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Ava, by all definitions, was not having a good day.
Quantum energy had been wound into the very fabric of her being, and something wound could always be tightened to the point of suffocation, no matter how much that bind had been loosened by the quantum surge of energy Janet Van Dyne had gifted her. Sometimes she could expect it: notice the warning signs before the storm, prepare herself before she was cast right back into the pain and instability of her past.
Today was not one of those days.
The surge came suddenly, waking her in the middle of the night with a lance of pain shooting through her, the agony of all her cells being crushed down and reassembled, one by one. She could hardly breathe through the suffocation, her body as clay for the world to mold into whatever it wanted. She tried to get up, tried to get nearer to her stabilizers, but every part of herself felt foreign to the movement receptors in her brain, all of them failing to respond to anything other than an aborted attempt at movement that ultimately ended with her on the floor, curled into herself (or what remained).
It could've been minutes or hours of laying there before anything felt real again, or, at least, that she could perceive anything through the haze of pain. She took advantage of the singular reprieve she had to grab her stabilizers from the dresser across the room and hook them into her suit, replacing the ones that had run dry trying in vain to stem the quantum distress. They didn't cure her—nothing ever really would—but at least she could feel a bit more like a person until her phasing took over again.
Regardless of any stabilization, though, these attacks always threw her to the deep end of sensitivity. Everything became too much, more than usual. It was as if the closer connection to both quantum and classical states combined the two in her brain, accentuating everything to its extreme. Whispered sounds grated on her ears, any touch cut like knives to her skin.
She hadn't had one this bad for months. She'd almost gotten used to being able to exist without the incessant need to either crawl out of her skin or tear open her ribcage—her mistake.
Hours after the initial surge and her senses were still a livewire, alerted to every single thing around her. She had no choice but to curl into a corner of her room and try to ignore the relentless hammering of everything against her.
But even that had its time limit, once the walls started to press in on her—her suit a cage to her skin and every movement a rush of pinprick shards against her nerves, each breath a new burden smothering her lungs. And her hair–
Her hair was the breaking point.
--
Ava ended up in the kitchen without a clear idea of how she got there, opening drawer after drawer, intangible hands grasping through clutter looking for one single thing. Drawer after drawer, and they weren't on the counter, and they weren't in the wretched knife block like they should've been, like she'd told the team a million times before—and they weren't anywhere, she couldn't–
Every sense kicked to the highest notch told her she was no longer alone. Eyes burned into the back of her neck, watching her every move in this fruitless search. There was a voice but it just echoed in her ears without being processed at all beyond pain.
She didn't even think to stop and focus on it, hand still rummaging through all the crap of a new drawer because someone took the bloody kitchen shears and he was so close to her she was practically suffocating on it—
"Back up." Her demand was curt. Ava didn't much care.
He backed up. She could breathe a bit easier.
"What do you need?" Him and his irritating, persistent patience. Why not just leave her alone? He'd made his voice softer than before and she wished he hadn't, that it would've just passed through her head like before and she didn't have to hear this baseless care–
She slammed the drawer closed. Nothing. It was on to the blasted cabinets now, apparently, because where else would they be, she just—"The scissors, I need the damn scissors, and some asshole took off with them and I need them, and they're not anywhere—" and she stood on the edge of crying out of frustration for this stupid thing.
And damn Bucky Barnes and his patience. "You're not gonna find them here. Look at me."
Ava's hands came down to grip the edge of the counter, all her focus in keeping them tangible just for something to hang on to. Her lungs faltered under it. She was about ready to vibrate out of her skin. She did not look at him.
"Ava. Breathe."
"I am breathing." In came another horribly shaky breath.
She heard him huff. "Can you look at me?"
Another moment before she relinquished her grip on the counter to turn to him. She almost immediately regretted it, a wave of all that her narrow-minded focus had ignored coming crashing in. But he was calm, and just him, and her focus grasped onto that like a lifeline, trying to tune out everything else assaulting her senses.
"What do you need the scissors for?"
"I just need—" Her breath stuttered again, quickening, and not bringing in nearly enough air. "It's too much." She tugged at the hair that had come out of the bun, every slice of contact a new pang of too much, all sensations narrowing right back to where it weighed down her head like an anvil, every strand carving into her neck—
"I need it off, I can't—" She sucked in a breath, and two, and still, still not enough, too much and everything was just too much and damn everything she was crying again.
"Okay, okay, Ava—" It was like he was calming a wild animal. "Focus on me, okay?"
She tried, through her mind screaming at her, tried to find him again. Let go of her hair from where she had been brutally tugging at it. Focused on his lungs expanding, matched it. Every gust of air in her lungs was still shaky, and painful, but at least she could breathe.
Once he seemed to be satisfied with her state, Bucky continued, still soft, soft, and she held on with everything in her, "Listen, you don't have to agree. I can just get them for you if you want—" His gaze fell to her hands, which remained out of synch with the rest of reality. "—but I'm not sure scissors would stick around much in your hands right now, right?" The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, and she couldn't help feeling just a little more at ease for it.
Ava's voice sounded more unsteady than she'd like when she responded, "Maybe not."
Bucky nodded a bit. "Okay, well. Only if you want—I can't say I'm the greatest barber, but I'm halfway decent. I've got hair scissors, and I'd probably have better luck holding onto them." He shrugged, betraying some of his hesitation. "If you wanted me to help."
Averting her eyes, she struggled with herself. Because—ugh. With her bloody hands the way they are, she knew she wouldn't be able to do it herself. She hadn't thought of that, with how her head had been before. On the other hand, this was so incredibly humiliating, her body betraying her this much and him seeing it, no matter how unreasonably patient he was being even though she'd already snapped at him, twice.
But she already practically cried like a toddler in front of him twice in the past few minutes, so what was another blow to her dignity? And Ava really couldn't stand another minute of the weight on her head.
That was what ultimately led to her nodding at the offer.
He smiled at her encouragingly and she maybe wanted to strangle him a bit. Or melt into the floor. Either way.
--
Bucky led her to his room and adjoining bathroom. If she were less fixated on other things, she may have been curious to look around; she hadn't actually been in his room before, only caught glimpses whenever she was at his door. All she caught now was an impression of tidiness, maybe a lack of personal touches.
His bathroom was much the same: neat, simple. She imagined most everything was tucked away in the various drawers within the vanity—even in his private space, guarded.
His voice took her out of her head. "Do you want a chair, or anything?"
Not entirely trusting her voice to not be shaky, Ava just shook her head. She'd sink right through it, anyway. She hardly trusted herself not to sink through the hundred floors beneath her, fall through the earth below. At least the vacuum of space would ease the pounding in her head from every way gravity smothered her.
Ava's gaze couldn't meet her own in the mirror in front of her. Sometimes she seemed to disappear like smoke, sometimes it was her own echoes of agony, sometimes it was just her—and it became difficult to even spare her reflection a glance. His countertop was plain white marble, but better than any other option.
Bucky moved off to the other side of the room, opening a cabinet above the toilet to retrieve the scissors. She tamped down her curiosity at what else may be inside—though the cabinet door blocked her view anyway. It didn't much matter, though, when her mind rapidly narrowed to the decreasing space between them as soon as he started back towards her.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood upon his approach, a dreadful sense of unease or fear or something washing down upon her, her breathing rising in spades and she panicked, blurted out, "Don't touch me."
Bucky froze in place. Her hands flickered, she clenched them into fists. Glared into the counter. She couldn't mess this up more could she.
"I mean," she forced out before he could speak. Her next breath was as deep and stabilizing as she could make it. "Try not to touch me. If you can help it." He was cutting her hair, of course he was going to— "My skin, not my hair."
She saw him nod from the corner of her eye. "Okay. I'll try my best."
He approached again, slower. Every movement he made felt predictable, intentional. She appreciated that, when each thread within her had decided to be everything but.
His hand motioned to her. "Do you want me to…?" he trailed off, expectant.
Did she want him to… she blinked, confused, then—
"Oh—" She had a sharp intake of breath. "No, no. I'll—" Her bloody hair was still up. Great job, Ava. Doing great here. Her fingers shook as she brought them to the bun, and it was a near herculean effort to keep them solid as they wrapped around the band, to try and keep patient rather than ripping off the whole thing and potentially making it worse—which happened more frequently than she'd like to admit.
The hair fell onto Ava's neck, her shoulders, like bricks. The loose strands had been sharp slivers, but this—
Her chest rose and fell in a rocketing pace, everything that'd been momentarily forgotten coming back with a vengeance. The band fell through her fingers onto the floor. She knew if she looked at the mirror now she'd see only flash images of herself, glitched imitations. How would Bucky even know whose hair to cut?
Her voice trudged through the flood. "Just do it." He could figure out whose hair to cut by himself.
"You sure?" Of course he noticed the change.
"Do it," she repeated through clenched teeth.
Despite her own insistence, she nearly flinched at his hand circling around a section of her hair. He moved with caution, and care, and avoided every part of her neck when he did it, and still, every single cell near his hold hurdled through waves of uncertainty. She usually avoided physical touch with everything in her when her phasing got like this. At least she could hold onto her own bewilderment at how foreign the nearness felt, beyond everything else.
"Any preference on length?" Bucky's voice was still soft. It had been this whole time. At some point, that quiet rumble had become something of a comfort amidst the onslaught.
Ava shook her head and immediately regretted it—the burden of hair weighing down made the movement near impossible and severely unwanted. She clenched her eyes closed and clarified, "Just off my shoulders."
He hummed, lightly. Her head moved slightly from the gentle tension his hand exerted on the hair he held, until it evened out and the snip of scissors enveloped her senses, sharper than his voice and unfortunately too loud to completely block out. Her teeth grabbed hold of her cheek, and she tried to concentrate on that dull pain rather than the grating sound of her supposed salvation.
Bucky worked efficiently, though, and the scissors were likely just as well-cared for as his weapons. Only a few seconds passed before that section was completed. The remaining hair fell to her neck with renewed lightness, still heavy but not suffocating. Ava breathed with a sort of anticipatory relief.
Bucky moved to another section, and it was much of the same. The snip of scissors lessened to an expected scrape across her skin. Everything else faded to the background. Her eyes remained closed, narrowed focus upon the pressure of his hold, the warmth of his proximity that had ceased to be stifling upon becoming a certainty. He'd completed half of her hair before she knew it.
"I've got the top layer, but the next one's closer to your skin. I can't promise I won't get you." Bucky's voice didn't quite break the bubble of her mind. "You still alright?"
Ava swallowed. Her phasing was balanced, for now, as much as it could be. Hopefully that would be enough. She nodded, the motion already so much lighter, and everything else was lighter for it. "I can handle it."
"Just let me know if it's too much." This had to have ruined his day—how could he possibly still be so forgiving?
His hand returned to grab a portion of her hair. The first brush of fingers against her neck lined every muscle in her body with tension, and it was a fight against flinching at it. For as much as Ava fought against a physical reaction, though, Bucky clearly noticed, gathering the hair and pulling away much more quickly than before. The moment lasted a mere half second, yet the back of her neck buzzed from it for ten times as long. Longer.
"Sorry," he apologized, genuine.
"It's fine." Did she sound as unsteady as she felt? She hoped not. "You warned me, right?"
"Sure, but still. You alright?"
Ava nearly cracked a smile at that, amused and baffled. One tiny touch and he stopped everything. It infuriated her to no end, yet calmed her all the same. "Keep going. I'm fine."
Bucky seemed to hesitate for a second, then resumed his task, hand and hair held away from her neck.
It only occurred to Ava, several breaths later, past the snip of scissors, that she was fine. The buzzing hadn't quite ceased but it wasn't bad. It wasn't the sizzling pain she'd expected, the forced solidity of her cells attempting to remain in the same phase as everything else. It was…warm, if anything, which didn't make much sense when she realized it'd been metal that had touched her. She'd thought it cold—had experienced that coldness the one time she'd held it in her hands.
Absurdly, that single touch made her wish she hadn't requested that he be cautious.
Truly, she'd been knocked off-kilter; even her phasing seemed confused. So much so, when he gave her warning for the next touch, when the metal made contact with her neck…she leaned into it. The backs of three fingers pressed against her skin, and she breathed.
The warmth threaded through her veins, through the static of each nerve, sewing them back together. She'd think the sensation akin to what she'd felt years before, when her life expectancy lengthened significantly with that gift of quantum energy, except it didn't halt the phasing; it balanced it. Mirror images reflected into one. And she breathed for it. Maybe for the first time all day.
"Ava?"
With a sharp intake of breath, Ava abruptly came back to herself and to the situation that disorienting peace had taken her away from. His hand still lay upon her neck and she flinched from it, enough to have to catch herself on the counter. "I—" What the hell just happened. "I didn't mean to do that."
Not enough time passed before the loss of solidity hit, and it hit hard. Ava hurriedly retreated from the counter's support lest she phase right through, but only left herself more unstable for it. She stumbled backwards, trajectory leading directly to the ground before two hands encased her elbows and kept her upright. Against all better judgment, she melted into them, into that goddamn warmth tracing paths from her left arm. From his left arm.
She couldn't bring herself to move away from it.
"Ava." It occurred to her that probably wasn't the first time Bucky said that, or tried to get her attention.
She hummed in response. She couldn't quite find any words to say.
"You okay?" He sounded worried and probably confused, for good reason. She freaked over him touching her at all not too long ago and here she was, practically cradled in his arms.
"I'm okay."
"Alright, good." He was close enough that leaning back even an inch would leave her back pressed against the plane of his chest. She grew dizzy with it. She couldn't decide if that was from the arm or from him. "Wanna tell me what just happened?"
"Uh…" Unfortunately, after a day of nothing but every single molecule compressing her into shards, this sheer relief had decoupled all of her thinking capability. Who knew. She blinked, once, twice, then tried to explain, "This is going to sound weird, but I think your arm helps."
"Helps…?"
"With my phasing."
Bucky remained silent for a time, and she resisted looking for him in the mirror—believed that seeing whatever picture they made would discourage her from staying in that position any longer. And….she really didn't want to detach herself from it. "Huh," he spoke at last, sounding just as puzzled as she felt. "Imagine that."
His thumbs caressed the sides of her elbows. Her mind kept forgetting the whole reason for being in here.
"So, if I…" he began, and she couldn't even prepare herself before his hands made a move inward from her elbows, arms following to wrap around her middle. The motion pulled her back into him, slotted against his chest and—
Oh, she was going to die today. The dizziness definitely hadn't come from the relief alone. Every limb of hers became unsteady for an entirely new reason, enveloped in warmth and humming with it. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd been—
But God, the relief was still there. Ava closed her eyes against the wave of solace that met her, the vibranium resonating from the center of her body outward, extending to the soles of her feet, the tips of her fingers. It wasn't perfect, she wasn't cured—
But it was enough. Enough to wash away the agony that had interwoven her existence for hours. Enough to dial back the senses pervading her consciousness to something manageable. Enough to regret, just a bit, that she'd made such an impulsive decision to chop almost her entire head of hair off; at least she could be grateful she didn't decide to shave it.
The reprieve was also enough to focus even more on who remained behind her, arms interlaced against her ribcage. His heart beat a rhythm like hummingbird wings against her shoulder blade, and Ava couldn't say her own was any better. His chest rose and fell, breath glancing across her shoulder, and she didn't think she had been this close to anyone in years outside of combat. But this wasn't combat. This was them, alone, in the silence of his bathroom with only the soft light overtop of the vanity and the piles of her thick, dark hair laying at their feet as company. She still didn't look in the mirror.
Strange, to be this comfortable with someone she couldn't claim to know very well. The desire to know him better nearly overwhelmed her for a moment. This man who had been stupidly kind through this entire interaction even as her phasing near tore apart her state of mind; who'd been standing here with arms wrapped around her for several minutes simply because she said it helped. Who she hadn't even allowed to finish cutting her hair.
She probably looked a damn mess right now, only half her hair chopped off, gaunt from the day she'd had.
Ava allowed herself a few more breaths before straightening from the slouch she hadn't realized she'd fallen into and taking a step forward. Bucky's arms fell from her, though his left hand moved to her upper arm and settled there.
"Sorry," she apologized, though it felt strangely unnecessary. "That wasn't what you agreed to."
"I didn't mind," he said, quickly, then tacked on, "…you know, if it helped."
"It did," she agreed. She wanted to look at him. Somehow it felt more intimate than whatever just happened, though, and Ava couldn't quite muster the will to. "…thank you."
"Anytime." He cleared his throat. "Uh, if you want. I mean, doesn't cost me much, obviously, so if you ever wanted to, uh—you know, I'm around." She couldn't stop herself from smirking. She'd didn't dare believe he was flustered right now.
Who knew hugging one girl turned Bucky Barnes back into a blushing teenager. She bit down the smile. "Just cut my hair, Barnes."
"Yeah, yeah." Bucky reached around her to the counter, where he'd apparently put down the scissors without her even noticing they were gone. His left hand trailed up to her hair, the lingering contact leaving sparks of warmth in its wake. Whatever care that had brought him to so cautiously avoid touching her before seemed to keep him from separating the metal from her now.
He grabbed hold of the section of hair he'd abdicated before Ava's lapse. The gentle pressure of his measuring coupled with his hand brushing along her neck consumed her focus; she truly hadn't been in any clear state of mind at the beginning of this, if this part of it hadn't affected her at all. Was he closer to her than before?
The snip of scissors startled her some, but she braced for an ache that didn't come. Her head no longer pounded from an overload of senses, and the sound that found her ears was dulled and so, so much more bearable than before. She hadn't expected how soothing the repetition of motion and noise became, when the world wasn't tearing apart her every molecule.
The end of it came far too soon.
"I think it's done." Ava blinked open her eyes at Bucky's voice—she didn't know when she'd closed them. His left hand rested on her shoulder now, and she felt something like anticipated mourning for the rapidly approaching loss of contact. But she couldn't exactly glue herself to his arm. That'd be absurd. He continued, "It's not the best, but…just for now."
It occurred to her she should probably look in the mirror. Dread preceded that action, though, and Ava couldn't really attach a reason to it. Mirror images, maybe. She always hated mirrors.
But it was a haircut. I'd be weird if she didn't even look at it—just walked straight out the door. Get over yourself.
His hand still lay on her shoulder. She felt stable now, mostly. The mountains and valleys of quantum energy surges, leveled. A momentous push to her brain, and she finally lifted her head, met her own eyes in the reflection. It was just her. And Bucky, over her shoulder, eyebrows raised in question. He met the eyes of her reflection, too.
…her reflection that had much, much shorter hair than she'd started the day with. He clearly took it to heart to get it off her shoulders. The length sat only an inch below her ears, full from thickness that was usually weighed down. She hadn't had a chance—or the will—to smooth it earlier, and soft waves broke through the straightened strands she usually maintained. It was…
"Is it too bad?" Ava glanced from her hair to Bucky, whose face had morphed into some version of amused self-deprecation.
"No." She shook her head, for a moment baffled at the lightness of the motion, the way her hair easily followed, back and forth. "It's fine. It's good, I just…" Her brows furrowed, head tilting just slightly. "I don't think I've ever seen myself with this short of hair before."
"Too short?"
She shook her head, maybe just to experience the absurd airiness that accompanied it again. "It'll grow anyways."
Ava stared at herself for a few moments longer—a stranger and not, she found— before her attention returned to the weight still on her shoulder. The worry creasing Bucky's brow revealed his had done the same; apparently, Ava wasn't the only one hesitant to let go. She couldn't hold him hostage forever.
"I'm not going to collapse again, don't worry," she assured him, though she was only mostly sure of it herself. Whatever steadiness kept her cells solid now could've just been a trick of the vibranium, for all she knew.
"If you're sure."
She smirked, sardonic, and raised a brow at him in the mirror. "What, are you going to be stuck to me the whole day if I'm not?"
"I mean…"
"No, okay—" She grasped his hand with her right and pulled it from her shoulder, twisting around to face him. Their interlocked hands connected the space between them. She stared at them, grimacing, and took in a breath that fought to be steady, some part of herself suddenly protesting against any intention of separating. Easy as 1, 2, 3, right? A bracing breath and…
She let go.
Her hand fell back to her side. It took a moment to become reacquainted with the disorder that rapidly encroached upon her molecules but… she didn't collapse. At least she was right on that front.
"That seemed better than before," Bucky observed.
It was, though that wasn't exactly a high bar to reach. Pain returned, but less. A low hum in the background, a radio in another room. Whatever the vibranium did helped to return her phasing to normal levels, and she felt immensely grateful for that. She breathed through the renewed, but familiar, racket of her system, and nodded at his words, agreed, "Better."
She tilted her head up to meet his gaze, though she'd really rather look away for this, and said, as sincerely as she could, "Thank you. For…all of this." Her face twisted, a bit. "You really didn't have to, so. I appreciate it."
"Of course," he replied, softly. His eyes were soft, too, looking down at her. As soft as they'd been the whole time, more soft than she'd ever really seen him before.
Barely a foot of space bridged the gap separating them. Unbidden, a vivid recollection came to her mind of his warmth surrounding her. The solidity of muscle and the sheer safety of it, of the relief and the warmth. The near addicting dizziness approaching her mind even now—
He was right here in front of her, just as captured as she was, lips slightly open, and maybe, just maybe…
Nope. No. Ava dropped her eyes to the side and took a sharp intake of breath, taking a step back, as much as she could without ramming into the counter. "I'll, uh, be on my way, then."
"Right." His face was unreadable when she glanced at him again, and she momentarily regretted making him close it off like that. But no point to that now, she already did it.
Without succumbing to another glance, Ava left through the open door and made it back to the familiar walls of her room without remembering a thing of the walk between. But at least it was a place where nothing and no one would keep her from shoving the humiliation of the day into a box, locking it away, and tossing the key.
Though that wasn't exactly foolproof. Her heart still beat slightly too fast, and she couldn't even appreciate the fact her fingers remained solid enough to feel the pulse of it because everything else raged in loud, loud circles through her head.
And at the core of the storm lay the simple fact she took advantage of him, of his kindness. Bucky offered to cut her hair, damn it, not–
Ava groaned. Oh, no.
She left him with her hair. Piles of it. On his bathroom floor.
Ava buried her face in her hands where she sat on the edge of her bed—considered burying herself too, for a moment. Really, she should've just let herself disappear through the Earth's surface in the first place. At least that would've been less mortifying than this.
She wasn't going to be able to look Bucky in the eye ever again.
What a mess.
(And a shame, truly, when she still couldn't seem to lock away the phantom feeling of his arms wrapped her, no matter how hard she tried.)