Chapter Text
“If you keep staring at me, I’m going to sprint down the hill into oncoming traffic.”
“There is no oncoming traffic.”
“I’ll keep running until I find some.”
“Good luck.”
“Shut up.” You mutter, taking another swig of your coffee. Bucky Dumbass Barnes leans against the porch railing, watching you. You flip him off and he rolls his eyes, looking instead at the dirt road ahead.
The day is calm and cicadas are buzzing loudly. You draw your knees up to your chest as you watch the wind play with the grass, making it flatten and swirl into ever-changing circles.
It’s so incredibly boring out here, away from the city. There’s no coffee shops, or long walks down busy streets, or movie theatres. The lack of movie theatres hurts the most.
All you want to do is sit with people, too many people, anonymously sharing a laugh or a cry in a dark room. Free people don’t appreciate the amount of community that is shared within the walls of a theatre. The insight gleaned from hearing their murmurs to their friends about the attractiveness of the actors or the stupidity of the dialogue. You miss connecting with them and feeling, finally, like one of them. Anonymously. With the ability to leave afterwards, free to go about your business.
But now, all you do is watch the grass as Bucky watches you. Solely because of one stupid person with an obsession.
You chug the rest of your coffee and get up, limping past Bucky and letting the screen door slam behind you. He huffs, but you couldn’t care less.
The safe house has a rudimentary kitchen. Though, fancier than your own due to the coffee machine Sam brought as an apology for forcing you here. As you start another cup of coffee, you tap the counter with a finger. Sam said this would only be for a month. Just until they found out how He was tracking you. Then you could go back to your blissful anonymity in New York.
That is, if they could even find who He is.
That’s the flip side of the coin. You can disappear, until someone wants to find you. Then, it’s all that much easier for them to never appear to you at all, except when they want to.
The little voice in the back of your head whispers his name to you, but you close your eyes and silence it. He’s gone. He must be.
The coffee drips from the machine. It’s been overworked the past two weeks, both from you trying to cling on to whatever sense of normalcy you’ve cultivated outside of this house, and from Bucky trying to stay awake.
How long did Bucky say he was going to stay here for? Couldn’t have been more than a month. He’s always been sick of you within the hour in past missions. It’s a miracle he’s still around two weeks in. Once he’s decided he’s done, you can go back. Or when whatever Sam bribed him with is gone. And then, who else does Sam trust enough to know where the safe house is? He barely let you know. You’ll be going back in no time.
Sure, there’s a homicidal maniac after you, leaving traps that have caught you twice already and broken your leg both times, but now that you know his M.O. you can catch him. You’ve handled yourself before, who’s to say you can’t again?
The coffee machine beeps, and you take a sip from the cup. Your bad leg twinges, angry at supporting you for this long, and you grit your teeth. Your own body doesn’t believe in you. That’s a tough pill to swallow.
The screen door slams again as Bucky comes inside.
“There’s no more coffee.” You mutter, and he reaches into the cupboard by the door and pulls out a bag. Opening it, he comes over to the machine to refill, and you move gingerly out of the way. He doesn’t notice, or care, and continues.
“This is the last bag, though. We’ll have to go into town to get more.” He says to the coffee machine.
“I don’t think it’ll answer you.” You say.
“You don’t want me looking at you. I’m happy to grant that request.”
“I don’t want you watching me. That’s very different.”
“You’ll have to get used to me doing that.”
“Not for much longer.”
“Thank god. You’re the most irritating woman I’ve ever met. I don’t know who’s stalking you, but it must be the only person in the world who could put up with your bullshit.”
“At least someone can put up with mine. I don’t think anyone can handle this long with you.”
“I’m okay with not having a psycho leaving bombs on my doorstep.”
“My balcony. He left them on my balcony.”
“Touchey. Or however the fuck you say it.”
“Touché.”
He rolls his eyes, not answering you and instead methodically glancing over the sparse living room. After two weeks you know what he looks at. The boarded up back door, the windows with trip-wires stretched across the sills, the cameras blinking red and pointed at every egress point. If he wasn’t such an ass, you’d be impressed by the level of care he’s putting into his job. You know it’s just about the money, though. Money that’s quickly running out.
“How much did Sam pay for?”
“Coffee? Two months supply. You’ve been drinking it like the damned Energizer bunny, though.”
“No, your money. For your ‘services’, or whatever you call the peeping tom bullshit.”
He closes his eyes and sets his jaw. His neck muscle flexes beneath his collar. You’d think it was attractive if it wasn’t his jaw.
“That was one time. I knocked, and you didn’t answer. I told you to always answer. I didn’t ‘peep’ at anything, anyway.” He finally says after a minute of counting.
“You’re not my keeper.”
“For the next two weeks, I am. And then it some other poor idiots job to watch you.”
That makes you freeze, putting your coffee down.
“What?” You say, and he glances over at you.
“What, you want me to stay now?”
“No! What do you mean someone else will be watching me?”
“Well, if Sam and them don’t find Him, you’ll still need to stay here.” He’s talking slowly, as if talking to a particularly dumb child.
“That wasn’t the agreement. Sam said a month.”
“You’ll have to take that up with Sam. Besides, you want to go back there? Back to your apartment, that He knows about? Hell, He knows the security camera blindspots. And you want to waltz back in like everything is fine?” Now, he’s looking at you. You really hate it when he does that. He seems to always be studying you, picking you apart with his ice-cold eyes. It makes your heart jump into your throat.
You break the eye contact by looking into your coffee.
“I just want to go home.” You finally say into its dregs. You swallow the rest of it, putting it on the counter harder than you meant to. “I’m taking a shower. Try not to come in, weirdo.”
“Easy enough.” He mutters as you walk up the stairs.
- - -
That night, you’re running.
You don’t need to look behind you to know He’s there. You’re barefoot again, running on the rough cement of the lab, scraping your bare skin against the walls as you round the corners of the never-ending basement prison. The burn from your wounds is nothing to the one in your head. It’s making your vision blurry and your eyes red-hot, and you know he’s closing in on you.
Sprinting now, the lights behind you close one by one with an electric thud, like a giants footsteps getting closer to stomping on you by the second.
Thud. You’re blinking back fire. Thud. Your heart is giving out.
Thud. You can feel his breath on the back of your neck, sending chills down your spine as he finally-
Crash. You startle awake, a scream still ripping through your throat. You grab the closest thing to you -another coffee cup- and throw it towards the door that just smashed open. It narrowly misses a barely clothed Bucky as he ducks backward.
“Fuck!” He shouts, “Don’t surprise the guy with a gun! Gun safety 101!”
You notice now that he is holding one, its metal nose glinting off the moonlight coming through the bent blinds. His steel fingers share the same gleam.
“Don’t break into a sleeping woman’s room!” Is the only thing you can manage to yell back, turning away from him to wipe hot tears from your face quickly.
“I think the fact you were screaming loud enough to wake the dead is reason enough to come in here! I told you to not lock this door, by the way, so the whole breaking and entering thing is your fault.” He barks.
“Shut up, Bucky.” You whisper.
“Is someone in here? Why were you screaming?” The floor creaks under him as he steps into the room, looking around the corners.
“No one is in here, just go back to bed.” You’re gripping the mattress now, trying to calm down. He’s not making it any easier as he stops to stand behind you. There’s a soft ting of a bullet hitting the ground as he uncocks the gun, but he doesn’t leave.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes I did.”
“There were two questions.”
“I’m glad you know how to count.” You need to breathe. 1, 2, 3- shit. 1, 2- shit! Do you know how to count?
He’s quiet for a moment, and you almost think he’s left until he speaks again.
“Why do you insist on being so difficult?”
“Because I need to be.” You say breathlessly. Running a hand through your hair you stand up shakily, moving around the bed and going to the door. He’s standing in front of the doorway, not moving. In the dim light of the moon, the only part of him not shrouded in shadow is his metal arm. You try to avoid looking at it, knowing somewhere deep down that he hides it from you for a reason, with long sleeves even in the harshest sunlight. But the only other place to look is his chest or his face, which makes your cheeks feel hot even now. You settle on looking down at the bullet on the ground between you both.
“I need some water.” You murmur after a moment of him staring down at you.
“You need to answer me.”
“Please, Bucky.” You plead. Your defences fall for just a moment, but your lungs are starting to collapse. The world is starting to swim, and you’re not sure if its panic, tears, or the pain in your leg screaming at you to sit back down. Whichever one, you really don’t want Bucky to see it.
“Go back in bed. I’ll get it for you.” His voice is calm now. Quieter. Exhausted, the only answer you can manage is a nod, doing as you’re told and laying back down. You stare at the crack in the blinds and try to blink away tears as you listen to him rummaging in the kitchen.
He comes back too soon. He sets the glass on the nightstand behind you, but you don’t hear him leave. Sighing, you turn around, and finally look at him in the face.
His eyebrows are knit together, and as he looks at you, you can feel him studying you again. This time your stomach flutters.
You break eye contact again, sitting up and sipping the water quietly.
“Thank you, Bucky.”
“Sorry for crashing in.”
“Sorry for screaming.”
“Not for the coffee mug?”
“I’ve been wanting to do that.”
You flick your eyes up at him, and you think for a moment you see a smile, but it quickly falls away once he looks in your eyes. You both look at each other for a second, two, three, before its his turn to break contact. He runs his metal hand through his tousled hair, glancing down at his gun, the bed, the window, anywhere but you.
“When I, hmm.” He takes a deep breath. “When I have a bad night, I have to ground myself.”
“Ground yourself? Like a naughty kid?”
“No.” He pinches the skin between his eyes. “My senses. Y’know. Five things I see, three things I hear, one thing I feel. Until I calm down.”
“Oh.”
“Are you still on edge?” He glances down at your free hand gripping the mattress. You loosen it.
“I guess.”
“Do you want me to stay in here?”
“What?”
“Do you want me to stay in here. To...watch over you.” He’s still looking away from you.
“Aren’t you already doing that? Hence the gun?”
He rolls his eyes.
“If you don’t want me to, I’ll just-”
“Yeah. If you can. Stay here, that is.” The permission comes from a part of you that you’ve shoved down. Or thought you shoved down. Now, it’s speaking from the middle of your throat, stealing any breath you have with it.
He finally looks at you again, then slowly nods.
“Okay. I can. Let me grab a blanket.” He walks out of the room, and you’re finally able to breathe again.
Laying back down, you try to ground yourself. You see the armchair across from the foot of your bed, the window, the bent blinds, the broken patch of ceiling above you, the barely touched glass of water on the nightstand. You hear the croon of an owl outside, the orchestra of a grasshopper, the creak of the floorboards as Bucky comes back in. Closing your eyes, you try to focus on sleep.
You feel Bucky’s warm hand brushing against your skin as he pulls your blanket up to cover you, leaving you cold when he moves away.
Your muscles relax as you hear him settle into the armchair. Inexcusably, your brain tells you, he calms you. Happily, your heart slows, letting you fall into a dreamless sleep.