Chapter Text
The move-out didn't take long. Not surprising, given they didn't have much in the States to move, and they had multiple people to assist. Anything else was back in their home in Wakanda, and therefore unnecessary to bring with them.
It took roughly half a month to find a place of their own. It was less than thirty minutes by car or motorcycle from Sam's, but the distance was enough to feel independent. Red was also already familiar with the neighbourhood, since it wasn't too far away from her parents' house, which made things more comfortable.
Red delayed telling her parents until the final pieces were moved, and politely declined a very pushy businesswoman mother who insisted on making sure they weren't being scammed for what they were paying. Red knew enough of her mother's methods to succeed at that on her own. And after a few tries, they'd found their fit.
By the end of the month, they'd were back to work, taking the occasional break for therapy sessions and trips back to Wakanda, and for Steve and Bucky to get into arguments about white picket fences for the fifth time since moving in. Red stayed out of those, allowing the boys to bicker alone.
Overall, it wasn't a bad time.
.
Lying on her stomach on the bedspread, Red watched the cursor blink on the page. Finished with her side assignments from her father, she'd found the time to try her hand at writing again. The page was as blank as her mind, ideas half-formed with no substance passing through like scraps of paper in the wind. She felt no motivation to write any down, instead continuing to glare at the screen like words would magically appear.
Unfortunately, especially given that magic actually existed in their universe, they did not.
She felt her mood shifting, becoming more and more negative the longer she stared at the screen. After an hour, when it was clear that the words were not forthcoming, she rolled onto her back, unhappy, and stared at the ceiling. It gave her no response.
After a few minutes of staring at the uncaring paint above, Red shuffled off of her bed, out of her clothes and into her bathrobe. Time to try and put her therapy advice to good use.
—
Red turned the faucet, stopping the stream of hot water from overflowing the tub. She dipped a hand in, then removed her bathrobe and stepped in, sinking down into the mass of bubbles with a sigh.
She sat there.
And sat there.
And sat there.
She sighed again, her head falling back to rest on the wall behind. This didn't feel much better than lying on her bed doing nothing. She hoped the lavender and bubbles might perk up her mood, but it wasn't working.
Maybe a bath hadn't been the best idea. With nothing to do, there was too much thinking time. And she didn't exactly have a good history with big bodies of water deep enough to drown in.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let that thought go, recalling the therapist's words not to get caught up in small things from the past that she'd already dedicated too much time to thinking about.
Opening her eyes again, she focused on the bathroom instead. It was spacious; a large bathroom cabinet and mirror, toilet, washbasin, towel basket, a hook on the back of the door currently holding her robe, and a bath the size of a jacuzzi. That had been one of the most emphasised aspects of the house when shown around for the viewing.
She closed her eyes once more, taking a deep breath and smelling the lavender. Lavender was supposed to be relaxing and help you sleep. She could see how that might be, as she began to feel sleepy a few breaths later. She shuffled down and let herself go lax against the tub, resting her head on the edge rather than the wall, and kept her eyes closed as she felt the exhaustion of the last few days catch up with her.
Knock knock knock.
Red jolted, water splashing as her eyes shot open.
No one was in the room with her, thankfully. But, then, she didn't know where the noise came from. It had sounded vaguely distant.
Knock knock knock.
Oh. Someone was knocking on the bedroom door.
"Yeah?" She called out to whoever, voice echoing nastily off the bathroom tiles and making her wince.
"Can I come in?"
Bucky.
Red's brain pulled up multiple reasons why that wasn't a good idea. First being her mood, and a quick second being that she was currently naked in a bathtub.
"Um... can it wait?"
A pause. "Is everything okay?"
Debatable.
"Yeah. I'm just in the bath."
"Ah."
She shifted a little uncomfortably when he stopped talking. "I can get out..." she said, not really wanting to, but if Bucky wanted to talk, she didn't feel right denying him.
"I could talk to you through the door?"
That seemed like a fair compromise, if a little awkward. She figured it must have been something important if he wanted to talk to her enough to suggest that.
"Okay."
The bedroom door opened and closed, and approaching footsteps stopped just shy of the door.
Silence.
"Red?"
"Still here."
"Are you hungry? Steve made fruit salad."
That... wasn't what she'd been expecting. He was interrupting her bath over fruit?
"Uh... sure," she responded slowly, confusion evident. Though, now she was thinking about it, Red couldn't remember what she'd eaten for dinner. She knew she'd eaten something, but if she was asked to name the meat, she couldn't say. Maybe her mood hadn't been so great earlier, either.
Bucky continued, "I have a bowl with me."
Ah. That's why he was asking now.
"You can leave it on the side table," she told him, soon followed by the tap of ceramic on wood.
Quiet again.
Biting her lip, Red stared at the door blocking her view of him. She felt like something was wrong, and would much rather be having this conversation face-to-face because at least then she could see what Bucky was thinking.
She pushed herself up and out of the water, grabbing her robe off the hanger and tying it before sitting on the edge of the bath like she had before getting in. "James, do you want to come in?" she asked softly.
"Aren't you in the bath?"
"I've got my robe on," she replied. "You can bring the fruit bowl with you if you want," she added, and after a moment, the door nudged open and Bucky slowly walked inside. He'd swapped out his long-sleeve shirt and jeans for a tank top and slacks, and was missing his metal arm as he nudged the door closed again. He'd been taking the prosthetic off more frequently lately, likely because of the added strain that missions was putting on his body.
She gave him a little wave and smile as he closed the door behind him before taking a seat on the closed toilet.
"Hi," Red said.
"Hi," Bucky replied.
Bucky took another look around the room before his eyes fell on the bath and the bubbles covering the surface, sniffing the air.
"Lavender," Red answered, running a hand through them again. At his slightly scrunched expression, she added, "I don't really like it, either."
"Doesn't smell like you," he said quietly, quiet enough to be a private thought. She didn't understand what he meant at first, but then remembered her apple and cinnamon spray. She felt her chest warm unexpectedly at his reaction to the change.
She nodded, folding her arms and crossing one leg over the other, not quite missing Bucky's quick look down as the robe climbed higher on her legs. Her face warmed too.
"So, how are you doing?" Bucky rounded them back to the original conversation.
"I'm okay. Not great, but okay." She rubbed her upper arms through the robe. "Bit cold now," she commented to fill the silence.
"You can get back in the bath," Bucky said, and then ducked his head like he wanted to take it back.
Red's eyes widened, staring at him equally surprised.
"I meant that I won't look," he quickly added.
Red chewed her lip, glancing back at the bath. It was deep, and there were enough bubbles that he wouldn't be able to see anything below her collarbone. But still, she would be virtually naked in the same room as him. That... that was a lot. "M-Maybe later."
Bucky nodded, adjusting his position on the closed toilet, moving them forward. "You're not feeling so great, then."
She was thankful for the distraction from the awkward moment, getting back on topic. "Can't think. Tried to help myself feel better with a bath, but it didn't really work."
"Not everything will work for everyone."
"Yeah. I... think maybe I should've figured that out. Me and large bodies of water don't mix, as we have all kinda seen by now."
"At least you tried."
Red shrugged, defeatedly. "I suppose."
It fell quiet again.
Red shivered as the water on her legs cooled, and squeezed her arms tighter around herself. The heat of the water had been nice, but now she was itching to dry off and wrap up warm in her blankets.
Bucky noticed her discomfort, because of course he did. "You can get back in. I'm serious, I won't peek," he insisted.
Again, all the reasons she shouldn't do that in front of him appeared in a list in her mind. It just seemed so... intimate. Were they at the kind of level where that was an acceptable thing to do? They'd not done anything more than kiss or cuddle, and any time she'd been vaguely undressed in front of them, it had been an accident. Being virtually naked in front of one of them, even with the cover of the bath and bubbles...
Red stared at the steaming water as her leg bounced figetingly, inadvertently creating a small breeze with her robe that caused her to shiver again. She pressed her lips together, looking back at an incredibly sincere Bucky, who she knew wouldn't break his word over anything less than an emergency.
...fuck it.
"You better not," she said with an edge that wavered in her sheepishness.
Bucky's brow raised but he didn't say anything, instead covering his eyes as promised.
With a deep breath in, now she wasn't being watched, she dropped the robe and slid into the bath as quickly as she possibly could without slipping and cracking her head open. Regret flashed in her stomach momentarily, but she shoved it down and gathered all the bubbles towards her end to cover herself.
"You... you can look now," she prompted shyly, and Bucky's hand dropped and his eyes locked on hers.
Red felt her cheeks warm as the sudden reality of the situation fully settled in with his piercing eyes watching her. She swallowed, her own eyes flicking to the floor, and tried her best to ignore it. "How have your missions been going?" she asked to distract them both.
"Good."
"And how are you going?"
Bucky sat up, leaning back a little. "I feel good. I'm surprised," he began, "I thought that I might give all of this up after everything. But being out in the field, being out there with the team, with Steve, I know for sure that I'm not ready to give it up yet." The honesty in his voice was clear, like a weight was gone from his shoulders— gone before he'd started talking.
Red nodded along. "That's good."
Bucky nodded back, eyes trailing down in considering thought, before nodding again. "So that's where I am. How have you been while we've been busy?"
Red bobbed her head side to side. "Managing. The house is... big when you guys aren't here. And I don't like decorating while you guys aren't within asking-for-an-opinion distance," she said, honestly. If he could be honest, so could she.
"You could invite some people over if you wanted to. We wouldn't say no."
Red shrugged. "I don't really have many people to invite, at the moment. And I haven't been in the mood to go visit my parents again yet. I keep thinking about the conversation I'll have to have about how I moved into a house not far from my old hometown with not only one boyfriend, but two."
"Do you not want to?"
Red leaned back against the tub, folding her arms under the water. "It's not that I don't want to. I'm just... I don't know. How do you go from having no dating life to speak of to suddenly dating and moving in with two men who are both more than a decade older than you?" she asked. Then paused, then her face scrunched up. "It sounds really bad when I put it like that, doesn't it?"
Bucky hummed. "A little."
Red let her head fall back, lamenting her lack of ability to say anything normally. "It's gonna be a ripping off the band-aid situation, I think. Just blurt it out and then go hide in Wakanda for a week."
"Do you want us with you, this time?"
"I don't know," she said, chewing her lower lip as she rolled the situation around in her head.
It would be a nightmare, but she could handle it. She'd managed to handle telling them about her mental struggles. At least, after running away for a year. Could she hide away for a year again after telling them this? Wakanda was nice at all times of year...
She flinched back into reality when water was flicked at her face. She blinked, shaking her head and sitting up, frowning and staring accusingly at Bucky. "Hey!"
Bucky shrugged unapologetically. "You were overthinking."
She continued to frown, but the glare lightened into something humorous as she agreed with it. She looked down at the water, the sensation of being splashed causing her to recall their late-night picnic after Christmas. "Reminds me of the waterfall picnic."
"That was a fun night." Bucky didn't hide his smile at the memory.
"It was," she agreed. Then narrowed her eyes at him. "Could've done without the tickle-torture though."
Buckuy didn't lose his smile. If anything, it grew. "You deserved it. You were being a brat."
She sat up straighter in indignation at the accusation. "I was not!" she defended herself.
Bucky gave her a look that spoke for him. She totally had been.
She grumbled, crossing her arms and splashing back into the bath, mumbling bitterly. "I'm not a brat." She definitely didn't pout for added effect either.
"You occasionally act like one."
She knew he was teasing, but she refused to let him have the point against her. She scrambled for a response. "Then... then you "occasionally" act like an old man," she fired back.
Bucky's smile turned into a smirk, leaning back with casual confidence that had her eyes struggling to stay on his face and not wander down his body. "You're going to get a repeat of that night if you keep calling me that," he said with a raised eyebrow, an unmissable danger to his tone that wasn't there before.
Damn the supersoldiers and whoever the hell had taught them to do that. He shouldn't be making her heart race at the same time he was sparking her competitive side into continuing to push back against him. It was so unfair. She was under no illusion that she would lose if he decided to fulfil his threat, but it didn't stop her from wanting to go along with his ever-growing boldness. It would never not surprise her when he got in these teasing moods, but they'd been welcome so far.
Still, she had enough common sense this time to remember she was literally naked beneath the bubbles, and managed to stop herself from falling into the trap for now.
Instead, she played up the innocent act to get him to give up instead. "You wouldn't. Not when I'm all vulnerable?" She heightened her pitch, dramatically placing a hand over her chest and pouting up at him, blinking her eyelashes.
Bucky kept his smirk, but she saw something flash in his eyes that she couldn't quite distinguish. It seemed positive, at least.
But, just in case it wasn't, she tried to distract from it. She glanced down at his lap and the bowl that had been forgotten.
The fruit did look pretty good. Steve had a talent for making boring dishes look incredibly appetising. Except for the pineapple. She was still bitter, no pun intended, about her last brush with pineapple in fruit salad. "Can I have one?" she asked.
Bucky hummed distractedly, looking down at the bowl he had also forgotten about, and soon held it out to her.
Red reached out with one of her hands, stopping short when it dripped water and bubbles across the floor. Not wanting to get soap over the food, she looked around for her towel, seeing it on the door hangar a few steps away. She could probably reach it if she leaned out of the tub far enough, or she could ask Bucky to grab it for her.
She didn't have to do either. Because when she looked back at Bucky to ask, there was a slice of strawberry being held up to her lips.
It took her a few moments for her brain to kick in and understand what was happening, before feeling her cheeks heat up again, and she knew it definitely wasn't from the bathwater.
Her eyes flicked between him and the fruit, hesitating for a moment, mouth still open from where she had been preparing to ask for the towel. Then, feeling too awkward to decline with him waiting there for her to do something, she leaned her head down and took it from his hand with her teeth, slowly chewing and swallowing while distinctly not looking in his direction. The fruit was fresh, cut perfectly for small snacking bites, and just the right amount of sweet as it passed her tongue.
She cleared her throat once done. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Another slice was soon bumping against her lips, and again, without looking at him or shrinking down in the awkwardness, she ate it. His fingers were rough against her lips, but not entirely unpleasant. In a distant way, the feeling was familiar. Her mind wandered to their time in the old apartment, back when Bucky was in hiding: that day when she didn't want to get out of bed. He'd fed her pieces of a chocolate bar by hand to make sure she actually ate something. It was a bittersweet feeling thinking about how he had had so many of his own problems at the time, and yet he'd still taken care of a girl who just happened to step into his safe place at the wrong time. He never had to do any of the things he'd done for her. And yet.
And he'd still been convinced was a monster...
The taste of a much bitter fruit on her tongue brought her back to reality to realise he'd moved on from the strawberry and fed her a slice of kiwi. Forgetting what she was doing, she turned her head and felt suddenly pinned in place when she saw him watching, and the strange intensity he was watching with.
More specifically, he was watching her lips.
Instinctively, she licked her lips free of sticky fruit juice.
Bucky licked his in time with her.
Red felt a real flush crawling up her face, at a loss of what to do after witnessing that move.
Bucky didn't seem to be bothered at all, never once looking away as he fed her another, and Red was already locked in deep enough that she couldn't stop looking back at this point. And that gave her the little push needed to continue. Piece by piece, the fruit was eaten, and Red thought that if the same thing was happening in the kitchen over breakfast, she would not be having such a strong reaction. Perhaps it was the setting that was causing this to feel much more... intimate. In the kitchen, it would have been casual, maybe even playful. This was... something else. Something she didn't have a word for. Something she had absolutely no fucking idea how to react to.
Bucky's fingers brushing against her lips began to feel purposeful, but she didn't dare accuse him and break the unsteady quiet that had settled between them. She gripped the side of the bath tightly, trying not to breathe too hard or loud, and let him feed her as he pleased, all the time watching him watch her lips.
Only when his fingers slipped against the empty bottom did he stop, causing him to look away to the suddenly empty bowl and for the spell between them to break.
Red let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, slowly easing herself back against the bath. The bubbles on the water's surface had significantly diminished, and she quickly gathered everything remaining to cover herself up again.
Bucky's eyes flicked from her face, to the bubbles, to the water where her legs weren't covered, and then down to the bowl with a cough. "I'll take this downstairs and... let you get back to your bath." He stood up quickly, shuffling out of the room and shutting the door behind him.
"Yeah. See you later..." she mumbled to the empty air as she heard the bedroom door close after that.
Red groaned and put her head on the side of the bath, sitting alone in the tepid water, her mind and thoughts now racing for an entirely different reason than when she ran the bath in the first place.
"Fuck my life."
.
Tristan's laughter was both a comforting sound and a slightly condescending one. "You really are a little 'innocent in love', aren't you?" she teased while Red refused to raise her head from her hands.
"Ngh." A very coherent answer after admitting a personal embarrassment to her old friend.
Tristan took a sip of her coffee, still smiling while she tamped down her giggles. "Hm... Well, normally, my advice for getting their more 'romantic' attention without words would be something like "walk around the house in something more sensual than shirts and jeans", or "try making them jealous by going out together and dancing with someone else", but I don't think those will work with you. You wouldn't like doing that."
"I wouldn't," she agreed, finally lowering her hands to hold her hot chocolate cup and sip.
"Also, it's probably not the best idea to make two supersoldiers mad. Even playfully for the sake of sparking a conversation you're too nervous to start on your own."
"Yep."
Another giggle as Tristan leaned closer over the table. "Is that "yep" from experience, by any chance?" She lowered her volume like she was whispering a secret. Which, technically, it still was in public. The world was still debating whether they viewed the rogue soldiers as fugitives or saviours.
Red glared. "No comment."
Tristan held her hands up in surrender and sat back again. "Alright, alright. I won't press you for the dirty details. Even though I really, really want to."
"Gossip Queen," Red accused jokingly.
"The one and only," the proclaimed Rumour Royalty replied.
Red sighed and rubbed her face, looking out of the window of the cafe to the busy street for some solace against her own inner turmoil. She would question why she had even brought the situation up with Tristan, but just like last time they'd talked, it had been so easy to fall back into old habits and trust with her. It was as if nothing had changed from high school but their age and appearances, meanwhile everything else had remained the same.
"Are you still writing?" Tristan asked, dragging Red's attention back to the table.
"Not much recently. I've been trying to get back into the swing of it. I miss it."
"Will you let me read it if you do write something?"
A short pause. "Maybe," she said, still a little unsure about her father's earlier requests to read her work.
Tristan rested her chin in her hand, a nostalgic look on her face. "Your mini stories were always great. I still remember the one about the raven and the shiny coin."
Red's recovering ego was quickly shattered by memories of shame. "Oh, don't."
"'Detective Feathers', right? Raven by day, detective by night, given the ability to think like a human after stealing a coin from a haunted house roof." Tristan quoted perfectly, mimicking Red's high school enthusiasm with almost perfect cadence.
Red's face was back in her hands. "Tris, please...."
"Now he uses his powers for good, solving mysteries and stopping criminals, all in the span of a wingflap."
"I'm having a cringe attack. Please stop talking about my old stuff. I'm begging you."
"It was cute."
"Nooooo." Red sank down in her seat, uncaring about any other cafe customers staring at her attempts to disappear into the floor.
Tristan relented, but not without that comforting/condescending laugh. "Fine, fine! So, if you're not writing about detective ravens-"
"Uuuuuugh."
"-what do you think you'll write about?"
Red pushed herself back up to sit properly with a sigh. "I don't know. I've been putting a few ideas down, but I don't really feel inspired by any of them. Anything I try and make up seems either too boring or too complex an idea, and then I end up getting intimidated and scrapping it all. I've not made it past five sentences on anything yet."
Tristan's painted nails tapped rhythmically against the ceramic cup as she thought. "Well, instead of making something from scratch, you could try writing about something already existing."
She shook her head. "Journalism is Dad's thing, not mine. My thing is fiction."
"It's not "your dad's thing". Nothing is "just somebody's thing". Running a company isn't just your mother's thing, painting murals for kindergarten walls isn't just my thing, journalism isn't just your dad's thing, dating two super hot supersoldiers isn't just your thing..."
"Tristan..."
Tristan held up her hands in surrender again before curling them back around her cup. "Look, what I'm saying is: just because someone else does it doesn't mean you can't, too. You're not cheating or copying by doing something your dad does. It's not a test. You've said it yourself, you and your dad are similarly skilled in literature and academics, so what's wrong with doing similar things? Besides, I didn't say journalism. I suggested writing about things that already exist. You did that for the school paper a few times, didn't you?"
"I guess. Not that anybody ever read that thing except to draw glasses and facial hair on the faces."
Tristan shrugged. "It might get you started. The worst thing is sitting and staring at an empty document for hours willing the words to work. We both know that from writing school essays."
"Mm-hm." Red agreed, then let out a long sigh, massaging her temples with her fingers. "I'll think about it," she decided.
"Though, you could pick up your detective raven story again..."
"Never."
Red glared playfully at the blonde hiding her smirk behind her cup, acting like an innocent little angel that they both knew she wasn't. Red never wanted to think about those mini-series stories ever again. Luckily, the laptop holding the only copy was now at the bottom of some ocean. Otherwise, she would take it right now, break it into many, many pieces, and then burn the remains to ashes so that no being may ever look upon it again.
And if Steve or Bucky asked what she was doing lighting a fire in the garden? Well, it was hardly the worst thing they'd ever watched her do for unknown reasons.
Red took a long sip of her hot chocolate, looking at her friend across the table properly. While she would say that not much had changed between them since high school, she could see the changes that had happened to her friend. She was still Tristan Walters, the same loving, outgoing, blonde haired blue eyed beauty that was too sweet for the world around her. But there was a maturity that wasn't there a few years ago, a little less naive light behind her baby blues, a little awareness in the gentle giggles. The same, yet different. And in Red's opinion, not a bad thing.
"It'll come to you," Tristan insisted. "You just have to be patient and keep at it. Something will stick if you keep throwing."
"Yeah." Red nodded along, thinking about how similar she sounded to her therapist. "Have you always been this good at giving advice?" she asked.
Tristan shook her head, scrunching her nose. "Nah. I just... grew up a bit, recently."
Red tilted her head. "In a good way?" she asked.
A short pause, quiet and considering but not hesitant. "Yeah. In a good way, definitely," Tristan replied, glancing out of the window to the busy street. "The rest of the world is a lot different from high school," she said thoughtfully.
"I'll drink to that." Red raised her hot chocolate mug and sipped.
"It's a good feeling." Tristan raised her own mug and sipped to the toast.
They both put their mugs down as the companionable quiet set in for a small break. And after a few moments, Tristan laid a gentle hand on top of hers.
It wasn't a touch she recoiled at. Tristan had always been touchy, but had also always been respectful about it, so Red was relieved to discover the old trust still lingering in her chest ignited familiarity instead of aversion. She curled her fingers to hold the more slender ones in a tender grip.
"I'm glad you came back," Tristan said.
Red squeezed her friend's hand before looking at her with a firm but gentle gaze. "I missed you. I know I said that before, but... I really did miss you. Both when I was going through stuff at home, and on the road. Your number never left my phone."
Tristan gave her a soft, sincere smile. "Neither did yours."