Enjoy the happy chapter because everything is about to go to shit. :D

I woke just before sunrise with a peculiarly mixed sense of contentment and unrest. The contentment I understood with a mere glance at the sleeping man beside me and the adorable drool dried on his jaw indicating a deep, relaxed slumber. The light left on in the bathroom washed over the side of the bed he occupied, picking out the glossy hues to his raven hair. His nose was to me, lips parted and raw in the wake of last night's exploits.

The unrest is what drove me from bed and behind the locked door of the bathroom. Hands braced on either side of the farmhouse sink, I peered through my ill-kempt mass of curls to see the dark circles finally erased from beneath my eyes. The last time I slept that hard, there was a significant amount of alcohol involved. I ran a hand down my body, remembering the covetous way with which Bucky had done the same only hours prior. Sure enough, there were marks to prove as much not only on my hips, but all along my throat where his teeth sunk in, where his lips latched on. Looks like I was wearing my hair down today.

I kept my head down when I finally entered the room again, moving soundlessly so as not to rouse him before I was ready to acknowledge everything we had done. A quick scavenge for clothes had me shuffling down the empty hallway to the lab. Sally scuttled about muttering in some yet undiscovered language, while Sam, the embodiment of the early bird and its worm catching, teased her from the examination bed. Once I entered, however, his target shifted instantly.

"Let me ask you something," Sam started.

"No," I clipped.

"Don't provoke my patient. I need her relaxed this morning," Sally chastised.

Sam ignored the both of us, swinging to the ground, hooking the band of his sweatpants with his thumbs while his eyebrows kinked knowingly. I winced, bracing myself for the taunts that he had no doubt been compiling the majority of the night. "You kids wrap up?" he asked.

"Christ, you can stick me with that needle now." I held my arm out to Sally who waved it away, nose plastered against the computer monitor as she typed.

"I'm the one who had to listen to it. Besides, it's not just for diseases and whatnot. I, for one, don't want a little James Barnes running around any time soon," Sam continued.

Sally bustled her way between us, shining a palm sized flashlight into my bleary eyes. "Sgt. Barnes is clean, ran the tests myself weeks ago. So, confession Haven, yesterday I may have injected you with the anti-serum I've been compiling from Bucky's blood."

"Aren't Doctors supposed to ask before that shit? Isn't that how Haven ended up in this mess?" Sam asked.

"We used a fucking condom?" I spoke, unable to process what Sally admitted, so I focused on Sam's earlier questioning.

"I think you mean, we used a condom fucking." Sam winked.

"The only thing that would have happened was her side effects disappearing, but my readings are saying nothing stuck," Sally continued on, ignoring the pair of us.

Now, a needle pricked my wrist and their bickering muted as I watched the vile of blood being drawn. This was like that day on the farm all over again. My memory of the trauma was blocked, but the feeling that came with it was clear as the orange dawn breaking just past the window seat and its curtain of books: betrayal. Sally was a neutral, a third party in this hell and still she chose to experiment on an unsuspecting woman. That's how Bucky was made; that's how the Winter Soldier came about.

The wind chimes outside clattered together excitedly, each unique voice carried out over the open ocean. My own voice came out as nothing more than a choked whisper, "Stop." When no reaction came from the doctor, the leaves of the palm trees growing around the house like a protective wall began beating against the windows. Sam and Sally startled into silence. "Stop," I repeated and Sally just dipped her head in guilt.

"I'm merely trying to help, Haven," she said.

"So be better than Menzel. Get willing subjects, or at least ones who can't fight back." The gale my emotions stirred up disappeared leaving an eerie calm in its place.

I stormed from the room, down the steps, out over the sand dunes to collapse at the fingertips of the ocean. To my back, the line of palm trees all but obscured the house entirely from my view. They wouldn't come running after me, however. This bracelet they kept me wearing would tell them exactly where I was and probably my pupil's dilation at any given moment if they wanted. I let the salty waters stroke up my bare legs, dampening the hem of my cut off jean shorts before being swept back out by the current. I'd always loved how the sand morphed under my body after a wave, fitting like a second skin. If I closed my eyes, let the sun soak into my tan skin, let the chorus of the seagulls carry me in its wake, I was home. I could picture the little shack my parents occupied, the tourists my dad had to chase off our land more than twice a day. I could smell the neighbors barbecuing and hear my parents inviting themselves over to partake of the meal. When nights would roll around, my family would gather around our old, box TV, unconsciously learning English, and watch American actors living out "reality" lives. Back when everything was simple, back when our only worry was the occasional hurricane.

When I opened my eyes, however, Florida took the place of Costa Rica once again and a pair of long legs were stretched out beside me. They had khaki pants rolled up past pasty ankles and dark hair curled out against the sand beneath Bucky's head. I broke my transfixed gaze away from the ocean to find two pools of still water studying me from where he lounged.

"Hey, Ace" Bucky said softly. The sea breeze was nonexistent today, so his loose white shirt hung off the edges of his muscular frame without contest.

"'Sup?"

"Can we talk now?"

"I asked if you wanted to last night," I shrugged, humming as the foam of the waves came up to lick across my toes and chase away heat from the sun.

"I wanted other things last night. One thing is the same, though." He shifted to crouch in front of me, his hair an inkblot against the endless blues of the sky and water behind him; his features so sharp, they could have been carved by a clever blade. "I have not had my own mind for a long time, but my heart is fine. I want you."

The sand commanded my attention, the fraying ends of my T shirt, and the freckle on my arm, anything but him. The ocean was white noise, drowning out the rest of the world too effectively; I didn't want a clear head. Rationality was against me right now; it reminded me my gut instinct was not likely my own. The tide was quickly rising, the salty water licking up to my calves now. A glance over Bucky's wide shoulders warned me of the large wave too late. It smacked into his back, sending him crashing into me. The end result was a hopeless entanglement of limbs and wet sand crammed into nooks I'd never be able to get clean. Bucky was laughing, tugging seaweed from his hair. The beautiful noise carried down the beach, drawing in curious seagulls. My hands settled on his cheek. It was rough with a mix of his stubble and the grains of sand, but the rays from the noon sun reflected in his mirthful eyes and shimmered up at me, etching a smile into my fretting mouth. After over a hundred years of hell had somehow only made him kind. He was a man I could fall for, and that set a marching band to work in my chest: a drum thundering in my heart and trumpets soaring in my veins.

"Alright," I said.

"Alright?" he repeated.

"Alright, you want me. I want you. Let's do something about it."

When he kissed me this time, all the devastating need was gone, what remained was a nearly crippling tenderness. He was the only one who saw me as anything but an advancement or a threat; he was the only person I could breathe around, though his lips didn't leave me much room to accomplish that task right now. With me on his lap, Bucky scooted us away from the reaches of the sea and hooked the backs of my knees to straddle his waist much like last night. I hummed in delight at the friction he created between my thighs, mouth plunging down his throat, teeth tugging at the patches of skin that made his heart convulse against my chest. I pushed him onto his back with one hand, using the other to pop the button of his pants and wiggle down the zipper. He was half hard with anticipation, lust coloring his cheeks, or maybe it was the heat from the sun.

A few sensual strokes had his length throbbing in my gasp and his fingers twisting chunks of my loose hair. "Need help with that?" I teased.

He exhaled, with a forced control that had his muscles wound so tight they quivered. "Someone could see."

"You want me to stop?" I asked, nose poised at the dip in his collar bone.

"Pause?" he asked.

"That shed ours?" I inquired, nodding towards the wooden building positioned strategically between us and the house.

"I think it holds extra supplies for the store, maybe a surfboard or two."

"Private enough for you, Barnes?"

A small smile touched his face and he pulled me up by the back of my neck, kissing one of the more prominent hickeys on the side of my neck, dragging a hiss from my teeth. "You better be ready to finish what you started."