
Face on fire yet again, Summer ignored Steve's coughing following his choking as she mouthed the words "David, five years old", but Bucky continued to stare at her in blissful ignorance that she knew was patently false.
Not that David would even remotely understand what had been said, but that was beside the point. Summer eventually sighed and turned back to her food, trying very hard to maintain her somewhat angry expression despite the fact that she actually wanted to grin like a moron. More than that, she just wanted to ignore the other two men in the room, even though by now they were both quite used to how Bucky liked to brag in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Especially Steve, who had been dealing with it for longer than any of them had and was endlessly amused that some habits simply never died, brainwashing or no.
Once the attention had shifted away from them again, Summer took the opportunity to lean over and whisper to the man sitting next to her, "I'm gonna kill you."
He didn't reply, instead merely keeping his eyes on his plate and grinning slightly. She shook her head at him, losing the will to still appear angry and smiling herself as she looked away.
She was almost done eating and very nearly thinking about other matters when an unexpected hand above her knee and lips at her ear made her nearly jump with surprise.
"I meant it, though. You're very, very good at it and making sure that nothing goes to was-"
She elbowed him in the ribs as hard as she could, which wasn't all that much, but he still made an "oomph" sound as he backed away. "Shut. Up!" she whisper-shouted, face back to its default state of uncomfortably blushed, even as she continued to smile.
Despite it all, deep down, she felt a distinct sense of pride growing within herself. She had once doubted her ability to fully or even competently please this man, due to both lack of experience and lack of confidence, but with both deficits being remedied, she could finally take some pride in those annoying thoughts in the back of her head being silenced.
Now, if only she could just get the ridiculous blushing under control. And Bucky's mouth.
Under an apple tree later that day, Summer sat with a large book open in her lap and David sitting in front of her, watching as she made various gestures with her hands and explained them with her words. She'd made a daily routine out of this following David's astounding communication with the deaf girl in his daycare room, but so far, he'd chosen to remain silent in every sense of the word with her.
She pointed to herself and said, "I..." Then she made two small fists with her hands and crossed her arms over her chest and said, "Love..." And finally, she pointed to him and smiled, "You."
He smiled back, but he kept playing with a couple of sticks he was holding rather than answer back. She understood his hesitation, despite how frustrating it was, but she now had more confidence than ever that he'd eventually make great progress in his communication. She just had to be patient and keep working with him.
"All right, next is... apple," she said, flipping through the pages and settling on one. She pointed up at the tree giving them shade and then followed the directions in the book, making the sign for apple by placing her fist to her cheek and pressing her index knuckle to it, then twisting it back and forth. "Apple."
He watched her closely, and one of his hands started to form into a fist for a minute, but it never left his lap and he loosened his hand a moment later. She sighed lightly and gave him a smile, taking that one little gesture as another sign of progress. "All right. How about we take a break and play hide and seek now?"
Smiling and jumping up at that, David brushed off his jeans and kept his sticks firmly in his grasp as Summer closed the book and set it aside, looking out over the small hill that they were sitting on and deciding to get closer to the house to play the game. The farm was divided between the animals and the growing food, and they were currently in the part of it that contained things like apple trees and rather impressive tomato plants, and an herb garden that made her nearly salivate just to look at it. The animals were closer to the house, the goats in their pin and a horse or two in some hand-built stables, and some smaller creatures in the still-adorable red barn that they were now walking towards. It was all very impressive for being maintained by one man who didn't look like the sort to have had much experience in this beforehand.
"Let's start at the barn, kiddo," she said, and David happily dashed off in front of her, all energy and smiles today, and she smiled to herself as well as she followed him. The fresh air really seemed to be doing wonders for him, and she only hoped that he wouldn't be too sad to leave once the tower was ready to be moved back into.
After a good fifteen minutes or so of hardcore hide and seek - David was a master of bending himself in odd ways underneath things and giving her a heart attack that she actually wouldn't be able to find him - it was his turn to count and hers to hide when she went behind the barn, ignoring the somewhat grating sounds of the nearby goats as she ducked behind a small pile of hay that was sitting outside. Then, as she was waiting for him to find her, she heard a sudden and unexpected noise that was not an animal or her son's feet padding through the grass. It sounded sharper, like something getting chopped, so she jumped to her feet, forgetting the game and dashing around the corner to grab David's arm and start looking around for the source of the noise. Then she heard it again, realized it was coming from near the house, and she tried very hard to not let her sudden spark of fear get the best of her.
Everyone had left, so she couldn't blame it on Clint or someone else. Hoping it was just an animal loose and not someone there to randomly kill her, she clenched her jaw and motioned to David for him to walk behind her as they crept closer to the house, behind the cover of some convenient trees.
Her knee-jerk fear, however, ended up being rather short-lived, because as soon as the house was within her sight once more, she identified the culprit as none other than Bucky, who had apparently not left with Steve as he was supposed to. Instead, he was dressed in clothes that looked very appropriate to the setting, which were also clothes that she herself had bought for him back when he was a terrifying, half-insane and mostly vacant ex-assassin sleeping under her roof in Virginia. Now, suddenly, seeing him in jeans and a flannel shirt of various shades of blue with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows as he attacked an innocent log on a stump with an ax, she was glad she'd bought it for him. She was not, however, glad that he had nearly given her a heart attack.
Now that the suspicion of danger had passed, she led David out from behind the trees and called out, "Seriously? You scared me to death! I thought you left with Steve!"
Pausing just before he could split another log, he glanced her way and then used his flesh hand to push his hair out of his eyes before he replied, "The meeting wasn't that important."
Giving him a knowing look as she approached him, she said, "You just didn't want to leave us here alone. You wouldn't have stayed behind just to... stock up on... firewood."
He glanced at the wood that he was demolishing, then shrugged and said, "Therapy."
"Wood chopping and dancing," she smiled. "Interesting therapeutic combo." He returned her smile slightly, then pushed aside his hair again, and she said, "I can still cut that for you if you want. It's growing ridiculously fast."
"But you don't want to," he pointed out, as David grew weary of both of them and found a much bigger stick nearby that he could play with.
She shrugged a little and smiled. "I mean... I don't want you to go full on caveman again but... it's nice having a little more to..."
"Hold on to?" he guessed, and she glared at him due to the company they had, but he just grinned and then turned back to his task of making more, potentially highly unnecessary, firewood.
"Anyway," she cleared her throat, "On a more serious note, I don't want you to feel like you need to always have someone near me to watch or protect me. Especially here. I don't want to be the thing holding you back from what you want to do. Or need to do."
He paused as he raised the ax again, letting it fall a bit as he looked at her and said quietly, "It's just... this soon after the attack, I didn't want to... I couldn't," he shook his head, looking away as he trailed off.
Understanding, and grateful that he placed such a high emphasis on her safety and wellbeing, she replied, "I understand, but... I hope you don't see me as someone who needs constant protection or a... damsel in distress or..."
Bucky laughed at that, a real laugh, and said, "That's the last thing I see you as. Especially after Steve told me how you ran down the tower in those heels with two kids thrown over your shoulders."
She grinned a little and said, "Well... yeah. So... just keep that in mind next time, okay? I don't want to be the thing sidelining you."
"You're not," he said quietly, and by his tone and the look in his eye, she believed him.
"Okay." She took a breath, then added, "Now carry on."
He looked at her a bit curiously as she smiled brightly and then took a seat on the grass, underneath another tree, a few feet away from David. When he hesitated, she waved her hand towards the logs and said, "Seriously. I could watch you do this all day. Extra points if you have to work up a sweat and take the shirt off."
That earned her another grin, and she spent the rest of the hour mock-battling David with the sticks that he brought to her, and watching Bucky look rather good adapting to his farm environment and giving her a good show to boot. She suddenly hoped that one of the chicken coops would fall apart so she could watch him fix it, or Clint decide that a tree had to go so she could watch Bucky chop it down. She never would have expected to find such thoughts so intriguing, but then again, she wasn't exactly dealing with the average guy off the street.
And he even eventually took his shirt off for those "extra points" he'd mentioned, and as she watched and giggled with a silly grin on her face, she decided that she might end up missing the farm even more than David when they had to eventually leave.
Just before sundown, Bucky was finished with his wooden demolition and was sliding his shirt back on over his arms when he glanced at Summer and found her looking at her phone and frowning as she read something. He wasted no time in asking, "What's wrong?"
She looked up at him and smiled a little nervously. "It's Clint. He wants me to feed the animals while he's gone." Bucky was confused for a moment, not seeing the problem there, but Summer quickly clarified, "That means I have to face Matt Damon."
His confusion then shifted into a grin. "Matt Damon" was her pet name for the evil, woman-hating rooster that Clint owned, and it had tried to murder Summer more than once during their stay so far. She'd given it the name of an actor he'd never heard of because apparently she despised the actor for no reason, other than his general existence, so she had bestowed the name upon the rooster. She also said that the rooster even resembled the man somehow. Bucky took her word for it.
"Need backup?" Bucky offered, buttoning up his shirt.
"Definitely. Nothing short of the Winter Soldier is sufficient for this mission," she replied, making him grin again. "But seriously. Keep that douche away from me."
"Yes ma'am," he nodded, giving an imaginary tip of a hat, and it didn't dawn on him until she looked at him a little curiously that that particular gesture had not come from this particular century of his life. But it had felt natural, like any other teasing thing he ever did with her.
At the sudden, very slight uncertainty in his eyes, Summer smiled reassuringly and tilted her head a bit as she said, "Sergeant."
His expression eased some, especially with the slightly teasing tone to her voice, and he watched her with amusement as she glanced over to David first before coming closer, reaching out to him and smoothing down his shirt over his shoulders before saying wistfully, "You know, I really wish I could have seen you back then. In your uniform and everything. Because I've seen the pictures and those videos but I doubt they really did you justice."
"Couldn't really say," he shrugged, glancing down as her fingers fiddled absently with his buttons.
"Not I have any complaints now, as you know," she grinned, watching her fingers as well, "but something about a guy in uniform, I guess. And the title. I wonder if girls called you Sergeant in bed. I could try it out," she looked up, clearly teasing. "Sergeant Barnes."
He tried to hide the instant wince that shot across his face, he truly did, but there was no stopping it, and he could not help it. Summer immediately paled, recognizing the sudden pain in his eyes as her whole face fell, and he wished that the first thing he'd seen and heard in his head when she'd said those last words was not the despicable face of Zola, but it was, and he couldn't change it. Those two words, said together, were an instant trigger of his fuzzy but intact memory of the man telling him his new purpose in life as the "fist of HYDRA", and of course, Summer had no way of knowing that.
"What? What did I say? What did I do?" she asked almost frantically, but he tried to shove the thoughts away and reached his hands to her shoulders in a calming gesture.
"Nothing, nothing. It's just those words," he explained, brows furrowed and eyes still more pained than he'd like to admit. "I don't like being called that."
"Okay," she nodded quickly. "I won't call you that again. I'm sorry. I was just trying to be... I don't know..."
"I know, and it's fine," he assured her. "Not the first time one of us has done something like that without knowing."
She nodded, understanding what he was referring to. A few weeks prior, when they were still in the tower, they had been deep in the midst of a stolen, mid-day, very quick romp in his room, while her son was out in the living room with the others, and when he noticed how incredibly hard she was trying to stay quiet, he'd made the mistake of gently putting his hand over her mouth right at the end to help her. All it had accomplished was her suddenly gasping as if he'd been choking her as she scrambled away from him as fast as she possibly could, even stumbling to the floor in her haste, and he realized all too late the idiocy of what he'd done. He spent almost an entire half an hour relentlessly apologizing for the painful memories he'd triggered, even though once she'd pulled herself together, she had assured him that he was fine and that it wasn't really his fault. It was just... what it was.
"I'm sorry," she said again, shaking her head, and he reached out to touch her face gently before he answered.
"I know. But you didn't know. And I'm fine," he nodded to her before kissing her forehead, wanting only to put an end to this moment and move on. She had no reason to be so sorry. When he drew back, he forced his expression into something lighter and said, "Let's go take care of that... chicken."
She looked at him for a moment before her lips briefly quivered and then burst into a wide smile as she laughed. "That is hands down the weirdest thing you've ever said. And I love it."
Her smile was the most contagious thing in the world to him, and he smiled back as her hand entwined with his. "Good."
Then, briefly dark moment successfully over, she began leading him towards the barn after she took David's hand in her other, free one. She wasn't watching when his face fell for a moment back into its frown from a moment before, truly despising how a memory or flashback could still wield far too much power and threaten to derail his entire day. This time hadn't been so bad, but it didn't mean others weren't, and as sick as he was of it, he knew that he could realistically expect this to continue happening for the rest of his life.
The trick was to deal with it and move on, and not give the moment so much power. So, that was exactly what he tried to do, focusing wholly on the task at hand: guarding his girlfriend from a rather nasty and temperamental rooster.
He followed her around the property as she fed all of the other animals first, making him carry the "heavy stuff" that wasn't really heavy at all, like the hay she gave to the goats and horses, and the water containers that went in with them. She saved the dreaded chicken coops for last, and when they got there, she clutched a small container of chicken feed as she eyed the rooster in question from her safe place outside of the coop.
While all the other chickens were oblivious, sure enough, "Matt Damon" - or whatever - came pecking to the forefront and cocked it's rather ugly head as it appraised her. He glanced at Summer as she took a deep breath, noticed David hiding behind her legs, and then said, "Should I just... do it for you?"
She shook her head. "I can do this. It's just a stupid chicken. It's Matt Damon. I can handle Matt Damon."
"I still don't understand the name," Bucky muttered.
"It seriously looks like him! It's weird!" she exclaimed. "And all of Matt Damon's movies are crap!" Then she shook her head and refocused herself. "Okay. I'm going in. Kick him if he tries to attack me. I should not have worn sandals."
Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward and opened the door to the chicken coop, slamming it a few times to try to get the rooster to back up, but the creature wouldn't budge and merely continued to glower at her. She frowned and then opened the door again, muttering, "Fine, then I'm just dumping this food right on the floor and you guys can just deal with it..."
She did so, and the rooster glanced at the food briefly, so she quickly grabbed for the nearly-empty water container and tried to make a mad dash away. But, the evil fowl was too quick, and flew right at her, going right for her vulnerable feet and pecking the crap out of them while she squealed and cursed Matt Damon's names to the heavens.
Taking his role as backup quite seriously, Bucky quickly sprang into action, but he was afraid that he'd kill the chicken and scar David for life if he kicked at it. So instead, his left arm shot out and grabbed Summer by her middle, then pulled her swiftly back to safety while his other arm slammed the door of the coop shut. Unfortunately, the door sort of fell apart upon impact, at least towards the very stop of the wiring, so Clint would likely be forcing Bucky to fix it the next day. But he wasn't worried about that now.
"Ugh! Demon chicken!" Summer screeched at the rooster as Bucky set her down and looked down at her feet to see them actually mildly bloody from the rooster's attacks. "Fricking ouch, man..."
He knelt down and examined both of her feet quickly, sighing as he stood back up and said, "I'll clean you up inside. No more feeding chickens for you."
She looked to be about to protest, but David staring wide-eyed at her feet caught her attention, and she muttered, "Crap. He hates blood. Why did I have to wear sandals?"
Bucky looked at David, then back at her, and then quickly made the decision to scoop her up in his arms and carry her back to the house. David couldn't get queasy from the blood if he couldn't see it.
"What - hey - you don't have to carry me, it's just some pecks -"
He silenced her with a single shake of his head as he began walking them towards the house. "I'm not just backup. I'm extraction, too." Then he gave her a slightly crooked grin, and she laughed, giving in and letting him carry her the rest of the way without incident.
Once inside, he sat her down at the kitchen table and then left to go rummage in one of the bathrooms for some first aid supplies, unwilling to take chances with an open wound on two feet that had been walking amid animal waste and other generally unpleasant debris. When he came back out, David was sitting in the chair next to Summer, staring again at her feet in deep concern. Bucky dumped his small armful of stuff on to table, then grabbed what he needed first and knelt down before her again.
"I can do this myself, you know," she chided him with a small grin when he glanced up at her before he began.
"But like I always say, you don't have to," he retorted, and her smile grew warmer as she then opted to remain silent. He then looked at David once more, before opening an alcohol swab and getting the painful part over with first.
The marks on her feet weren't too bad, and they'd all already stopped bleeding, but he still cleaned each one carefully and made sure they were each covered. David watched intently the whole time, and by the time Bucky had gotten to the last one, he looked at the child and then handed him the last bandaid. David looked up, his bright brown eyes confused for a moment before he looked down at the offered bandaid and took it.
"Peel off the two white pieces and then put it here," Bucky explained, showing David where to put it. As the boy began peeling off the pieces, Bucky briefly met Summer's eyes to find her watching them a little curiously, but even more warmly than before. Then he looked back to David, who hopped off of his chair to stand next to Bucky and carefully, meticulously even, place the little bandage on his mother's last boo-boo. Afterwards, he looked up at Summer and beamed, and she smiled back just as brightly.
"Are you trying to help take care of me?" she asked lightly, and David nodded enthusiastically. Even Bucky had to smile at the kid's cuteness. Summer then leaned forward and hugged her son, adding, "Well, I'm one lucky girl to have such a sweet little boy."
She kissed his forehead, and he smiled at her one more time before glancing at Bucky and suddenly growing shy out of nowhere, then racing off and out of the room. She chuckled at his sudden but not uncommon flightiness, then turned back to Bucky at his still-kneeling position. "That was sweet."
Bucky shrugged. "He seemed pretty interested in making sure your feet weren't gonna fall off."
She smiled and said, "You're really good with him, you know. He likes you so much. I know it's not always easy to tell because he doesn't talk, but he misses you when you're not around."
Bucky looked down for a moment, temporarily unsure what to say back before he settled on, "You've done an amazing job with him."
She wrinkled her nose and said, "Not really. You weren't there during the bad years. Trust me. I had no clue what I was doing for a long time."
But that was just it, he thought. She was alone and without help and she still managed to figure out how to raise a kid like David and keep him reasonably happy. It was almost beyond his comprehension, especially since it was so far beyond what he knew himself.
"But thank you for saying so," she added, reaching out and brushing back some of his hair from around his eyes. She might have kept offering to cut it, but he was well aware of how she looked at it and clawed at it, and he could let it grow a bit longer still.
He replied by rising some from the floor, just enough to reach her lips for a short, sweet kiss that left her smiling even more than she had been before.
"Wanna help me start dinner?" she asked while he looked from her lips to her eyes at the question.
"I still owe you a different kind of favor," he reminded her, saying the words quietly and with a slight curve to his lips.
"Yes," she grinned, fighting an instant blush, "but we're alone and my kid is awake. So peel potatoes now. Save the fun stuff for later."
He groaned almost too faintly to hear as he kissed her one last time, just as softly as before. "As soon as he's asleep."
She nodded, unable to fight the blush any longer, to his satisfaction. "The very minute."
By the time Summer was sitting next to David in the bed she shared with him, him curled to her side while she read him one of his favorite books, she was almost nodding off herself. But, every time she started to consider crawling under the covers and passing out, she'd remember that she had a "date" in Bucky's room, and she'd be doing neither her nor Bucky any favors by missing it.
At the end of the book, David gave up his own struggle to stay awake, leaving her side by a few inches to flop down on his pillow and pull the covers to his chin. She closed the book and set it aside, turning towards him and brushing his hair aside before leaning down and pressing a kiss to his forehead. "I love you, kiddo. Sweet dreams."
He gave her a sleepy smile of his own, and just as she was about to turn away and let him sleep, he pointed to himself. She did a quick double take, then felt her heart skip inside when he crossed his arms over his chest, over the covers. Realizing what he was doing, she felt her eyes instantly fill to the brim with tears that were of the furthest thing from sadness, and as he pointed at her, finishing his expression of "I love you", she smiled one of the happiest smiles of her life and laughed.
"I love you too! I love you so much," she gushed, kissing his forehead and then hugging him tightly. "Thank you for telling me! I've been waiting so long to hear that."
The smile that he gave her in return almost melted her all over again, and as she wiped at her eyes, he settled back into the bed and closed his eyes. She brushed his short hair back again and took a deep, still shaky breath, utterly overcome and completely undone by her son's first-ever "I love you".
Once she was sure that he was asleep, she stood up from the bed and found that she couldn't get the smile off of her face. David was turning six soon, and though his actions always told her that he loved her, his unexpected expression of it had filled a void that she hadn't really known was there. She'd accepted his silence for so long that it simply wasn't something that she let herself think about or desire, but now that it had happened, she realized she had been waiting a very long time for this night to come.
Still shedding a tear or two, she flipped off the overhead light and then quietly left the room, almost floating down the hallway on her high as she got to Bucky's door. Once there, she knocked softly on the door twice, and he answered so quickly it almost made her giggle.
As soon as he did, his eyes widened in concern and he blurted, "Why are you crying? What happened?"
"Nothing," she shook her head, walking inside the "office" room when he stepped aside, still looking confused. She smiled up at him after he closed the door and explained, "He said he loved me. David did. After all this time he finally said 'I love you'."
"He spoke?"
"No, he signed it," she replied. "Remember how I told you the little girl in the daycare was teaching him sign language and I didn't even know? I've been trying to teach him more but I didn't really know if he was getting it, but I guess he was." Then she smiled even wider, her eyes trying to water even more as she added, "I just... I'm so hard on myself and I'm always so paranoid that I'm not doing the right things for him, and it's hard to know sometimes because he doesn't talk, but this... this just... I feel really good right now."
She watched him smile in response to that, then say softly, "You should. You always should."
She smiled back, and while her emotions were on overload, she let them keep spilling through her words and said, "You really have no idea how happy I am that I have someone to... talk to and share these things with now. I mean, I always had my brother, but he lived on the other side of the country and it's just... not the same, you know. I was alone for so long and now I'm not and... I'm rambling, I'm sorry."
He shook his head, coming closer as he said, "Don't be. I understand what you're saying." His right hand gently rose to brush away an errant happy tear from her cheek, and a few seconds passed before he said quietly, "I like it when you're happy like this."
Her smile grew again. "I've been pretty happy lately. Even with all the... blowing up of stuff that seems to follow me everywhere now. This really is the happiest I've ever been. At least since I've been grown up."
He smiled at those words, but a little weakly, and she knew that it was likely because happiness wasn't such a simple matter for him. But it wasn't for her either, because as normal as he must have thought she was compared to himself, she had spent the last seven years feeling very abnormal and, on bad days, simply less than everyone else.
"I can remember being happy," he said quietly, eyes cast downwards as his brows drew slightly together. "I still can't remember my family much but I remember feeling... lighter. Everything being easier and... simpler. More what it felt like than what it was."
She nodded, then said quietly, "I won't tell you that you'll feel that way again because I know you won't. I won't either," she shook her head. "And that's okay. We can still be happy. You can still be happy." When he frowned a little, almost as a reflex to such words, she added, "And you deserve to be."
"Not really," he said quietly. "But I can almost believe it when you say it."
"Then I'm gonna keep saying it until you do," she grinned. "And you know how I can talk."
He chuckled, his hand again going to her cheek before brushing her hair behind her ear. "Even when I'm not really listening."
She narrowed her eyes. "Hey -"
A flash of a grin was his only warning before he leaned in and kissed her, softly and sweetly, and her brief outrage faded quickly. She was still on emotional overload, thankfully the good kind, and it was a freeing thing to just stop talking and feel. And if there was something that Bucky was good at, besides the obvious Winter Soldier skills and equally obvious other things, it was making her feel so much at once that it was almost like a pleasant form of drowning. Coming up for air was overrated.
He paused first after a handful of kisses, leaning his forehead against hers before drawing away slightly and saying, "I don't think I say it enough."
"Say what?" she asked, genuinely too dazed to follow.
"That I love you," he replied. "I should tell you more."
She smiled a little and then shook her head. "Don't say it just to say it. Say it when you really feel it and really mean it. When people say it every time they hang up the phone or leave the room... I just think it loses what makes it special."
"But I always mean it."
She smiled, thinking her face would start hurting soon from all of these smiles. "I know. So do I."
"I love you," he murmured, looking down at her lips and then her eyes as he then backed her up against the wall.
She let out a small squeak when her back hit the wall, and she grinned as she replied a little breathlessly, "I love you too. And I love it when you do that."
He grinned back, then leaned in close and let his lips graze the side of her neck, the faint stubble on his jaw making her shiver pleasantly as he asked, "What else?"
She bit her lip, one hand in his hair and the other on his shoulder as she tried to think of ways of avoiding the question. "Everything else."
He kissed her neck gently then, almost too gently, and muttered, "Be more specific."
Stifling a groan, she said, "You can make me blush like an idiot just by looking at me. You don't need to try to make me say... things."
"But I know you can," he said, raising his head to give her a slightly mischievous look. "You can write them, so you can say them."
She shook her head. "Writing and speaking are way different. And nobody was ever supposed to read that."
He didn't refute that, instead growing curious as he said, "I wonder what you'd write now, now that we... aren't waiting anymore."
She laughed, a little too sharply. "Too filthy for even your eyes."
"Impossible," he murmured before kissing her again, harder this time. His arms were firm around her and his chest pressed her fully to the wall, and she kissed him back until she was nearly dizzy, quickly back to where she had been earlier that day, before muffins of all things had interrupted his efforts to repay her wake up call.
When his lips drifted back to her neck, she drew in a breath so shaky her whole body trembled, and she asked quietly, "Still wanna try tying me to the bed in nothing but the heels you like so much?"
She could have sworn she felt every inch of him twitch against her, but after a second or two he looked up at her and shook his head. "Not tonight."
"What's tonight?" she asked innocently, and he responded by dropping his eyes to her chest and then quickly ridding her of her shirt, tossing it to the floor before focusing all of his efforts on kissing every inch of her that his mouth could reach.
He started at the base of her neck, then drifted down, moving further down with each press of his lips and swipe or flick of his tongue, and just the attention on her breasts alone made her knees weaken underneath her. She clutched at his hair, his shoulder, whatever she could reach, but what she could reach kept diminishing, until his mouth was below her navel and breathing hotly in between kisses. It was then that she opened her eyes, looked down, and almost choked when she realized he was down on both of his knees before her.
"I - ah - Bucky," she managed to breath out, one hand going blindly to the wall behind her while the other stayed in his hair, on top of his head. He glanced up at her, his lips still grazing her skin and making it nearly catch flame, and her mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. He grinned at her speechlessness, then closed his eyes and resumed his maddening kisses, his hands working to take off the rest of her clothes as she tried to just breathe and wonder if he really expected her to stand through what he clearly intended to do.
She got her answer once he got everything off, then looked up at her one more time before taking her hands in his, then placing them in his hair and saying lowly, "Hold on."
She gulped and nearly choked on the air rushing out of her lungs. She did as he instructed, holding on for dear life and wondering how she would ever survive this man.
He ended the day much as he had began it, lying limp and sated in his bed, but this time with Summer next to him and equally dazed. He was lying on his front, metal arm dangling off the side of the bed and his other draped across her middle as she laid next to him on her back. She was panting, too deep into the exhausting aftermath to even grab the sheets to cover herself like she normally would, which was quite rare. He supposed that he had outdone himself tonight.
Blinking suddenly sleepy eyes, he kissed the part of her that was closest to his lips, her shoulder, then grinned softly at her when she opened her own eyes and turned her head to look at him. Her hair was a mess, her entire face flushed and lips a little swollen from his constant assaults on them, but her eyes were the best part to him. They were a little heavy with sleep, like his, but it was in these moments after that they held an intriguing mixture of innocence and of the utter opposite. He never let himself forget that he was her first, her true first, and that all of this was still very new to her. It was still new to him as well, despite his previous life, but he was reasonably confident that he was doing well in this particular... area. Maybe a little more than just reasonably.
She turned slowly on her side, drawing up the sheet over herself when she did - he wished she wouldn't, but he'd never say a word if it made her more comfortable - and as she faced him more fully, she raised a hand to his sweat-soaked hair and brushed it away from his forehead, where some of it had been stuck. "I don't want to get up. I don't think I can get up."
He chuckled quietly, shifting himself to lay on his side as well, his arm tightening along her middle and pulling her closer to himself. "Then don't."
"I have to," she sighed, her eyes closing. "Seriously though. I'm not sure if I can feel my legs."
Giving her a look when she opened her eyes after saying that, he subtly let the hand currently sitting on her hip slide down lower, over her outer thigh and then suddenly between her legs, moving swiftly enough to make her jump a little and let out a squeak at the unexpected touch. He grinned and said, "I think you can still feel your legs after all."
She groaned a little, smiling still as he moved his hand back to the safer place of her hip. He kissed her softly, not willing to let her go just yet, on the cusp of asking her to stay until he fell asleep as his hand gripped her hip just enough to pull her a little closer. But before he could say anything, she flinched a little and broke the kiss. "Ow..."
He opened his eyes, looking at her in confusion only to be met with similar confusion in her own eyes. "What?"
"I don't know," she said honestly.
"What hurts?" he pressed, a thousand thoughts suddenly racing through his head, each as irrational as the next.
"My hip, where you just grabbed me," she said, and he had the sheet off of her and down to her knees before she could so much as blink. The light in his room was still on, though it wasn't the brightest, but his perfect vision had no issues immediately discovering the problem. His expression darkened instantly, and Summer looked at him, then at her hip, then back to him before she said, "What? What are you looking at? I don't see anything."
"It's bruises," he muttered, not meeting her eyes. "I can see them, barely. They're still forming."
"Oh," she said quietly. "I mean, it doesn't hurt that bad, I just wasn't expecting..."
She trailed off as he placed his right, flesh hand over her hip, then glowered even more as he lined up the bruising with his hand and fingertips. All this time he had been paranoid and beyond cautious to keep his metal arm under control around her, thinking that any unintentional injuries would be due to that limb, but maybe he had forgotten to pay equal attention to the other one, which was just as unnaturally enhanced as the rest of him and just as capable of inflicting accidental damage.
"It's okay," he heard her say as she sat up, placing her hand over his as he continued to glare at it. "Really. It's just some bruises. You probably did it when you were holding me up and doing that angling thing where you kinda twist me and... anyway. It was worth it."
He raised his eyes to hers, finding her smiling in her attempt to ease his mind, but he was already beyond the point of that. When he looked down again to continue his staring, she reached out and pulled his face back up, and said, "I'm serious. I know what that look on your face means. Don't overthink this. It's not a big deal. I'm fine."
He stared at her for a minute, briefly debating whether to tell her all the reasons why it was a big deal and why she was not fine, but he knew he wouldn't convince her and she would continue to tell him that it was just a tiny blip on the radar, barely even that, and to just let it go. So, he decided against being honest, instead forcing his expression into something a little less dark as he nodded. "Okay."
She searched his eyes, and he suspected that she was surprised by how quickly he'd given in. "Okay. And I mean it. Don't even think about it. I know you probably will anyway, but -"
"No, you're right," he said in a tone that he hoped was convincing. "You're right."
She nodded, still looking at him quite closely, and he had no doubt that she didn't believe him. Nonetheless, she let it go at that point, kissing him as his mind raced.
This time, it was a little bruising, nothing major, little more than a stubbed toe or skinned knee by comparison. But, now that there had been a first time, there would certainly be a second, and maybe it wouldn't be so small and insignificant. Maybe he'd push her against a wall too hard and fracture her rib, or give her a slight concussion. Maybe he'd forget himself in the middle of the act, push too hard or too fast or both, and he wasn't even sure what exact kind of injury that would produce, and he didn't want to ever know.
The rest of the night passed in a blur, as did Summer's reluctant departure. She wasn't stupid and she knew what he was doing, what he was thinking and feeling, but she also knew that she could do very little, if anything, to stop him, so after he had gently urged her to go get the sleep she needed, she had left him alone with his thoughts. He didn't sleep much that night, staring at the ceiling for most of it, terrifying himself with one imagined scenario after another, each one worse and more gruesome than the last. It was not the first time he had done this, but it was the first time in a long time, and the first since they had taken the plunge and started sleeping together. Now he felt like a fool, having spent all of this time so physically intimate and open with her, just ignoring the dangers or maybe pretending, subconsciously, that he was better enough now that the dangers didn't exist anymore.
But he knew better now. He didn't know what that meant for the future, or what exactly he would do now about it, but he knew that above all else, he feared two things the most: first, forgetting everything all over again, and losing his new life and new memories the same way he'd lost his first ones, and second, hurting someone that he loved.
He fell asleep some time in the very early morning hours, and his dreams offered him no rest and no peace. Summer slept uneasily as well, hoping that a handful of bruises that she couldn't even see yet wouldn't become the new monster in Bucky's head.
A/N: Super duper quick update today because I'm in the middle of moving and almost forgot to update at all. I wish I had more time to ramble because this chapter is one of my favorites, it was so much fun to write, and I very much looking forward to your guys' feedback, like so much :D I'm behind on my PMs on here, and school, and life in general, but I'm happy to say that at the age of 25, I am FINALLY a licensed driver, so I've had a busy but awesome week :D Thank you guys for reading and for being awesome! I'll see you all next week for more life on the farm :D