Work Text:
Like clockwork, they move in a rhythm - established in a matter of days.
They tend to be careful around each other. There are boundaries and lines that even without speaking, they adhere to. Each of their day to day activities seem to fall in place at coinciding times, that it may look like they’re avoiding each other, though they aren’t. Sharon busies herself with paperwork - her lease, her old job - while Bucky’s out most of the day most days. Speaking is on a need to do basis.
Cleaning, washing the dishes, sometimes cooking - Sharon has taken it upon herself to accomplish even the most menial of tasks. His apartment is tidy most of the time anyway, with the lack of furniture around, so she finds the task therapeutic more than tedious. Bucky pays her no mind, even saying thank you when he finds a simple meal on those days when he’s been out for too long.
It’s a weird living arrangement, but they make it work.
On the fourth day, it rains.
Day 04
One may call it breaking the ice.
Finding overall mobility limited due to the heavy rain, Sharon resigns herself to the idea of an uneventful Friday night. She relaxes into the couch, watching the downpour outside. Madripoor has little to no rain in a year, and that’s one thing she's missed, back when she was in her own apartment-bar, doing whatever she could to pass the time.
That had been a few weeks ago. It had only been two weeks since.
The doors open, and by now she’s come to memorize the weight, a certain methodology of movement for someone like Bucky Barnes. He moves around - to the bath, to the kitchen - and if he regards her asleep by the couch where she's seated, so as not to initiate conversation, she’s come to terms with it. Has been for the most days since she’s been here.
When was the last time they talked? Something about her mentioning that her move is taking longer than expected, followed by an apology, accepted with an it’s alright. Two days ago?
So she is rather surprised to the smell of hot chocolate close to her face - she looks up and sees Bucky offering her a cup.
“Ma used to make it for me.”
She accepts it, letting the taste fill her senses. “It’s good,” she comments while taking a sip. “Thank you.”
Had they been ordinary people cohabiting - maybe even in that sense - she would have asked how’s your day? Have you eaten?
But they make do with this arrangement, a favor for a favor thing. Sharon considers the situation like a long stakeout mission, where they pretend to be in whatever convincing relationship they need to be while they spy on their neighbors.
She then settles for, “You remember how to make it.”
He bites. “I remember a lot of things.” Bucky lets out a breath. “Even the ones I would rather forget.”
She knows that feeling too, and this is what she's learned about Bucky since - that they have a lot of common ground to cover, most of them rough. Uneven with their many scars. Rough on the sides, scary to walk alone in. If she will allow herself and he’ll do the same they might find themselves in a place where the other’s presence become bigger to the other than they are supposed to be.
Become more. It’s a scary thought.
So she pulls him away from his thoughts, to pull herself away from hers too, changing the topic. “Do you remember a rain story?”
He regards her with a curious look.
“The day I got into SHIELD, it rained,” she starts. “I was drenched from head to toe and my then superiors weren’t really happy about it.” She smiles at the memory.
“Couldn’t care less,” she continues, and says it with wistfulness. “It was dream come true.”
If he found her boring, and the story so uninteresting - well, she tried. She’s mostly done it for herself, to remind her. He seems to be lost in his own thoughts, perhaps gathering whatever he could from what she’s shared.
“My rain story,” he speaks in a low voice, after some silence. “My first kiss happened in the rain.”
His face holds a certain calm, a smile forming slowly in his features. With the display of such boyish charm, Sharon turns to him, more of reflex than consciously, delighted that he chooses to stay and not run away from this. It takes a while for him to continue as if collecting his thoughts but the smile stays.
Sharon studies him, the way the street lights outside peering from the window cast a light glow on his face. Handsome with an edge of roughness, and she admits to herself that the stories that she’s read of him might be true.
“Let’s hear it.”
Day 06
What followed since then - a long, ongoing conversation with no end in sight - has got to be one of the most surprising things life has thrown her way yet.
Bucky Barnes talks a fair amount. And he knows a lot of words. Quite unlike the man she knew from long ago, where she thought the only thing he knew how to do was to stare and to grunt. He’s sarcastic when he wants to be, sometimes to the point of being annoying and that he also tends to ask a lot.
Thus, the long, ongoing conversation. A huge part of her hopes there will be no end in sight.
(She knows deep down there is.)
They talk about anything under the sun. When she receives her first paycheck, she offers him a trip to Ikea. He refuses, but she’s adamant to pay him back one way or another. They agree on a minimalist dinner set for two, for Bucky and a future visitor. That’s how far the agreeing goes, though. They argue until they reach the counter - who’s paying (he ends up doing so) and if it would have been better to have a four seater set than two, in case she and Sam would be around at the same time (she knows deep down she’s fighting a losing battle, but she dares herself to hope).
The cashier waits for them not-so-patiently, muttering “newlyweds” under her breath, audible enough for them to hear as she swipes the card for checkout. That shut them both up.
Sharon can’t find it in herself to back down on this silly fight though - with Bucky, with the cashier. So in a last ditch of effort, she hauls random sets of kitchenware - spoons, forks, plates, a pan, some cooking tools - and pays them with her own card with a wry smile, a look that says the cashier has been so very wrong about them. She adds a set of knives for good measure.
Watching the exchange from a distance, Bucky sighs.
Day 07, 08, 09 and somewhere in between
“Why buy all those stuff if you don’t know how to use them?”
She shrugs. “Spite.”
His eyes turn wide in both mock and disbelief. That thing he does with his face where he agrees with something but with open judgment. “That’s a really good philosophy to live by.”
“I mean,” she tries her best to salvage what was supposed to be an omelet. “I’ve survived?”
When he leaves her to do his own thing, a knife swooshes by on the left side of his face. Bucky stops and turns to her in slow motion, eyes turning to dangerous slits.
“At least I remember how to use these.”
Later, he eats the omelet in peace.
“You ever gone back to Brooklyn since...”
“Once.” He screws the bolt in its place, attaching the leg. He appreciates his work - the bed side table he's assembling since an hour ago almost coming to life.
“And you’ve never gone back because?”
“Changed so much.”
“Hmm.”
“What is Sam’s family like?”
“Warm. Fun. Happy people. He’s got a sister,” he adds, reaching down for the bulb from her. Her hold against the ladder looses a bit. “Careful down there.”
“Sorry.” She says, stressing her r's. The thought of meeting Sam's family - or of going places - plays around her mind as she muses, “maybe I could come along to Louisiana next time.”
There’s a pain in her chest when she says it.
“You should. Very nice people. She let me crash in there once, and she’s known me less than a day.”
“Maybe she likes you.”
“So I still got it, eh?” He flashes her a charming smile.
“Yep.” She agrees but Bucky knows her enough now, that that’s not all there is. “Though you come as old and as rickety as this ladder.”
There it goes.
“So what if she’s into older men? Way older,” he counters.
She rolls her eyes.
“You're telling me there are still women in existence that fancies ‘way older men’,” she quotes in the air and continues, “those who broods and charms because they come with a lot of baggage?”
He looks at her from the top of the ladder, done with locking the bulb in place. He stays there with that look - plainly telling her that he’s looking right at one of them in the face, sharing the same breath.
Sharon realizes her own words, gets what he’s implying and fights the urge to flip him off. She wants to wipe that grin off his face with a kick.
He’s right, but she’s not giving him that.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
He wakes up breaking in cold sweat.
Yori’s son. He knows he should have given the old man - his friend - so much more, deserved so much better than the apology he had given. He’s hoping the pain of knowing how his son died had helped him rather than not knowing the truth at all.
His shirt is damp when he makes a move to get up. It's then that takes notice of a weight against his chest, hands holding his arms as if to subdue him.
“You were struggling.” So it was that bad.
And it dawns on him what she’s trying to do, and the queasy feeling in his stomach rears back its ugly head.
“I could have hurt you.”
Who knows how much of his real strength he lets on when he’s fighting his demons?
“I’m alright.”
She releases her hold on him, his breath hitching when she unlocks her legs from its viselike grip on his upper torso. Sharon walks over to the counter to get him a glass which he then acccepts wordlessly.
“Don’t do that again.”
“Then don’t have nightmares.”
Easier said than done, bordering on childish, because for people like them, the nightmares come with the territory of sleep. He sees through the intention but he says nothing, focusing more on catching up with his breathing.
Much later he will realize that he’s kept them at bay for some time, just because she’s around.
The next day happens like nothing’s happened.
He’s not sure, really - maybe his vulnerability from last night has lit up something in her to loosen up just the same. This morning, she appears to have woken up in a really good mood, attempting to do a batch of sunny side up eggs.
She’s dancing to...he tries to pick it up with his super serum hearing - a Cyndi Lauper song, if he remembers right. Maybe Sam and Sharon share taste in music.
Oh girls just wanna have
That's all they really want
Some fun
He pauses, taking his time, breathing her in. It’s not that hard to imagine Sharon Carter with that friendly smile and such optimism, the one he came to know from before. Loyal believer to a fault. So different from the jaded version of her he's come to live with by now. The way she smiled at Steve, that really sweet smile, as he watched them at the back of the car - that was his last memory of her before Madripoor. If he would admit to himself, he was hurt that the memory was tainted by her bitterness. But he understood her, maybe even more so than Sam did. And he really didn’t want to call her awful but there was too much fire in her he might have wanted to quench.
So he stands there, with no intention to announce his presence, just letting her be. No running, no hiding, just the two of them doing domestic things pretending to be normal people going through life day by day. She seems not to sense his presence and it has been a good long while of dancing that he’s able to catch it all in video. Albeit fumbling how to record at first.
Then, she turns and freezes in the spot - he only laughs at her mouth slightly wide open at the realization he’s seen it all.
Bucky waves his phone at her and makes a run for it before she reaches her knives.
Now he's seen this side of her, this her, he feels a different fire. The wild tresses of her waves, the expression on her face, he commits it all to memory.
Then, he lets himself be burned.
“Dates?”
“No.” He chews on, unabashedly gleeful for this one time they agree to indulge themselves. Takeaway steak and cheap wine on a Friday. “I don’t know, kind of hard to find someone with a shared experience.”
“Not even this online thing?”
“Hard pass.”
She nods, agreeing. “But what does Sergeant Bucky Barnes like in a woman?”
Bucky thinks the question over. Sharon adds, “Come on, I could be your wingman. Sam’s traded his for a shield anyway.”
“Har har,” he retorts, unamused. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”
She sticks her tongue at him. “Come on, give me something to work with. I might know a few agents...”
He a takes a while to respond. When he does, he makes a counting gesture off his fingers. “Capable of taking care of herself.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Easy to talk to. Got some fire in her. Smart.”
She waves her fork at him, tells him to keep going. He looks at her with a solemn expression on his face.
“Pretty without even trying and a little crazy in the head.”
She looks up and catches his gaze. There's something in the way he said it...
Sharon leans over, lacing her fingers under her chin. He has spoken the words with deliberate slowness, as if it’s only meant for her to hear.
“Knows how to work her knives?”
He smiles.
“That’s a plus.”
Sharon bites her lips and reaches for the wine to pour herself one, at the same time he does. Their fingers graze and the pull between them takes up a notch higher, has gone undeniable. Neither of them look away.
“Someone comes to mind?”
“Someone just might.”
sometime Day 11
The air has shifted between them, but instead of facing it head on, they walk their way around it. It’s not as much as avoiding what seems to be so apparent - they're just, letting things be. For Sharon, whose days of cohabitation are almost done with her paperwork finally moving, discussion seems to be a moot point.
But where Sharon fails, Bucky sort of compensates. Not with words, but with little gestures. Prepares her coffee, smiles more often. He offers to cook more too, and leaves his apartment less.
He’s driving her up the wall with the touching too. He can’t seem to help himself. A hand on her back, a tap on the shoulder. One time, she tried to reach something from the top of the cupboard and he just happened to find her struggling. So, he moved her aside with ease with a firm hold on her waist and she cursed herself at her reaction. To be fair, she can't seem to help herself too.
She’s not trying to lead him on, but she’s not not leading him on either.
And when they are not touching, intentional or not, they fill the space between them with words and more words as if it will never be enough.
They’ve almost covered everything from favorites to pet peeves. Exchanged tales of their missions and near-death experiences. They talk about their people too - families, friends, Sam. Places they would want to visit. Hopes, dreams.
She grieves at the idea of them. He thinks she's better than therapy.
All, except for three things: his time with HYDRA, her time in Madripoor and Steve Rogers.
Day 14
“Whoa!”
They open the door together, both of them armed. Sharon’s clutching a blanket close to her chest, her other hand positioned to fire her gun. Bucky’s stance is defensive, ready to block an attack. When they realize who it is, they relax a bit.
Sam’s eyes darts between the two of them, already questioning a lot of things since he got in there, but firstly - on their lack of clothing. To their defense, it’s a hot night out, with the weather acting up with the thunderstorms and then sudden heat this time of the year.
“We’re just sleeping.”
Sharon leans on the door and crossing both arms across her chest. She trains her eyes on the tags hanging on Bucky’s neck, glinting against his bare chest. “Unfortunately.”
He rolls his eyes. She’s all bark and no bite.
However, the exchange is not lost on their friend. “You’ve certainly grown more accustomed to each other.”
“This is the most intimate we’ve ever been,” Sharon deadpans. By that, she means a few feet apart in their sleepwear with another intruding presence in the room. They are both thinking of that night when Bucky had his nightmares and maybe there's more intimacy in that, but Sam doesn't have to know that now.
“We’re just sleeping.” He repeats it in such a way that it echoes Sharon’s ‘unfortunately’. “Like most people do at two am in the morning.”
“Unless there’s something important that can’t wait in the morning.”
With that, Sam’s cheery voice disappears and dread fills the room as he throws a pile of pictures on the table.
At that moment, Sharon stops counting the days.
They ride in his motorcycle at ten. Bucky goes along with her vague directions that eventually has led them to an amusement park.
“This is where I leave you.”
It's more of a statement than a question, and Sharon offers no explanation in return.
He surveys the place, where throngs of people have come, taking advantage of the sunny weather. Sharon brings with her only little of her stuff, the rest she has asked him to drop on a location she will disclose the next time she makes contact. The meaning hangs on the air - whenever that is.
There are no complaints from Bucky at all.
“Yeah,” she looks around, everywhere, then at him. “Probably for the best.”
He nods. He’s still reeling from how fast everything had changed, how so sudden they are thrown back into the lives they lead and cannot escape from.
“Thank you for everything."
“Don’t mention it.” He maintains a healthy distance from her, putting his hands in his pocket. “We’re friends, right?”
She smiles with no malice. “Bestfriends.”
He gives her a small laugh at that thing he did that started this all.
Both of them know nothing about goodbyes. Where it mattered the most back then, there was no opportunity to be had. He fell off from a cliff. She had to make a run for her life. Maybe it was also for the best that they both didn’t know how.
She gives him a final nod and turns her back on him when he calls her back.
“Wait.”
She watches him walk over to a nearby flower stand. Sharon lets out a breath when he sees what he's done, feels her heart breaking with every step he makes closer to her. The sadness hits deep when he hands it over - a set of three yellow tulips, tied with a red ribbon.
“I know it’ll never be,” he says with his eyes saying more than what his words mean. “But I just wanted something... to remember. What it was.”
She looks at the flowers in her hands. “Is.”
Friends. Bestfriends.
Almost lovers.
“I guess we’ll always have that.”
She wants to look away but she finds herself lingering in the moment, at that look on his face. His eyes holds an intensity to them that she would not want to ever forget.
“Tell Sam to take care for me. And you too.” She takes one deep breath.
“Don’t come looking for me.”
“Don’t make me.”
He sees the sadness she tries to hide in her eyes, and the imminent separation seems a small mercy for both of them. No time for attachments. No space for liabilities, not even for almosts.
He walks away to the other direction when she does, remembering that time in Bucaneer Bay, when he thought it’d be the last time he’ll see her again in a long while. Though he knows she’s gone, on instinct, he looks back. He looks again. And he just had to look again one more time.
When it comes to her, he’ll somehow always look back.
fin.