Chapter Text
"I'll drop you off when we stop for gas."
"Are you kidding me? We're in the middle of nowhere."
"... Then stop complaining."
At that, you huff, cross your arms, and slump in your car seat. Bucky doesn't look pleased, either, and his grip on the steering wheel of your car turns his right knuckle white while his other hand leaves minuscule indents; an obvious sign of his frustration. Under the usual circumstances, you would have made him a cup of tea and put on some old, soft music. If it were really bad, you would have run him a warm, but not scalding, bath. It had been two weeks since you found him in the hallway of your apartment -- sopping wet, bleeding, and angry that you had even considered calling a hospital -- and in that time the two you had perfected a routine.
But these weren't the usual circumstances.
"You brought me my stuff, right?" you ask him without turning away from the dashboard.
"Clothes." You didn't get any more out of him.
"That's it?" you ask, and your voice rises in pitch, "You whipped me out of my own home with no warning, and you didn't bring me anything? For a kidnapping, you could at least have considered that I need --"
"This isn't a kidnapping," his rumbling voice interrupts. He knows you hate it when he does that and he doesn't even have to look towards you to know that your eyes narrowed. But it stops your complaining, and that's all he needs. "I was keeping you safe. They know you know me, and you would've been found and killed if you stayed. And not slowly, either."
"What a goddamned hero you are." You don't bother asking who 'they' was; he never told you, anyway, but the scars he had, crudely attached metal prosthetic, and the bloody metal tracker he asked you to wrench out of it confirmed a long time ago that 'they' were there and he was for real.
The next few hours create a silent vacuum between the two of you, until your car decelerates and rolls to a halt by the side of the highway, edging on an empty field. If you had to guess, you were in an abandoned rural part of Virginia. "Why'd we stop?"
He doesn't answer and opens the door, slamming it behind him. You flinch and he notices. His eyebrow raises but he reminds himself that, two days ago, he told himself that he would try to keep from scaring you, because it wasn't something Bucky would do. The Winter Soldier was terrifying, and he didn't want to be terrifying anymore. Especially not with someone who only knew him by his old name; a fresh start.
You follow him out and he rounds the car to your side, opening the door facing the field, and pulling out your large toolbox that he piled into the backseat. It hits the ground with a thud and he sits on the floor of the car with his feet weighing down on the ground like he's getting ready to run. You drop to your knees in front of him and unlock the box.
"What do you want?" you try again. He stretches his hands out on his thighs and leans back before he gives you the answer you were looking for.
"The pressurization in my forearm is broken," he says like he's reciting a handbook that he memorized, "I need it fixed."
You pull out a screwdriver and begin to undo the plates on his arm. A small pile of shining metal forms by your side. He watches you without saying anything. You had done this often enough -- and maybe the only reason he kept you around at first -- for the two of you to have gotten used to it: your steady, careful hands tinkered while he watched and thought about holding your hands in his hardened ones and running his fingers over the callouses that formed over time from clenching your fingers around tools and fixing machinery.
Your hair fell around your face, your tongue poked out between your lips, your shirt was rumpled, and he didn't want to look away. He couldn't decide if the way his chest tightened was felt constricting or safe.
He wanted to apologize for taking you away from all you knew, because that was something he could understand, but the words were stuck in the back of his throat and running through his mind over and over. He wasn't sure if he had actually vocalized it or not by the time you had finished putting his arm together again; either way, you gave him a sweet smile that was probably already more than he deserved and laid your hand on his forearm. He flinched out of habit before staring down at your fingers.
"Do you feel that?" you asked him, rubbing your thumb in a small circle. He felt like his brain just sparked and shut down, and all he could do was nod. Looking back up at you, he caught your hand. Although you had touched him before, he never stopped you like this and you knew that you must have done something wrong.
"I just wanted to see if it worked," you backtrack, "I'm sorry, I should have --"
That was the first time Bucky kissed you, all mashed lips and teeth and his functioning metal arm on the base of your neck.