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“Tell me I can take this damn thing off now,” Bucky grumbled, still blind to the world.
“Patience, Bucky. Not yet.” You shifted the car into park and hurried out the door to reach his side. Your hand landed on the car handle the same moment the door opened from inside, and Bucky stepped out of the car blindly with a little help from you.
“Can I take it off now?” he asked, sounding thoroughly unimpressed.
You sighed, your excitement waned a bit. “Yes, you can take it off.”
Unceremoniously, he tugged the blindfold off and blinked rapidly as he adjusted to the sunlight. His eyes darted over the scenery. “Where are we?”
“Shenandoah National Park.” You surveyed the lush green landscape along with him, trying to see it through his eyes. You tilted your head at the modest rustic house up ahead. “And this is our cabin.”
“You brought me to the mountains?” His tone was indecipherable.
You shifted on your feet, all of a sudden self-conscious. “Well, yeah. I thought we could both use a little bit of a break from real life. And, well…it just seemed to me like you’ve been needing it these past few weeks, so I…I thought it’d be good to get away for a bit. And it is Arbor Day, so…happy Arbor Day.”
A smirk curved at his lips. That expression coupled with his freshly cut hair had him looking closer to his old self from the ’40s than you’d ever seen him. “You brought me out here to celebrate Arbor Day.”
You rolled your eyes, feeling defensive. “Not just Arbor Day. But sure, who doesn’t want to celebrate trees? They’re very important for several reasons, you know.”
He only continued to smirk in that infuriatingly patient way of his.
“I’m serious!”
“You know they have trees in Washington, right? Only you would surprise me with a weekend trip to the mountains for Arbor Day.”
“Not true,” you grumbled, feeling a childish grumpiness at the way he found such amusement in you.
“Well, now I know why you told me to pack decent hiking boots,” he said as you collected your bags from the backseat.
“And the term ‘hiking shoes’ didn’t give anything away?”
“Could’ve been for any number of things.”
“Like what?” you said a little testily.
“An impromptu mission that involves scaling a mountainside,” he answered dryly. “Trekking through enemy territory to do recon.”
You were still bent over the backseat where he couldn’t detect the heat spreading over your face. You’d wanted to surprise him with a little getaway after noting how unusual he’d been acting recently, and for him to laugh at your attempts to cheer him up and rejuvenate his spirits…well, frankly, it hurt.
It was only then when you’d already arrived at the cabin that the thought occurred to you that maybe the reason he’d been acting strange and distant was because he did need a break. From you.
You finally emerged from the backseat with the bags, a sour look on your face. “We’ve been with S.H.I.E.L.D. too long.”
He smiled a little at that as he smoothly transferred the bags into one of his own hands, leaving one with you.
“But no, this is strictly for pleasure,” you said. “As much pleasure as you can get from hiking anyway…if you even want to go hiking, that is.”
He surveyed his surroundings. “Fresh air, no one to bother me…my woman at my side…I could do a lot worse.”
You huffed internally. It was harder to be mad at him when he said stuff like that.
“Let’s go inside,” you said. “I want to see what this place looks like in person.”
You’d barely taken two steps when his arm hooked around your waist, blocking your escape. He leaned in to plant a chaste kiss to your mouth that somehow managed to make you feel like you’d just been defiled.
“And babe…” His voice was low and intimate, his stare unwavering. “You are my real life, and I don’t need a break from you.”
He squeezed your waist before his heavy arm slid off, and he turned away for the cabin.
. . .
After an arduous day of hiking up steep mountainsides and over rough terrain, the soothing bath that followed was sorely needed. Afterward, you lounged in bed in your nightwear with Bucky. You were on your sides, face to face. One of his arms acted as your pillow while the other was draped lazily over your waist.
“Still up for hiking tomorrow?” he asked.
Your reply was an exaggerated groan as you dug your face into his warm, bare chest.
You both felt and heard his chuckle. “Well. Arbor Day appreciates it anyway.”
“I think we were supposed to plant a tree or something.”
“Have you ever seen me try to plant anything?”
“...No?”
“Exactly.”
You snorted.
“My thumb has to be the exact opposite of green,” he said.
Languidly, you traced invisible patterns on his chest. “Did you have a good time?”
“You were with me, weren’t you?”
“No,” you said reflexively, groaning and rolling haphazardly into him until your shoulder dug into his chest and your body practically melded with his. “You can’t say stuff like that. It’s too much to live up to.”
His hand came down on your shoulder, stroking your upper arm. “You brought me out here,” he said simply.
You withdrew from your cave to look at him. His hand had stilled and was wrapped around your arm.
“Thank you,” he said, unsmiling and sincere. “For bringing me out here. It’s good to get away.”
Your heart softened. “Do you want to talk?”
“We’re talking now.”
You gave him a look. In return, he gently grasped your wrist and brushed tender kisses along your inner wrist.
“I never did thank you,” he murmured.
“You just did,” you said, watching as he nuzzled the inside of your wrist.
“Not for that,” he said. “For being you.”
You had no idea what to say.
“For putting up with me,” he continued. “Dealing with me. And all the times I decide I want to be a moody asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
“But I got the moody part right, didn’t I?” He gave a halfhearted smirk in an attempt to mask the grimness behind his eyes.
“Well, if we’re being honest here, out of all people, I think you have more than enough right to be,” you said.
He smoothed the pad of his thumb over your lower lip, his eyes following the movement keenly. “I don’t know why you bother to stay.”
“I do. Because you’re an honorable man who still has the strength to try and do the right thing. Because even though you had every right to hate the world and everything in it, you came out wanting to be a better man. Because you’re loyal and intelligent and adorable when you get confused. And because it’s downright frustrating how annoyingly hot you are.”
This time, it was an honest smile that graced his lips. “Knew it. This whole time, you were only in it for my looks, weren’t you?”
“My man is the handsomest man of all handsome men out there. Why wouldn’t I bask in that? Need me to go on? Pretty sure I have it all jotted down on a notepad somewhere.”
He stroked your cheek lovingly, eyes shining with mirth. “I think I get the picture.”
You lay quietly, wanting to ask again about what had had him acting differently the past couple of weeks. He spoke before you could.
“I’m better now,” he murmured. “Being out here with you, it’s…reminded me.”
“Reminded you of what?”
“Just some things is all.”
“Good things?”
A subdued smile slowly curved at his lips. “Good things.”
“Well, if you ever want to talk, you know where to find me.”
“I know.” He placed a soft kiss to your fingers. “You’re good like that.”
“So what do you want to do tomorrow?” you asked as he laced his fingers with yours, making them dance together idly.
“Nothing. Anything.”
“Well, we’ll see if we can fit nothing into the schedule. We’ve still got the whole weekend to go.”
“Good,” he said, and the dark note his voice took on did not go unnoticed. “Because the things I plan on doing to you require you not leaving this bed for at least another two days.”
You smirked, even as that telltale heat ignited low in your belly. “That long?”
“I’m a hungry man, baby. With endurance to match. And I got something right here in front of me that’s looking to fill me up more than just fine.”
You snuggled closer, longing to feel the branding heat of his skin against yours. With teasing strokes to his hard chest, you gazed up at him through your lashes. “But I thought you were going to fill me up.”
In an instant, his eyes were glazed over with lust and his jaw was taut from his clenched teeth. Before you could blink, he grasped your hip with a harsh growl and squeezed, deftly rolling you onto your back so he was on top. He ground his rapidly growing arousal into you and you locked your legs around his hips to anchor him to you.
“Baby, I am going to fill you up. Nice and good. I’m going to fill you up so good you won’t be able to walk for a week. Then,” he said as he lowered his mouth to nip and suck at your neck, “just when you think you’re recovered, I’m going to do it again—” He pressed his arousal further into you. “And again.”
Your breath hitched. You struggled to think over the sharp bite of his teeth and the tantalizing pressure of the rock hard evidence of his growing arousal at your needy core. “So I’m just supposed to never walk again, is that it?”
You could feel his suggestive smirk along your neck. “The price you pay for staying with the Winter Soldier.”
Heady with desire, you tangled your fingers in his hair as he continued to suckle at the sensitive skin of your neck. “Winter Soldier no more.”
“No,” he agreed. “I’m a tamed man now.”
“Not too tame, I hope.”
Before you could process it, he captured your wrists and pinned them tight above your head. There was no hope of escaping his iron grip.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? A wild man?” he asked with his silky smooth voice. That voice, no matter what he was saying, always managed to make it sound like he was divulging a dirty secret.
You were delirious with want. “Only if it’s you.”
“That’s right. Only me. Only ever me.”
“Yes.” Your voice came out breathy.
“You talk about me like I’m some sort of good man, but you have no idea how I am when it comes to you. How much of a selfish bastard I am. I want you all to myself, baby, and God help the poor soul who tries to take you from me.”
His lips hovered just over yours, and when you tried to kiss him, he pulled back the barest inch.
“Are you mine?” He looked directly at you, his voice low and husky.
“You know I am.” You arched your back to try to regain that delicious friction from his clothed arousal, but to no avail. Breaths coming out ragged, you decided to counter his challenge. “Are you mine?”
His blue eyes, so clouded with lust that only a thin ring of blue remained around the pupil, raked over your face, drinking in every detail. Then, just long enough for him to answer, they turned discernibly sober. His gaze never strayed from yours. “Always have been. Always will be.”
At last escaping his hold, you raked your fingers through his thick shorn hair and tugged him down, your heated words directly up against his lips. “Good. Now make love to me, Bucky. Hard.”
He wholeheartedly obliged.
. . .
When you woke up just past midnight, it was to the sense of emptiness that told you Bucky was no longer in bed next to you.
Sleepily, you brushed a hand over his side of the bed and discovered the sheets were barely warm. He’d been up for some time.
Your bleary eyes automatically flew to the deck right outside the second floor bedroom, and sure enough, right through the glass you could make out the still figure of Bucky as he sat in a chair, his back to you.
After giving your body a moment to fully wake, you rose from bed with a blanket cloaked around your shoulders and pulled the sliding door open. Bucky immediately turned to look.
“Hey. How long have you been out here?” you asked, soft voice disrupting the stillness of the remote surroundings.
“I don’t know,” he said. His own voice sounded grainy, like he hadn’t spoken in days. “Did I wake you up?”
You shook your head. “I just woke up and you weren’t there. You can’t sleep?”
He turned to face the trees the deck overlooked. “No.”
When he didn’t say anything else, you wavered at the door. Then, making your decision, you stepped out onto the deck and slid the door shut behind you. You breathed in the cool, fresh air, the blanket trailing at your feet. The moon hung low in the night sky, unencumbered by clouds.
When you reached the chairs, you meant to seat yourself in the one right next to Bucky, but he gripped your arm over the blanket and tugged you toward him until you had no choice but to fall right into his lap.
“You’re not cold?” you asked.
He shook his head, arm securing your waist.
You laid a portion of the blanket over him so you were both covered. “We’ll share anyway.”
You settled in comfortably, curling up to his warm body. He radiated such life and health and vitality, like he was a staple of the very earth. With his strong, steady heartbeat underneath your palm, it was easy to imagine he’d always existed and always would. It was dangerous to think when, no matter how much more resilient he was than the average person, he was still very much mortal.
The morbid thought had your heart twisting. You’d give anything to be there with him for all the rest of his mortal days if you could.
“I never got to apologize,” he said suddenly, quietly. One glance up found his gaze directed out ahead.
“For what?” you asked, thinking it had something to do with you.
“For killing Tony’s parents.”
Your blood ran cold.
“I’ve done a lot of bad things. They’re all just rattling around in my head, always there in the background. Can never forget ’em even if I tried. But this…I was the whole reason Steve went to war with him. The thing that tore everyone apart. Why everyone wasn’t together when those fucking aliens landed on Earth.”
“No,” you whispered automatically, wishing you could take on his hurt for him. That you could unload any fraction at all of the burden from his weathered shoulders and place it on your own so he didn’t have to live as a haunted man. But there were so many demons in there to exorcise.
“No,” you said again. “No, we couldn’t have stopped it anyway. They were too strong. They were too…they were…”
“Stopped ’em in the end, though, didn’t we?”
“No. Yes. Yes, but—Bucky, the whole thing was a disaster that none of us could have ever prepared for. It was on a scale none of us had even dreamed of. Everything, all of it, it was a whole messed up web of events no one could’ve stepped a single foot in.”
“No. It doesn’t change the fact that if I hadn’t been there to tear the team apart, we might’ve stood half a chance.”
“No, Bucky, it’s not like that. You know it was more complicated than that. If you want to talk about a straight chain of events, the blame on everything in this world would be never-ending. You could find fault in everyone and everything if you just kept going far back enough. You want to blame someone for all this, blame HYDRA for taking you in the first place, for making you into something you never asked to be and for making sure you were alive for Steve to find and fight with his dying breath to save. You see? It-it’s all just a tangled mess that no one can undo and you are not to blame.”
“I still did it.” He sounded so stoic, so calm in his unflinching belief.
“Because you weren’t you. What did we say earlier? Winter Soldier no more. Of course I’d give anything—anything—if we could go back in time and make it so that you were never made to do any of those horrific things at all…but that wasn’t you. That was someone you were created into. This is you. Who you always should’ve been. The man that holds me like I’m the most precious thing in his world and who wants to atone for all the sins that were forced on him. I love you, Bucky, no matter what that comes with. And if Tony were still here…I think one day…even if it took the rest of his life…he might’ve found it in his heart to forgive you. Not forget, just forgive. I just wish you could do the same.”
It was quiet for a long while. Too quiet. When you chanced a glance up at his face, he was still staring ahead. His fingers toyed absently with your hair.
“It’s funny,” he said. “Most people, all they want is time. They want more of it, want to live forever. But I never did. Between all those missions and my time spent in cryo, I never even had time to think about how tired I was. Some part of me knew it, but I had no room to think about it. To feel it. Wasn’t until they fixed me up that I realized how exhausted I was. And by then, I thought I had nothing to live for. I was supposed to be alone. Some sort of comeuppance for everything I’d done.”
“Bucky…” You clasped his cheek. “You have everything to live for.”
He took your hand from his cheek and planted an achingly sweet kiss to your palm that conveyed more than was spoken. “I know that now.”
You pressed your lips to his. Then, you burrowed into him.
You didn’t know how much time had passed when you came to full awareness. The steady rise and fall of his chest had lulled you to near sleep. He subtly shifted your position on his lap, which you took as a sign that he was ready for you to get up.
Reluctantly, you got up, instantly missing his warmth.
“I’ll be inside,” you said, brushing a kiss to his forehead.
You were turning away, blanket once again around your shoulders, when he caught your hand and had you twisting around to face him.
“Marry me,” he said.
The air immediately left your lungs.
“What?”
He stood up, still with a firm grasp of your hand, and stepped closer until there was no room between you. “Marry me.” He shook his head. “I lost five years of my life. Lost you for that long. Hell if I let myself lose you again.”
“Wha—I—”
He cradled your face in his hands, burning eyes searching yours. “There’s nothing I’ve wanted more in this life than to spend the rest of it with you. Let me make you happy. I’ll spend the rest of my days trying to prove to you I can.”
Absently, you shook your head between his hands, while your own hands had found their way to his wrists. “Bucky, I—”
“Just let me say it.” His jaw was clenched, his mouth set in a fierce line. He looked unequivocally determined. “Whole reason I’ve been acting strange with you is ’cause it’s been in my head to ask you for a while now. Hell, it’s always been in my head. Just never thought I’d actually get the chance. Always chickened out before I could find out.”
What…?
He’d been contemplating marriage with you all that time?
“I’m not a perfect man,” he said with no small measure of self-disdain. “The whole world’ll tell you that. I’m not some noble do-gooder like Steve, and maybe I’ll always be second best—”
“You what—”
“But if there’s one thing I can do right in this world, it’s you and me. At the very least, I’ll fight till my very last breath. ’Cause you’re it for me. Always have been, always will be. You’re the one good thing I have in this shitty mess of a world and I can’t let you get away. No, not just can’t—I won’t. Because no matter how stupid you are for it, you love me, too. You know I had the chance to go back with Steve? He told me he was going and he asked what I thought I was going to do. It was possible, he said.” He shook his head. “But there was never a choice. I wasn’t going back. Because you were here.”
“Bucky, I—”
“Please, just let me get this out. And he knew that. He knew I wasn’t going to leave. And he knew why. Yeah, it was ’cause there was no shitting way in flaming hell I could’ve just gone back to the ’40s and pretended like nothing happened, like I wasn’t someone completely different, but it was also ’cause you were here and he knew that. And you know what he told me? He told me to take care of you. I know he told you to take care of me, what, four years ago now? I know he told you to take care of me, but he told me to take care of you, too. And that’s what I always fully intended on doing. Still do. Not out of obligation or some half-assed sense of duty. I want to, more than I want anything. So marry me. Be my wife. Make me your husband. And I promise you I’ll make it worth it every day for the rest of our lives.”
You couldn’t speak. There was…no way you could form words.
His eyes still searched yours, and he must’ve found something he didn’t like because his face fell with undisguised dejection and his hands grew slack around your face. You could feel him slipping away, ready to close himself off.
“Bucky…” With your voice finally able to work, you threw yourself at him, encasing him in your arms, feeling the lightning rapid pace of his heart to match your own. “Bucky…you were never second best.”
You’d always wondered if he felt you settled for him because you couldn’t have Steve. To your core, it wasn’t true, but you were always deathly afraid he’d believed it to be.
“I want you. I love you,” you told him.
He exhaled slowly against your hair, holding you to him. “Doesn’t matter how many times I hear it. Don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing you say that.”
“I love you, Bucky Barnes. Do you love me?”
You drew back to look at him. His eyes that sometimes saw too much and other times not enough were all the answer you needed.
“Love you?” He chuckled ruefully and leaned in, speaking into your neck. “Baby, what you got me all wrapped up in is something no human language has got the words for. And I know a lot of ’em.”
You laughed despite yourself.
“But yes.” He pressed a languid kiss to your neck. “I love you. God…I love you. More than I knew was possible.”
“Then yes.”
He immediately stilled. “Yes?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you, you idiot.”
He drew back to gaze at you, disbelief etched across his face. “Yes?”
You held his face between your hands. “Yes. Of course.” You pulled him in for a kiss and spoke against his lips. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
He let out a breath of shock before he smiled against your mouth, a genuine, artless smile. In the next second, you were clear of the floor, Bucky twirling you in the air in his secure hold.
You laughed, tears of joy marking your cheeks when he stopped and let you slide down his body, front flush with his. Laughing along, he swiped at the tears gently with his thumbs.
“Was there ever even any question?” you asked, unbelieving of all that just happened.
It wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to you. You were so firm in your obstinate belief that your guarded heart would be locked away after everything that had transpired with Steve, never to show its face again. But you were no soothsayer, and life had a way of taking unpredictable turns.
The all-encompassing grin had faded from Bucky’s face, but the serenity in his still shining eyes was clear as day. He shut his eyes and rested his forehead on yours.
“No,” he said. “Not anymore.”