"Are you sure you want me to do this?"
"Yes, Summer."
"But... you're sure?"
"Yes. Unless you don't want to do it, but I thought you did."
"No, I do. I like doing it and I definitely don't want anyone else doing it to you."
"Then why are you hesitating?"
Sighing heavily, Summer looked down at the scissors in her hands and smiled as she walked around the chair that Bucky was perched on the edge of, shirtless, as he waited for her to cut his hair. David was busy on the floor of her bedroom some feet away, back in his old habit of taking his toys apart with little screwdrivers and then putting them back together, and meanwhile, Frozen was playing on the TV for the hundredth time due to David's love of the movie. Summer bit her lip as Bucky looked up at her a bit expectantly, with a small smile of his own, and she said, "I just... I'm gonna miss... this." Her fingers ran through the long front pieces of his hair, making her point for her, and his grin widened.
"What you're really gonna miss is yanking on it all night."
"Hey, little ears," she quickly reminded him, though she was already blushing and still smiling. "But yes, I will miss that, even if I agree that's it's probably time to cut it."
His hair was now long enough to get in the way significantly enough to bother him, and when it had reached the point of being able to fly into his mouth if the wind blew it wrong, it not only reminded him of the times when he'd had his much longer Winter Soldier hair, but it was also utterly annoying. Summer had noticed his discomfort and had offered to cut it for him, but actually doing the deed was proving a bit difficult.
"You'll still get to pull on it," he pointed out, though he whispered now for David's sake. "It's just going back to normal."
"I know," she whispered back, "but I'm gonna miss how you look when you're on top and your hair's all sweaty and in your face and..." she trailed off when she looked up and saw the knowing, slightly maddening grin on his face. She cleared her throat and smiled, "Anyway. Okay. I can do this."
He nodded, still grinning, and she walked around the chair again, standing behind him as she picked the scissors back up. She was also equipped with clippers, to clean up the sides and his neck, but it was always easiest to start with the scissors first and at the back of the head, in her opinion. And it was also easiest considering how distracting he could be once she got around to doing the front of his hair.
The first snip was the hardest, but once it was done, she let out the breath she'd been holding and found the rest quite easy to do. She had been cutting his hair for months now, ever since he'd paid her that surprise visit in Virginia before her house had blown up, and it had become a sort of calming ritual for them, usually about once a month or so, since his hair seemed to grow rather quickly. She never once took for granted the fact that he trusted her to put very sharp instruments so close to his skull, and for her, she liked the way it felt to take care of him in that way, as seemingly insignificant as it may have seemed on the surface. Sometimes they chatted as she snipped away, and other times they stayed in a comfortable silence, and this time was one of the latter ones.
She listened to the sounds of David's tinkering and the occasional click of Bucky's arm as she worked, finding the same sort of lull in the act of cutting hair that she did in cooking. It was relaxing in the same kind of way, focusing on a singular task and working to achieve the final result. This time, the result was watching Bucky's farm look give way to his normal one, and it was nothing but appropriate, given how their time at the farm was running out. The tower's repairs would be finished very soon, and she would be going back to work, and the mission Bucky would be taking part in was coming up too. The whole time they'd spent on Clint's farm had been like a time-out from real life, in many ways, and leaving it would be as bittersweet as it was cutting off his hair.
When she got to the front of his hair, and was standing in front of him as she combed through it and kept cutting, Bucky stared at her like he always did at this point. What she didn't know was that every time she had ever cut his hair, while she had worked on the back and sides, he kept his eyes closed and enjoyed the calm of the moment along with her gentle touches. Then he would always open them once she was back in his line of sight, and the extent to which he would try to distract her depended on their current company. Thanks to David's presence, he kept the distractions to a minimum this time.
"Okay," she said with a look of deep concentration on her face as she set down her instruments again and brushed his hair down with her fingers, starting on the top and then working her way down the much-shorter sides. He never liked his hair overly short, and she always tried to keep it at least a little similar to what she had seen in his old pictures, but with a more modern touch. What that meant was, he had enough hair to look as neat or as messy as he pleased, without it bothering him or falling into his eyes. She smiled at the return of the look that she was most fond of. This was always how she pictured him in her mind, regardless of how much she had enjoyed the brief longer hair. "Hm. I missed seeing you like this more than I realized."
He smiled back, while her hand left his hair to trail down to his shoulder, his metal one, and brush away a few stray fallen hairs. "I'll clean up here if you want to go jump in the shower now." He nodded, then slowly got to his feet, and she gave him one more smile before turning and heading for the door herself, intending to grab a broom to sweep up the floor with.
But his arm shot around her waist before she could go, and she let out a little squeak as her back hit his still-bare chest and he pressed a quick but sweet kiss to her neck. She laughed and her eyes quickly darted to David, who glanced their way and scrunched up his little face in distaste before turning back to his toy and opting to ignore them.
"Thank you," Bucky said, utterly unnecessarily, and she smiled happily in reply just before he kissed the tip of her nose and let her go. She forgot why she had been trying to leave the room, and instead watched him grab his shirt from the floor and look back at her one more time before he left the room. Her smile remained intact after he shut the door behind himself, and after a few seconds, she bit her lip and ended up flopping down on her bed with a groan.
Staring up at the ceiling, she briefly took stock of things as thoroughly as she could over the course of a minute or two, all while still smiling like an idiot. Things were actually sort of great at the moment. Bucky's paranoia had calmed down a bit after the mild disaster over those accidental bruises, and though he was still very careful when they were together, he wasn't holding back like he had been, and their nights were back to being maddeningly perfect. Her days were nothing to sneeze at either, and just the day before before, David had convinced Steve, Bucky, and Summer with his wild hand gestures and adorable smiles to play Mario Kart with him. Steve actually wasn't so bad, as Sam had been trying to teach him the art of gaming for a month or two, and Summer was an old veteran of the game, but Bucky had held the controller like it was an alien artifact that required extensive knowledge of ancient runes to operate. Summer thought it was him at his most charmingly and accidentally cute, and no amount of her coaching stopped him from finishing in dead last every single race.
In other words, everything was pretty good. Bucky was doing well, and spending a lot of time with Steve every day in preparation for the upcoming mission, and it seemed to do him good. When Natasha was around, Summer loved it, because she finally felt reasonably confident in calling the super-spy a friend. Clint was also becoming one of her favorites, and he and Bucky seemed to relate on a level quite exclusive to the two of them.
And David, her sweet little David, was turning six next month, and he was signing more and more each day. He'd actually asked for a specific type of food from her using sign language earlier that day, and she had wanted to throw a party and ride through the city in a limo with her head sticking out in celebration of such a seemingly mundane event. But it was such a big deal for her, and the nice thing was, Bucky understood these things, because he knew very well how huge the little things could be.
She remembered when Bucky couldn't even eat a bite of normal food without throwing up, or crack a smile, or, much of the time, even blink. They had all come a long way, Bucky the most, obviously, but David was catching up, and Summer was indescribably proud of them both.
But, she realized as she continued to stare at the ceiling, she hadn't had nearly the same level of growth as the two of them. Sure, she'd moved (forcibly), gotten a job, rebuilt her life following HYDRA's invasion of her life and entered into her first truly serious, not to mention intimate, relationship of her life. But it all felt like... very little to brag of.
She frowned a little, not liking the feeling. Her degree was unfinished, ever since she's taken a leave of absence at college after the move to New York. She had yet to write a single word of anything on the laptop that Paul had bought her on his last visit. She might have been working, and cooking, and taking care of the two boys that she loved most in the world, but she also realized that she hadn't exactly been pushing herself in certain areas. After all, she didn't want to work as an assistant forever, and yet her best shot at financial independence - writing a book - was perpetually dead in the water.
She blew out a breath and wrinkled her nose at herself. She really needed to figure that out. Until she did, and until she got on her own path to reaching her potential, the way Bucky and David were, she would continue to be unimpressed with herself.
But before she could turn her happy thoughts too self-abusive, a little face suddenly entered her line of sight. She looked up and laughed as David peered down at her, his face upside down compared to hers.
"Hey, kiddo," she smiled, reaching out and pulling him down to the bed as he giggled. She hugged him close and he let her squeeze him to death before he started trying to squirm away, and when he did, she let him go. He stuck his tongue out at her and then hopped back to his toys, and she sat up in the bed, watching him a bit wistfully as he got back down to business disassembling and reassembling his toys. He was getting so big, and it was all at once terrifying and amazing, in every sense of the terms.
Her phone on the nightstand then began to ring with her brother's familiar ringtone, and she grinned as she picked it up and answered, "Man, I thought you'd fallen off the face of the Earth."
"Nope, but a week of false labor alarms tend to scramble my brain," he replied without missing a beat. "Hey kid."
"Nerd," she smiled. "I've missed your annoying voice."
"I bet you have. My voice is awesome."
"So no baby yet, though?"
Paul sighed. "Nope. This one's being an even bigger jerk than the others. Sarah's about to throttle me just for having the audacity to breathe while she suffers. She's starving but she can't eat much because she says there's no room, and she's so hot she's got the AC blowing full blast all the time and me and the kids are freezing to death."
Summer grinned. "Is she vowing again that this is the last kid?"
"Of course. We'll see in a month or two. So what's new with you? You back at that tower yet?"
"Not yet. Still at the super top secret superhero lair," she teased. "But we should be going back fairly soon."
"Good. That's why I was calling, actually. I was thinking about making a trip out there for David's birthday next month."
"Next month?" she repeated. "Really? With a new baby?"
"Well, since she's due any day now, she'll be a month old or so by then. We've travelled with babies that small before."
"Yeah, but... you'll have seven kids... under ten," she pointed out, eyes widening at just the thought of traveling with that many little kids at once.
"Sarah's mom could take some of the kids," Paul said. "We want to come out. We miss you and David. And she wants to meet Voldemort."
"Oh, well... wait," Summer narrowed her eyes. "She's got a thing for Steve, doesn't she? She had that t-shirt of his face that she wore all the time after the New York thing. And she said he was number one on her 'allowable cheat' list."
"... Yeah, that's true," Paul conceded, "and by the way, it'll never not be weird that you refer to Captain America as 'Steve'."
"Weird and awesome," she grinned. "He's seriously great."
"Well duh, he's Captain America!" Paul retorted.
"Yeah, but I mean as a person," she replied. "And guess who I'm like officially friends with now?"
"Um... do I want to know?"
She rolled her eyes. "Natasha."
"Oh!" his voice brightened instantly. "Natasha. Yeah. Natasha."
"Hey, calm down over there."
"Sarah's got her allowable cheat list, so do I."
"That's gross. The people you want to let each other cheat with are together in real life. That just seems wrong."
"Oh, whatever," Paul replied. "I bet you'd still bang Tom Hiddleston if you got the chance."
Summer opened her mouth to scoff at such an idea, but then an even better idea came to mind, and her eyes widened as she gasped, "No, even better! Tom Hiddleston and Bucky at the same time -"
Paul's sudden wail of an agonized curse hit her ear, and she heard fumbling sounds like he was dropping his phone in his haste to cleanse his ears of what he'd just heard. She laughed heartily, and when he finally got the phone back to his own ear, Paul said, "Summer, I mean it - stop saying things like that. It's not natural for baby sisters to say things like that. They're supposed to stay babies. Forever."
She laughed again. "Yeah, I think we crossed that bridge a long time ago."
He grumbled a bit and then said, "Yeah, well, anyway, moving on from that - I did have one more reason for calling you. I've been thinking."
"Uh oh," she automatically replied.
"Yeah. So, I'm willing to bet my medical degree that you haven't written a single word on that laptop I got you."
She cringed a little before muttering, "Yeah... busted?"
"Right. Okay, so, I have a challenge for you. I want you to write... let's say... at least five hundred words everyday until I see you for David's birthday."
"Five hundred words?" She repeated. "But that's -"
"Nothing, at least not for you," Paul replied. "Remember when you were in your fanfiction days and wrote like a couple thousand words a day?"
"Yeah, because I had actual ideas," she said. "I don't have any ideas right now, for anything. I can't just make five hundred words appear out of nowhere."
"Sure you can," he countered. "Isn't that what writing is?"
Sighing, she groaned, "Paul..."
"Look," he quickly added, "I'm saying this because you need a push. I know you're happy right now and I'm glad for that, but don't become... I don't know, stationary because of it."
"I'm not," she replied. "I'm working, or, well, I'll be back to work soon. I'm juggling a lot, actually, and I've even been looking at schools to get David into since he's been doing really well with people."
"I know, and I get that, but I also know you," Paul said. "You always take care of everyone else first and give everyone else all your focus, and that's not a bad thing, but you need to take care of yourself, too. And do your own stuff. Writing is your stuff."
"... But I have nothing to write," she said.
"So just start with something random, then see where it leads. You just need to write something. You could even write about your life."
"Ugh, don't start that again," she groaned.
"Why not? It's a good idea! You're the most interesting person me and Sarah know, by the way. We're always talking about you and your life and wondering what's going on that we're missing. It would make a great story. Just make it more fictional and dramatic or whatever, and there you go."
"So, what... orphan girl raised by grandmother has a baby under traumatic circumstances and then eventually falls in love with a... traumatized veteran amputee? While people keep trying to kill them?"
"I mean, I don't know, you're the storyteller," Paul shrugged. "But yeah. Something like that. You can do it so easily. Just don't write fifty shades of... Winter."
She laughed again. "Oh, I so could if I really wanted to."
"Yeah, please don't," Paul replied. "But seriously. Just try it for a week. If you can't do it, then fine. But try this week, and if it works, keep going. Five hundred words every day until David's birthday."
"Fine," she finally agreed. "I'll try."
"Okay. Good. And when I get there, I want to read it."
"All right," she nodded. "And you'd better make it out here now that you're getting my hopes up."
"I will. So long as the baby's good and healthy, it'll happen. I want to come out a lot more than I have. I want David to really know us. And I still can't believe the sign language thing."
She smiled a little sadly and said, "I know. It's awesome. He's awesome. And I want him to know all you better, too. You know - you could get a job out in New York."
"Yeah... maybe. Once my residency's finished, I can look around and talk to Sarah about it. But, you could also come out here."
"I know... but the thing is, I think Bucky's gonna need to be in New York for awhile. He needs to be wherever Steve is. And I'm not going anywhere without him."
"Figured that," Paul said. "I take it things are good with you two."
She smiled. "Yeah. Very."
"Still on the pill, right?"
She rolled her eyes. "Shot, actually, and yes."
"Good."
"You don't have to ask me that every time, you know."
"Yes I do," he argued. "I'm the only person you've got to check up on you about these things. And I know how you are around this guy."
She narrowed her eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," he quickly replied. "Anyway, gotta go."
"Fine," she sighed. "Call me when she's in labor for real."
"Will do."
After saying their last goodbyes, Summer hung up the phone and set it down on the bed, sighing as her brain swirled with the confusion of what the heck to write five hundred words about every single day for a month. That was no small amount of words for any writer, really, let alone a rather rusty one, but she knew Paul was right - she could do it. It was just a matter of what to write about.
Absently watching David fiddle with his toys, she decided after some time of pondering while she chewed her lip in contemplation that she could always just write a 500-word drool-worthy description of Bucky's daily looks each day, then enjoy Paul's misery when he had to read it all.
"What did it feel like?"
Clint looked up and paused from his task of hammering pieces of wood together, glancing at the man who was lending him a hand in renovating his goats' pin and asking, "What did what feel like?"
Unsure of how exactly to put it, Bucky gestured to his own head and then back to Clint. "The thing that happened to you."
Expression staying neutral, Clint looked back down at the wood and resumed hammering. "Felt like you would imagine. You'd probably have a better idea than most."
"Yeah, but..." Bucky paused, making sure to frame his words correctly, because he knew how annoying poorly thought out questions regarding his own woes could be. "Could you remember everything? Who you were, your life?"
"Sure," Clint nodded. "But it didn't matter that I could. I was there, but I wasn't there. Like I was watching and I knew what was happening, but I couldn't do a thing about it."
Bucky almost wished that he could say the same for his own ordeal, but instead, when he looked back on his own unwanted, violent memories, he remembered feeling nothing, and not really any sense of what Clint was describing. At least not until he had tried to kill Steve. But, he also knew that he had many memories to yet recover, and for all he knew, there had been other times when he had begun to become more self-aware.
"You ever feel guilty?" Bucky asked, handing Clint another 2x4.
Clint actually cracked a grin at that one. "Is that a serious question? Of course I do. Guilt was one of the worst parts of it all. I almost took out an entire helicarrier doing Loki's dirty work. I would have killed Nat if she hadn't literally knocked me back into reality. I even shot Nick Fury." Then he paused and added, "Guess we have that in common."
Bucky kept quiet about that one, though Steve had told him in confidence that Fury wasn't actually dead in an effort to assuage his guilt once those memories resurfaced. One less death to weigh on his mind, Steve had said.
He still couldn't help but feel that Clint had a better excuse for his actions than he did himself.
"I know why you're asking," Clint said, "and I'm not gonna tell you that it's all okay and it wasn't your fault and that you shouldn't feel guilty. Even if all that's true, it doesn't matter. You're still gonna feel guilty anyway. Everyone can tell you all day long not to, and it's not gonna matter."
Bucky frowned a little, though it was a relief to hear Clint say those words, knowing how very truthful it was. After a moment, he asked, "How do you deal with it?"
"Well, first I remind myself of who the guilt should actually belong to," Clint said. "And then I stop thinking about it."
Bucky looked at him a little helplessly. "How?"
Taking another break from the hammering, Clint glanced up towards the sun and then looked back down as he said, "Read a book. Come outside and work on something. Talk to someone on the phone. Target practice. Sometimes just a change in scenery is enough to do it. But if you sit around and stew in it, it consumes you."
Bucky nodded, and then for awhile, the two men were silent. Bucky debated bringing up a significant source of his guilt, something he remembered doing that still made no sense to him. He had done research in an attempt to understand it, thought about it and tried to analyze every inch of the memory until he had exhausted it, but he was every bit as confused as he had been the day he'd first remembered it. After a bit of going back and forth in his head, he finally said, "There's this one thing... it bothers me more than anything, I think. Even more than when I tried to kill Steve."
Clint glanced up at him, still hammering. "Yeah?"
"It was a kid," Bucky said, forcing the words out and avoiding eye contact as he said it. "It was a little girl at her birthday party, in her own backyard, and I just..."
"They had you kill a little girl?" Clint asked, appearing genuinely confused by this.
Bucky nodded, still trying to look at anything but the person he was speaking to. "I've tried to figure out why, but I just don't know. She was just a normal little girl."
Clint ceased his hammering, looking at Bucky as he spoke and then furrowing his brows as he sat back for a moment in thought. "Do you know much of Nat's story?"
Bucky shook his head. "I know she's a spy and used to be KGB. That's about it."
"Well, it's not my story to tell," Clint said, "but I can tell you that she can relate to you probably better than even I can. I know more about her life and what she's done than anyone, and that thing about the kid you just told me reminded me of something they did to her."
"What?" Bucky asked a little desperately, but he couldn't help it - the little girl had been haunting him for so long now, and he craved an explanation.
"Well... look at it from HYDRA's perspective. Here they get this guy who was an American hero, died in the war, best friend of Captain America, basically the last person on Earth who would ever willingly do their work. So they find a way to turn you and fry your brain until you forget your own name. But they have to test that, right?"
Something about the word "test" made Bucky's stomach turn, but he continued to hang on Clint's every word.
"If I had to guess, they picked that girl at random and had you kill her just to test how far you'd go. Make sure they'd taken all the humanity out of you, and that it wouldn't come back if you were sent to kill an innocent."
He wanted to be sick at the thought, because it made it all so much worse somehow, but Bucky thought it made perfect sense. Maybe the girl's parents really hadn't had anything to do with HYDRA, and it all really had been just a test. It made him feel even worse, just the thought that his mere existence had doomed some poor, innocent child to a senseless death for such a senseless reason.
"You ought to talk to Nat some time," Clint said, watching Bucky's expression turn ever darker as he contemplated the horror of it all. "You really do have more in common than you think."
Bucky shook his head a little, not at Clint's suggestion, but at everything in general. "I want to just... forget."
"Forgetting's what got you into that mess in the first place," Clint pointed out. "Just channel all that anger into the mission coming up. Best way to get rid of it." Bucky nodded a bit absently, and after Clint glanced at him for a moment, he said, "But for now - a change of scenery would do you some good."
Bucky was about to insist that he was fine, but then Clint was setting his hammer aside and getting up anyway. Bucky straightened up as well, and then Clint gestured towards the house as he stepped over the half-assembled pin. They weren't far from the house when Clint said, "You know, you've got a pretty good situation going here, all things considered. Really good support. You're lucky. We both are."
Bucky nodded, mostly out of habit, before he almost laughed darkly. "Lucky."
"Yeah. I had Nat to help me get my head back together, and you have Steve. Pretty good girl, too."
Bucky smiled, fleetingly but sincerely. "Yeah."
"Take advantage of that," Clint advised Bucky as he opened the door and both men stepped inside. Before Bucky could reply, he glanced towards the kitchen and was greeted by the sight of Summer giggling with Natasha, a martini glass in one hand and a spatula in the other as she hovered over the stove, and just like Clint had suggested, the change in scenery changed everything. A grin touched his face, suddenly intrigued now what the rest of the night would hold.
When Summer noticed them standing there, she choked a little bit mid-sip and then quickly recovered, smiling brightly as she called out, "Hi! Dinner'll be ready in like fifteen minutes. Natasha's playing bartender."
Natasha grinned, and Clint did the same as he said, "Oh boy. Last time Nat played bartender, a building blew up and I woke up wearing a spiked dog collar."
Summer choked again, and Bucky didn't even try to hide his amusement as she replied, "Let me guess, Budapest?"
Clint scoffed. "Oh, no, that story's way tamer than Budapest."
"What the frick happened in Budapest?" Summer asked a little desperately, looking back and forth between the two spies.
"That's a story for another day," Natasha shrugged before gesturing to the nearly empty glass in Summer's hand. "Ready for another?"
Summer smiled and thrust the glass out for Natasha to take, and she met Bucky's gaze just in time for him to grin and raise a questioning eyebrow. She simply blushed a little and turned back to the pot on the stove, but Bucky suddenly had the feeling that tonight was going to be rather... interesting.
Change of scenery, indeed.
Of two things, Summer was sure: Natasha was an incredible mixologist, and Bucky was an absolute jerk.
By the time she had actually gotten dinner on the table, she had been tipsy. She had assumed that eating would help diminish her down to a buzz, but then this mysterious glass of wine had kept appearing in front of her and was refilling itself. Except, she soon discovered, Bucky and Natasha were just alternating filling it back up once she'd surpass the halfway point. It was a conspiracy, and it was an utterly successful one, because by the end of the meal, she was full-blown drunk.
And it was awesome.
Everything was hilarious, and her penchant for saying weird or embarrassing things was elevated to the point of being humiliating, but she didn't mind at the moment, and everyone was so utterly entertained by her that she decided that it was just her duty to go with it and make the most of it.
The problem was the jerk seated to her left, whose apparent mission in life was to make her as red-faced and pleasantly yet maddeningly uncomfortable as possible. Whether it was his hand on her leg - sometimes a little too high and a little too close to something that was not her leg - or a remark so suggestive that it made her choke on her food and avoid eye contact with everyone else at the table, or a few torturous words murmured in her ear when she was least expecting it, Bucky seemed to be absolutely gleeful at her drunken state and was taking advantage of it. Staying seated at the table and not ending up underneath it was taking all of her self control, but even drunk on Natasha's concoctions and Clint's vintage red wine, she managed to rein in her baser impulses.
For then, anyway.
Somehow, she and Bucky ended up as the last two people at the table. She had noticed what seemed like another conspiracy taking place a few moments before, with the others slowly leaving and Steve very purposefully taking David to the living room with the promise of playing video games with him. Natasha had actually winked at Summer as she had followed Steve out, and Summer had merely kept sipping her infinitely-filled wine, wondering what in the world was happening.
Then, once the room was empty apart from herself and Bucky, she had been deep in the midst of contemplating the oddness of it all when suddenly her glass had disappeared from her grip halfway to her lips. "Hey -"
"Sorry," Bucky said, setting the glass down and grinning at her after. "I kind of want you conscious for what we're doing next."
"Pfft, I'm not that drunk, I'm just - wait, what are we doing next?" she asked with big, wide eyes.
Bucky just grinned and took a drink from her glass, then asked, "Depends. What do you want to do?"
She giggled, feeling her cheeks flush for the hundredth time since her second drink. "Uhh... wow, that's... such a hard question."
His grin widened, and then he briefly bit his lip before replying, "I'll ask a better question... where?"
Where, indeed. She only had to think for a minute before she smiled and all but yelled in nearly child-like excitement, "Barn!"
She laughed when he laughed at her enthusiastic answer, and then dutifully obeyed when he said, "Okay, but maybe not so loud... at least until we get there."
She nodded enthusiastically, and then she jumped up from the table and immediately swayed on her feet, but he was quickly up as well and steadying her with his hands on her upper arms. She giggled at her own drunkenness and said, "Oh my God, everything is kinda spinning and it is great. I feel great. Too great, by the way, because the whole time we were sitting there eating and you kept freaking whispering and touching me and trying to drive me crazy, I've been so incredibly horribly horny, and -"
"I know," he nodded, "but you're yelling again."
"Crap." Then she burst into giggles again, and as she laughed and laughed some more, he took her by the arm, and before she knew it, she was outside under the clear, cool night sky, being walked in the general direction of the barn. She leaned her head back and looked up at the stars dotting the sky, the half-full moon lighting up the night around them, and she took a deep breath before grabbing Bucky's hands and spinning herself out in front of him as she smiled, "God, I love it here! I kinda don't want to leave. Do you like it here as much as I do?"
"I like it," he shrugged, smiling at her as she looked up again a bit dreamily at the stars, walking backwards.
"It's just so clean and... awesome here, like the air and everything," she gushed. "It makes me want to get my own house again, but with you, and live on my own little chunk of land with some animals and..."
Her eyes widened and she snapped her head down, looking at him in slight panic as she rambled, "Not that I mean, uh, like... I'm not asking you to get a house with me, I just meant -"
"Summer."
"... I miss having my own house sometimes and I wouldn't want to live without you, but I'd understand if you -"
"Summer," he chuckled, pulling on her hands and making her stumble a bit against his chest. "Stop. Breathe."
"Sorry," she smiled, blushing at her own embarrassment. "I know we've been kinda living together for a long time now, but it would be different and I didn't want to freak you out, not that I could do it any time soon because money's tight and -"
Then she was suddenly being kissed, sweetly but also fiercely, and there was something hard behind her back, but she had no idea what it was. She simply kissed him back, the warmth in her veins from the alcohol increasing exponentially with the contact. She wasn't even aware of how she had begun to moan just from the kiss, at least not until he broke away and smiled, "God, Summer..."
"What?" she asked breathlessly, utterly oblivious.
"I like it when you drink," he admitted, and she smiled up at him as the hardness behind her back suddenly gave way. She stumbled back a little but he didn't let her fall, helping to guide her instead with his arm still around her waist. It was then that she looked up and around her again, and then she was smiling and exclaiming with glee again.
"The barrrn!" she slurred a little, springing free of his arms to do a little spin around the middle of the barn as Bucky shut the door behind them and grinned at her antics. "Gah, the memories we made here..."
Thoroughly dizzy from the spinning, she stopped and took a moment before looking at Bucky and giggling again. He was leaning against the door, arms crossed and expression one of sheer amusement and affection, and she loved how she felt in that moment. She felt more courageous, less inhibited, and so utterly happy that she could just skip. And so, that is what she did - she skipped up to him, aware of what kind of effect it would have on a certain bouncy part of her body, and to her satisfaction, that was exactly where his eyes went.
"Soooo, Mister Barnes," she grinned, grabbing the collar of his flannel-print shirt and using it to steady herself, "have I told you lately how much I love the farm boy look on you?"
"Once or twice," he nodded, hands going to her hips.
"Good, because... this," she reached up and ruffled his already-ruffled hair, "and this," she grabbed his collar again, "and these jeans you wear like ohmyGod is just... it's killing me. Hey, can you rip a log in half again?"
"Maybe," he teased, leaning down to kiss her, but she ducked it unexpectedly to bend down and then suddenly spring back up, with a piece of hay in her hand.
"Hang on, I'm trying to complete the look," she said before playfully sticking the little piece in his mouth. He gamely went along with it, and she all but squeaked with glee when he started chewing on it. "Oh man, see, that's perfect... you know what this makes me think of? Like, what it makes my writer brain come up with?"
He raised an eyebrow, still chewing on the hay as he replied, "No, but I definitely want to know."
"Okay, so... imagine this," she said, her hands poorly fumbling with the buttons on his shirt as she spoke, "you're this ridiculously sexy, kinda quiet and maybe a little brooding but also playful farmhand, and I'm the deprived and super frustrated lady of the house." Bucky's lips split into a wide smile and then he laughed, and she did too before going on, "No, no, but listen - so I walk around the farm in my dresses and hats, acting like I'm checking up on your work but really I'm just checking you out and staring at you while you work all sweaty and shirtless and... yeah, because I'm married to this idiot who doesn't know what he's doing and is always gone and is a total idiot douchecanoe."
"Douchecanoe?" he repeated, still grinning and staring at her like she was absolutely the most entertaining thing he'd ever seen in his life.
"Yes," she nodded, finally getting one button open. "So then one day, after weeks and weeks of me watching you and you watching me and little subtle flirting things and comments that could be seen as innocent but we both know really weren't, I can't stop myself anymore, so I come out here where you're working and make sure you see me, then I go to the barn and go inside and you follow me and close the door and then..."
"And then?" he spurred her on, grin still in place but eyes a little more serious than they had been a moment ago.
"And then..." she trailed off, shifting a little bit against him as she got to the third button and then pausing as she grinned up at him and asked, "Oh my gosh - this is getting you excited!"
He shrugged without an ounce of shame and said next, "I just want to know what happens next."
"Well..." she sighed, thoughts swirling through her drunken haze before coming together as she grinned, "You pin me to the wall but I tell you that it's wrong, that we shouldn't do it, because - and I totally don't condone cheating, by the way, but it's a made up story so who cares - because of my idiot husband, your boss, but you just hold me tighter and say he doesn't deserve me, and that you're gonna show me everything I've been missing from him. I give in and we kiss and it's freaking amazing because of all the pent-up tension and the angst and how it's so forbidden and wrong, but it's also perfect and amazing and you just... take me, right in the middle of the barn, and it's all rough and passionate and you make me absolutely scream -"
His lips suddenly crashed on to hers, interrupting her impromptu story-telling, and she struggled for air against the sudden, though utterly welcome, onslaught. She had no idea he'd like it so much, but the ferocity of his kiss and the even more prominent sign against her hip told her otherwise.
"How do you come up with this stuff?" he asked her when he had finally stopped to take a breath before moving to her neck.
She chuckled and replied, "I'm a writer and I'm drunk and you are disgustingly perfect, that's how." She closed her eyes as he nipped at her neck, then muttered, "I mean, I wrote a 500 word description of you today, because my brother's making me write something every day, and the funny thing is he said he's going to read it next month and -"
"You wrote what?" he asked, raising his head and looking down at her a bit curiously.
"A description of you," she shrugged. "I spent like two hundred words just on your arm. I think I called it... 'elegantly brutal'. But your eyes were the most important one. 'Violently blue, like a break of blue sky in the middle of a raging storm'."
His eyes softened a little bit, and he seemed at a loss for what to say. She just smiled at hm again and wrapped her arms around his neck, then kissed him sweetly. He tightened his arms around her and kissed her back, and from there, the sweetness again became a passionate, mutually blissful struggle.
At least until she snorted and broke into laughter mid-kiss. He opened his eyes and drew back, staring at her in slight confusion as she giggled away. "What?" he asked, panting rather heavily now.
"Because - because," she laughed, trying to stop and breathe but mostly failing, "Because we banged... in a barn... and your last name... is Barnes!"
Then she cracked up all over again, and Bucky just shook his head and grinned at her as she laughed to the point of crying.
"I don't know why it's so funny, but oh my God, it is," she gasped, wiping at her eyes with her fingertips. Just when she caught her breath for a minute, and they both thought that her laughing fit was over, she looked up at Bucky again and then burst out laughing all over again, this time falling out of his arms in the process and spinning away as she cackled.
Bucky just smiled and watched her, and it took her awhile to catch her breath. When she did, she fell backwards on a pile of hay and let out a long sigh, still feeling absolutely amazing. Then she sat up and blew some hair out of her face, focusing her slightly fuzzy vision on Bucky as she chirped, "You know what's on my nerves right now?"
"I... have no idea," he admitted.
"Frozen," she announced. "Well, the stupid songs. They're stuck in my head. Well, one of them. The 'Do you wanna build a snowmannnn' one," she half-sang, dropping back down on the hay with a burdened sigh, like such a fate was truly terrible. Bucky grinned and then started walking to her, and once he was close enough to reach out and touch her, she suddenly sprang up again wide-eyed and exclaimed, "Oh my God! I just had the best idea ever!"
Smiling widely, she reached out and seized his shirt again, and he helped steady her when she dropped down to her wobbly feet. "What's that?" he asked gamely, brushing some of the hair out of her eyes.
She reached down and grabbed his hands, then turned them around and grinned, "I'm gonna serenade you."
"You're gonna..."
"Yup," she said, popping the "p" rather loudly.
"Okay," he chuckled, unsure of what was coming.
"I just have one question first," she said, expression suddenly more serious.
"What?"
Then she burst into another huge grin and began singing - badly. "Do you wanna have more barn seeeeex? Come on, let's go and bang..."
He laughed, genuinely and fully, the smile reaching his eyes and making her melt a little as she danced him around a circle and bounced a little as she went on, "You're standing there like sex on legs, I'm so -" she let go of his hands mimed a waterfall with hers while she made a "woosh" sound, "are you gonna make me waaaait?"
He continued to smile at her antics as she flitted behind him, skipping again and making him his eyes glue themselves to certain rather bouncy assets as she resumed her performance. "Last night we were naked," she sang, skipping to his side and taking his hand again as she grinned up at him, "and now we're not - I wish you would tell me why," she added with a feigned sad expression, walking him backwards a few steps. "Do you wanna have more barn seeex?" she sing-asked, then grinned and pounced on him, making him fall into the hay and her land on top of him as she finished her song by leaning in close and singing softly but with a big silly smile on her face, "I really want to have more barn sex."
"I love you," he replied, lighthearted and smiling in a way she was sure that she hadn't seen from him before, but just as sincere as ever. She smiled and bit her lip, and then he reached into her hair and pulled her down, kissing her for all she was worth, neither of them caring how she had just forever... enhanced a kid's Disney song.
She was barely in control of her own movements as she kissed him, pulling a little on his hair and rocking her hips down against his, unaware of any unusual wantonness on her part. Then she stopped in the middle of it, panting a little as she looked down at Bucky - who was just as flushed as she was - and asked, "Wait, you never answered my question."
"What?" he asked breathlessly, hands stilling from their previous task of grinding her hips harder down against him.
"Do you wanna have more barn sex?" she asked innocently, and for all of two seconds, they stared at each other in silence. Then, Bucky was the first to start laughing, and from there, she was a goner, lost to a brand new fit of giggles.
So far gone she was to the giggles that when she opened her eyes and realized that she was no longer on top of him but on her back, on the hay, she was highly confused. "Hey, when did you - oh my God, my top is off too, and ahh! Okay, shutting up now - oh, frick me, I actually can't - unngh - shut up, gahhh..."
She felt him chuckle at her sheer bewilderment as he looked up from his place at her chest. She opened her eyes and looked down with her double vision long enough to see him grin mercilessly at her and then maintain eye contact as he started licking his way down to her stomach. She moaned at every little touch, not caring in the least how loud she was or how ridiculous she sounded. This was exactly what she had wanted to do the only other time she had been drunk around him, but back then, they had still been controlling their urges. Now, there was only one thing on her alcohol-addled mind, and she decided to give voice to it as she sat up and abruptly pulled him up just when he'd started inching close to his destination.
"Bucky?" she said, working to rid him of his own shirt as he stared at her at first like he was rather annoyed that she had interrupted him.
"What?" he asked, moving her hands away as he all but tore his shirt off.
She watched the shirt hit the floor, and then he pushed her down and was on top of her before she could get a word out. His chest pressed to hers and his mouth latched to her neck, she forgot what she was going to say for a moment. But then she remembered, and when she did, she grabbed his hair and pulled him back up as she said, "I know I'm drunk and all, but I want you to promise me that you're gonna take advantage of me tonight the way you didn't the first time. Like, take so much advantage of me that I can't even walk tomorrow. Please? I need it."
He grinned down at her. "You need it?"
She nodded furiously. "I need it so bad I might die if you try to be all noble or whatever."
He shook his head. "I won't." Then his eyes narrowed by a fraction, becoming just barely more predatory as he asked, "You want me to... take advantage of you?"
"I just mean, like," she slurred a little, gesturing vaguely with her hands, "don't like... do what you did last time, 'cause you know I want it, so there's no point in -"
"Hush."
" ... Because like I said, I... wait, what?"
"Hush," he repeated, a little more forcefully. She stared at his suddenly slightly harder eyes, and then he was up and off of her, standing but bringing her with him with his hand that was gripping a handful of her hair in his hand. He pulled her so that she sat up, and she stared at him in a slack-jawed drunken stupor. At least until he took another step back and gave her hair a gentle, but pointed, tug, and then said, "On your knees."
First, her jaw dropped. Then she smiled, and after that, she clapped her hands over her mouth in her sudden, unhidden, uncontrollable glee, because apparently she had been waiting for him to do something like this for a very long time and she hadn't even realized it.
She dropped down to her knees so fast that it hurt a little, but she didn't feel it, because she was too busy looking up and unknowingly licking her lips as his metal hand went back to her hair and the other started undoing his belt so her unsteady hands didn't have to.
It was official: Clint Barton's barn was her absolute favorite place in the whole world.
Normally, Summer loved it when she would awake to a bright, sunny new morning. Normally, however, she wasn't hungover, and the combination proved to be quite painful as she cracked her bleary eyes open and then instantly closed them against the sun's intrusive rays through her window.
First, she was confused as to why her head was pounding and her tongue felt like sandpaper in her mouth. But then she rolled over, away from the sunlight, and dragged a hand to her aching head, only to end up pulling away a piece of hay that she then opened her eyes to examine.
That was when it all came rushing back. And, as usual with these sorts of things, she wanted to squeak with delight at how the night had ended, while also dying a slow death thanks to her sheer humiliation.
"I actually sang that stupid Frozen song," she groaned aloud, throwing an arm over her face. "And I turned it into a song about barn sex."
Then again, barn sex did deserve its own special anthem.
Then she shot up in bed far too quickly for her own good, looking first at the other side of the bed and then all around the room, realizing that David was nowhere to be found. She panicked momentarily, thinking the worst and most irrational things possible at a speed that only a deliriously hungover mother could, but then she remembered that she was at a farm occupied by Bucky and a handful of Avengers, none of whom would let anything bad happen to her kid while she was... under the influence. Which she still blamed on Natasha. And Bucky. And the universe.
Now somewhat calm, she glanced over to her nightstand and did a double take when she saw a full water bottle and a handful of pills sitting next to it. She then dived for the items as a wave of gratitude suddenly overcame her, especially since she couldn't yet remember how she even got to bed and clearly was not the one to place such provisions on the table.
From there, getting out of bed and getting dressed and brushing her teeth while getting all of the residual hay out of her hair proved to be a most burdensome and difficult task, but she managed, though she had nearly vomited twice by the time she went stumbling out of her room towards the kitchen. As she mentally swore to never drink again - like she had last time this had happened - she finally got to her destination.
And as she stood in the doorway of the dining room, the aching in her head and highly uneasy stomach took a far backseat to the sight of David, perfectly happy and eating breakfast next to Bucky, who was holding one of his toys and gamely playing with him. It wasn't a particularly odd sight, and not something she hadn't seen before, but something about it made her stop and stare.
"She lives!"
She blinked and looked up to find Clint grinning at her as he tossed a plateful of food on the table, in front of an empty seat next to Bucky. Everyone else looked up then, including Steve and Natasha, and Summer smiled while trying to hide her instant embarrassment.
"Good timing, too," Clint added, gesturing to the plate he'd just set down. "That's yours."
"Oh... okay, thanks," she half-stuttered, still not used to anyone making food for her, ever. She made eye contact with Bucky as she walked to the seat, and he grinned faintly at her while keeping his gaze on he long after she'd looked away.
"How do you feel?" Nat asked, a knowing smirk on her face as she sipped a cup of coffee.
"Like next time you hand me a drink, I should stop at one instead of six," Summer replied, dropping heavily into her seat and trying not to throw up at the sight of the food in front of her. There was nothing wrong with the food itself - on the contrary, she knew Clint could cook - but absolutely nothing in the world could have been appetizing at the moment.
"I did warn you," Natasha pointed out.
"I never listen," Summer agreed, running a hand over her face and praying for the medicine to hurry up and kick in.
A few moments went by then, where she picked at her food with a fork and briefly zoned out as the conversation moved on around her. But, after the first few bites, some of her brain managed to kick back to functioning status, and she looked over to her right, watching David continue to play with Bucky, and she smiled a little as she asked quietly, "How did he end up out here with everyone?"
Bucky turned his gaze back to her as he said quietly, "I was up early and found him trying to find a drink in the fridge. You needed more sleep so I just kept him out here."
"He... actually left the room by himself?" She asked, and Bucky nodded in reply. She couldn't believe it - David hadn't felt secure enough to wander around anywhere on his own since their house had blown up. "Thank you for watching him," she added softly. He nodded, a smile briefly tugging at his lips, but she frowned as she added with a sigh, "I'm really sorry though, because I shouldn't have gotten that drunk and you shouldn't have had to do that."
To her surprise, Bucky chuckled and shook his head. "I was up anyway. I don't mind. And don't apologize because you're amazing when you're drunk."
She cringed a little, cheeks flushing as she kept forcing tiny bites of food down her throat. "Amazingly embarrassing, maybe."
He shook his head again. "Not even close."
She appreciated the sentiment, however little she believed it. Then he gently placed his free hand on her knee, and it suddenly brought with it a very vivid flashback of him telling her to get on her knees the night before, and she almost choked on the glass of orange juice she was working on. She looked at him once more, and by the look in his eye, she had to wonder if he was thinking the same thing that she was. His eyes then dropped to her lips, and she decided that they were definitely on the same wavelength.
It would have been so much hotter if she was still trying not to puke all over herself. And still piecing the entire night together. She'd have to ask him later for the full details, in case she was forgetting anything. Just the thought of listening to him describe it all in his own words was enough to make her blush already.
Soon, however, David finished his food and then sprung up from his chair, tapping Bucky's metal arm to get his attention. Once he had it, he pointed towards the front door, smiling all the while and bouncing a little. Bucky understood that David was asking him to go outside, so he nodded and then turned back to Summer long enough to give her a kiss on the forehead and then smile disarmingly at her one more time. She smiled back, watching in a stupor as her boyfriend got up and disappeared outside with her son, who indeed seemed perfectly content with someone other than Summer, perhaps for the first time.
Her thoughts and the silence in the room was then broken a few moments later by Natasha asking Steve conversationally, "Any plans today, Steve?"
Summer glanced momentarily at Steve as he swallowed a mouthful of food and shrugged, "Nothing special, you?"
"Nothing too exciting," she replied. "But you know what would be great?" Summer looked up again at the two Avengers seated across from her, and Natasha briefly glanced her way with a distinct grin on her lips before playfully singing to Steve, "Do you wanna have more barn seeeeex?"
Steve briefly choked on his food before erupting into red-faced laughter, and Summer's jaw dropped as she suffered the painful sting of imminent humiliation.
"Come on, let's go and baaaang..."
By now Clint was laughing as well, and Steve had laughed himself to the point of having to cough while Summer was just gaping like a particularly shocked fish. "But... how did you.. were you there, like outside?"
"I had to get something out of my car," Natasha explained, "So I had to walk past the barn." She paused and grinned. "And the song was catchy. Creative, too."
Summer groaned and all but slammed her head down on the plate in front of her. "You have got to be kidding me."
"For what it's worth," Natasha added as Summer drowned in her humiliation, "I think it's much better than the original."
Summer merely made an incoherent nose in reply. Not that the night of wild, intense, utterly fun adventures in the barn wasn't worth a little bit of humiliation the following morning, but Summer made a mental vow to never drink and sing Disney songs again.
"Am I the only one who thinks its funny that the guy she keeps defiling my barn with is actually named Barnes?" Clint asked, looking at Nat and then Steve. Natasha chuckled while Steve just sighed and smiled somewhat sympathetically at Summer.
"Barns are fun. Remember?" Natasha asked Clint, and Summer's ears suddenly perked up. She looked at Steve, who looked rather awkward all of a sudden, but Clint just shrugged.
"Yeah, they're okay. Where was that? Germany?"
Natasha shook her head. "Bulgaria."
"Right. Bulgaria," Clint nodded. "Still, nothing tops Budapest."
Summer dropped her hand rather loudly in the table then and exclaimed in a way that she had no hope of controlling, "What the hell happened in Budapest?!"
They still wouldn't say, of course, and Steve seemed rather relieved about that. Silence fell for a bit, during which Summer plotted ways to drag out the story from someone, one way or another, while still fighting the urge to vomit everything she was eating.
Then Natasha spoke a few moments later. "Imagine what she'd say if we told her about Morocco."
Clint choked on his eggs, then started laughing like he hadn't heard anything so hilarious in a long time. Summer just stared, knowing neither of them would elaborate in the slightest (which only Steve was grateful for).
The rest of breakfast went by a lot more slowly than Summer would have preferred, but eventually the conversation moved on to things not involving her and barns, or men with the last name Barnes, giving her a chance to finish eating while mentally getting over the embarrassment of it all. On the bright side, at least David was still too little to catch on to any of this. When that ceased to be the case, she'd have to be more careful, but, she also reasoned, she had a lot of years of idiot drunken youthfulness to make up for. And the previous night had certainly been well worth it.
Once she'd finished eating and had trudged over to the sink to wash her plate, she set course for the stairs and the shower that awaited above them, only to be unexpectedly blocked by Clint once she reached the kitchen doorway. "Not so fast."
She furrowed her eyebrows and paused before asking, "Uh... is something... wrong?"
"No," he shrugged. "It's just your turn."
He then lifted up a bucket in his hand, which had a bottle of bleach spray hanging on the handle along with a couple of rags and a sponge. Then he handed it to her, and she once again wanted to crawl under a rock and die.
"Have fun," Clint grinned before walking off, and Summer slouched her shoulders as she set a new course for the barn, which had seen more bleach in the last month than it had since Clint had built it.
Still worth it, she mentally reminded herself, just like the leftover mild aches in her knee and her only slightly better headache and the generally sore state of the rest of her body. That was the funny thing when it came to Bucky, she thought - he tended to make just about anything very much worth it.
Even having to bleach the crap out of Hawkeye's barn and listen to Black Widow tease Captain America with your drunkenly inappropriate songs that you sang to the Winter Soldier right before you banged him in Hawkeye's aforementioned barn.
A/N: First and foremost, credit for the barn sex lyrics goes to midnightwings96, who I devised this drunken barn scene with and who absolutely killed me with those lyrics :p I quite despise Frozen but I LOVE this version of the snowman song, naturally lol. Fun on the farm indeed, lol :D So, a brief little heads up for next week: in addition to my normal update, I'm going to be posting something of a companion oneshot to the chapter that is ridiculously long (like 22,000 words), so there is going to be a LOT to read next week, and I apologize in advance for the eye straining and prolonged reading time lol. It was not planned at all but one of those things where we were talking and then I was all I NEED IT, and I think you will all like it. It's an AU sort of thing but with our main two characters here, and it will all make sense next week, so stay tuned :D Thank you all for the wonderful reaction to last week's chapter and the reviews. I love you all and continue to be incredibly grateful to have such fricking awesome readers :D See you all next week! :)