Distressed // Steve Rogers

18 - Shimmering Crimson

"You know, this is good whiskey Soldier."

"It should be," she could hear the lift of his grin, "it's almost as old as me."

When she laughed he relaxed. He watched the way her smile made her eyes crinkle in the corners and how she shook her head at him as she grinned, the curls that had escaped her low bun bouncing around her face. She looked softer in this light: less threatening. Her eyes met his and he smiled a soft half smile at her, a peace offering, and she felt a wave of calm. For all their differences, he was sitting here with her, trying to look after her. Maybe he was a friend after all.

"So," Bucky cleared his throat and shifted forwards on his stool so that he was closer to her, "I'm just going to come out and say it. I think, maybe, Steve had a point. Possibly."

She chuckled as she listened to him and he grinned back before a darkness crept into his eyes and his lips turned down.

"Listen, I didn't know you'd been through all that stuff Romanoff." His voice was a low whisper, as if it pained him to speak this out loud. "I had no idea what you'd - what he did to you and I... Look I think maybe I misjudged you a little."

Talia looked down at the glass now almost empty in her hand. Reliving her experiences with Matthieu had drained her. Her chest still ached from the tears she had shed and if she thought about it too much her mind wandered and when her mind wandered it always landed back with Steve. And how Steve felt about what she had admitted. And how Steve might never look at her again the way he had looked at her this morning. She shook her head as she signalled for the bar tender to bring over two more and sighed.

"It's okay Barnes," Talia breathed. "In your defence I did kind of almost kill you. I hear that's hard for people to get past."

Bucky nodded slowly as he turned to the bar, propping himself against it as he smirked.

"And I tried to kill every member of the team." He paused as he thought over his past with The Avengers. "Some more than once. So I should have tried to be more understanding."

The bartender placed the two drinks down in front of the pair as a silence settled against them. Talia swirled the liquid in her glass as her mind travelled back to her time in Paris. The days before things became heavy and dark.

*

She laughed as he span her around their small apartment, boxes half unpacked around them.

"Matthieu!" Her head was thrown back as she giggled, drinking in the easy air and the golden rays of sunlight streaming in from the balcony. "We need to unpack!"

His lips brushed against her collar bone as she sighed contentedly.

"You could unpack in less than five minutes Ma Chère." His lips moved from her neck to her jaw. "You own so little."

*

Bucky said nothing as her tears started to spill. He knew the pull of memories all too well and he knew nothing he could say would make it better.

*

Broken glass lay around her. Shimmering against the crimson of her blood. She could hear him in the next room, leaning against the bathroom door, crying for her. She cried too. She cried because he'd hurt her. She cried because she had let him. She cried because right now she wanted to comfort him and yet the stream of her own blood - matting her hair as she slowly picked up pieces of the shattered mirror and wrapped them in tissue before discarding of them - it reminded her of something she had worked so hard to forget.

*

Bucky leant over the bar and grabbed the bottle of whiskey, topping up her glass and throwing Starks card towards the pissed off bartender.

"Whatever I take, put it on that," he barked.

*

"T. Ma Chère? Please." He cried as he clawed at her, his fingers scraping across the bruises he had left behind. "You know I didn't mean to."

"Let go." She sobbed, pushing him from her, kicking as he pulled her closer, his hands stinging against her skin. "Please Matthieu. You're hurting me."

"Then stop making me!" His voice boomed as his face swam in front of her eyes. His lips crashed against hers as she cried. His breath was hot with bourbon and his tears mixed with her own. He pulled her to the ground with him, wrapping her against him as he cried. She stopped fighting. She stopped pushing. She let her tears fall silently as she waited for him to slip into the depths of an alcohol induced slumber. She waited for the moment that always came.

When she peeled herself out of his arms she couldn't look at him. She couldn't think of the deep sea green of his eyes, or the way he would hold her on the good days. She couldn't. If she took even a second to look at him she wouldn't leave. And the steady flow of blood from her temple, the bruises across the porcelain of her skin, told her she had to leave.

She stumbled to the door barefoot and didn't look back.

She never looked back.

*

"So before the war you were a bit of a ladies man?" Talia laughed at the idea. She knew her experiences with Bucky were centred around his history as The Winter Soldier but that meant she couldn't picture him flirting.

Bucky grinned as he thought back to his life in Brooklyn. "Oh yeah." He chuckled. "I would bring Steve on double dates every other week but he wasn't exactly good at them."

Talia knit her brow together as she turned to face him. "Why not?"

Bucky sighed and rolled his eyes. "He wasn't always America's Ass, remember? The kid was scrawny and awkward. He spent all of his time d-"

"Drawing?" Talia interrupted, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

"So you've seen the sketchbook then?"

"Oh I've never looked inside it, but he keeps it on the bedside table." She bit her lip. "Is it bad I really want to look inside it?"

Bucky laughed loudly, completely relaxed with her, and he realised maybe he quite liked this girl he'd sworn to hate. "Not at all. I stole it once just so I could have a look. He's actually really talented. Even dabbled in oil painting for a while. I think most of them are hung in Nat's room now."

"You know what Barnes?" Talia giggled. "We have a lot more in common than I would have thought."

"I wonder what it says about Steve that he chose the two of us, huh?"

He watched as her features softened, her eyes seemed to sparkle in the bar light and her lips softened from a grin to a coy smile, a smile meant just for herself as she thought about Steve.

"I don't know," she mused, "but I know we probably don't deserve him."

Bucky shook his head again, smiling as he looked away from her and signalled for the bar tender.

"You're probably right about that Little Widow."

Taking the card back from the man, Bucky glanced over at her. They'd been here for hours and it was growing dark outside, they'd drank steadily and yet the alcohol had hardly affected her.

"Come on Little Widow. Put on the helmet and let's go." He passed her the helmet she'd had earlier and she frowned.

"Barnes. You've been drinking."

"And I don't get drunk - it is both a curse and a blessing from the serum."