Work Text:
You didn’t like guns.
“Duck, damn it!” Bucky yelled over the gunshots, diving sideways across the abandoned warehouse to pull you down behind a large crate.
Sadly, there was no escaping them in your line of work. You should get a medal for how many times you’ve pulled bullets out of Clint's ass alone.
For two weeks you were supposed to take a break from all of this. You were done with it. Finished. On vacation, for crying out loud.
“Here, take this,” Bucky pressed a gun into your hand.
“The fuck I’m supposed to do with this? I’m not trained!” you shouted at him over the noise.
Bucky was groping himself, trying to find a small knife he’d hidden somewhere.
“Just hold it still and fire!” he yelled back.
You considered the gun in your hand.
Leaning over it, you said to it, “Alright. You're fired.”
Bucky actually stopped what he was doing and stared at you dumbfounded.
“Hand in your badge,” you continued to mock the gun. “I want your desk cleared out by noon!”
“… Y/N.”
You whipped around to face him.
“What the hell do you want from me, Bucky? I took the Hippocratic Oath, I don’t put bullets in people. I grab ‘em, pull ‘em, fucking sanitize ‘em. I don’t shoot. I’d be out of a job without guns, but I. Am. Never. Pulling. A. Trigger. Towards. Another. Human. Being.”
“Yes, because you’d rather be a pasta strainer,” Bucky said, forcing himself to focus on the mission. “In case you haven’t noticed, we're in a bit of a situation here.”
A bit was putting it mildly.
This morning, your only plans for the day were to go to the park to sit with the squirrels and judge people walking by you while munching on some treats together. That’s it. That is the only thing you’ve been wanting to do for the past year or so.
But James Fucking Barnes just had to run into you while you were buying peanuts in the outdoor market.
Sure, he had some people chasing after him, but when did he not?
And, alright, say, some of them had recognized you and begun to chase after you as well, and Bucky was kinda saving your life at the moment, but you were allowed to be pissed at the situation.
“James. I’m not going to shoot people.”
“I need to sneak up on them from behind and there is no way in hell I’m leaving you here defenseless. So, please,” Bucky said. His voice was strangled, and you started to feel bad for putting him in this situation. “Take it. If someone comes and I’m not there, and you get hurt, I won’t be able to get past this. Promise me.”
You looked at Bucky, finding his words to be nothing less than sincere. It’s not like he enjoyed shooting at people, after doing it since he was a green soldier thrown into a terrible war he was way too young to fight in.
He deserved peace, too.
“I promise,” you said and clicked off the safety on the gun. “Just come back in one piece, please. I can fix the rest.”
Bucky gave you a small smile before slipping away towards the fight, as he always did.
The gunshots didn’t stop for a while.
Loud and destructive. Man-made killing machines. Death at the tip of your finger.
People will never stop finding ways to kill each other. But guns are the most fucking convenient.
Any coward can pull a trigger while standing far enough to not get any blood splatter on their shoes from the person, whose life they are taking away. To not see how the bullet rips flesh apart while going through a body. The clank when it falls on the floor, bloodied. The moment of silence, before the pain, before shock sets in, the realization.
And, if their really, really lucky, they make it to you before they bleed out.
Most of the patients in your care have made it out alive. A lot of people have not. Your friends. Your coworkers.
You hated guns.
It took you a while to realize that the gunshots had stopped. They probably ran out of bullets and were reloading.
Any second now they will start the fire again and keep advancing and, eventually, find you on the ground, waiting like a sitting duck. But you won’t fire the gun.
Bucky didn’t need to know that the feel of the gun had made you almost wretch, that your hands hadn’t stopped shaking since he made you hold it.
And it wasn’t just the stress. You were, arguably, calmer now than you usually were at work, but your hands had never shaken as hard as they did now. They were a tool for precision. It didn’t matter what shape the person lying on your table was. You couldn’t control the situation, but you could control your body.
And now you couldn’t control even that.
You forced yourself to breathe as Bucky had taught you.
A couple of minutes into the breathing exercises, there were new noises coming from a distant part of the warehouse.
Someone kicked in the door on the floor you were hiding out on, drawing the attention of the attackers.
With relief you recognized it as Bucky.
With dread, you watched as he favored his right leg as he walked.
He’d been hit.
Bucky engaged the attackers, having found a gun somewhere.
Two men were lying on the ground before they could even fire at him.
The next five dropped like grapes in the next couple of seconds.
A guy unceremoniously crashed into the wall, before sliding down with his kneecaps blown out.
Pop! went another guy’s arm.
“Gaah!” he squeaked. Bucky kicked him in the nuts so hard he flew a couple of feet backward, before landing on the ground and curling into a miserable moaning ball of pain.
Slam, bam, thank you, ma'am.
There were a couple of attackers left, but Bucky was handling them beautifully.
What he didn’t see was one man sneaking up behind him with a gun drawn.
“No!” you yelled, desperate to stop this, to keep Bucky safe and sound as he had you.
The next couple of seconds seemed to stretch into infinity.
Bucky dropped the last man he was fighting and turned his head, his eyes widening slightly.
The guy lifted the gun to Bucky’s head and smirked. You leaped from your hiding place with a gun in your hand and broke the Hippocratic Oath.
The last body hit the ground.
You and Bucky - you were the last two standing.
Once it was quiet, you ran into Bucky’s arms, holding him close. Tears streamed down your cheeks, making him blurry, but Bucky just pulled you closer. He was warm, and he was everything you needed right now.
He gave you ten seconds of a tight embrace. Then he asked, “Did you really just throw a fully loaded gun at a guy and knocked him out with the base of it?”
“Maybe?” you sniffled in his kevlar jacket.
“God, I love you,”
“I love you, too,” you said, and it was the most natural thing in the world.
You stayed like that for a while, before you rememberer his leg and made him sit the fuck down so you could take a look at it.
The backpack you carried had a first aid kit. You got to work. It wasn't pretty, but Bucky was sturdier than most.
When you finished, you stood up, keeping your bloody hands up and away so as to not spread red onto anything else.
“What’s the diagnosis, doc? How long do I have?” Bucky asked, deflecting the pain by flirting.
“You’ll live,” you said and stabbed him with some pain relievers.
Then you kissed him on the cheek for good luck, because you knew his body will burn out the morphine within an hour.
“I got shot, I want a proper kiss,” he pouted.
You laugh and let him pull you in for a real kiss, minding his leg and keeping your blood-covered, but stock-still arms away from Bucky.
Later, when the clean-up crew arrived and you were cleared to go home, you and Bucky found yourselves on a quinjet bone tired, but at peace, because that's just how your life was sometimes, and you were kind of used to it by now.
Bucky even seemed happy for a guy with a hole in his leg. And you found that the peanuts in your bag hadn’t been damaged too badly in the whole fiasco. You shared them with Bucky.
“Oh, here’s your gun back,” you said.
“Nah, keep it. Maybe Steve can teach you how to throw it like a frisbee. You know, since that is your signature move now.”
“I don’t like guns, Bucky.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Bucky said and took the gun back without arguing. “Don’t worry. I’m never leaving your side again.”
He was so sweet. You rolled your eyes at him and smiled.
He shifted the gun from one hand to the other and frowned. “Have you been putting glue on my weapons?”
“No,” you said, confused.
“Go ahead, deny it... But I’m sticking to my guns.”
You snorted at the pun and kissed him silly.
“Not if you want to take me on a date after this,” you muffled against his skin.
“It was worth a shot.”
Bucky’s smile was very bright and you couldn’t help but press your lips against his.