The Hurt And The Healing: Bucky X OC

Chapter Thirty Two: Mutual Pinning

As Bucky got ready for bed that night he ran through the plan that he, Sam, Mara, Torres, and Zemo had managed to construct. "Plan" was too strong of a word for what they had. "General-idea-of-what-they-wanted-to-happen" was a far more accurate term. Attend the gala, break through the biometrically locked door, get into the well guarded lab, hack into the database, recover the highly classified documents, and get out. He'd seen dating profiles with more details than that. But he and Mara were going to go along with it.

Mara. Mara should not be anywhere near this mission. Granted, she knew more about medical research than the rest of them combined, and she was the only one who could recognize what files they needed, but she also used baseball bats to solve all of her problems and had only dealt with addicts and muggers. Private security, brokers for the criminal elite, and international arms dealers were a completely different story.

She wasn't ready. He knew it, she knew it, even Zemo knew it. But she would have to be. He would have to make sure that she was.

A soft knock on the door broke him out from his brooding. It was coming from the connecting door between his and Mara's room. Before Bucky could chicken out and pretend to be asleep, he opened it.

"How do you feel?" she asked as soon as the door opened. She was ready for bed, face scrubbed clean, and hair wrapped in a scarf.

"Fine," he lied. She rolled her eyes and looked him up and down.

"You need sleep," she said in her doctor voice. He nodded. There was no denying that. "What helps the nightmares?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "Raynor, she always said that they were my guilt haunting me. And if I could find forgiveness they would go away."

"Raynor sounds like a moron," Mara scoffed. "Guilt over what? You didn't hurt anyone. Hydra did. You were just forced to witness it."

"Bit more complicated than that," he said dryly.

"What about you isn't," she teased. "But seriously," she continued in a more serious tone, "this Raynor lady sounds awful."

"She kinda was," he said with a rueful chuckle. Mara smiled, but it didn't come close to reaching her eyes.

"Please tell me you aren't seeing her anymore," she asked quietly.

"Yeah, Sam gave me better advice in a weekend than she did in six months," Bucky said. "I stopped going after the Flag Smashers thing was resolved."

"Good." Mara looked at him, and he knew that an idea was brewing in her mind. "Can I come in?"

He nodded and stepped aside. She walked into the room and looked around, taking in the unused bed and the uncomfortable settee that he had turned into a cot.

"I don't care if you slept on rocks, you are not spending another night on that thing," Mara said firmly.

"I was actually planning to sleep on the ground," Bucky admitted. She rounded on him. "Figured if I had another nightmare I wouldn't risk falling and waking everyone," he said with a shrug.

"If only there was something that was designed to be slept in," Mara mused, looking at everything in the room other than the massive bed.

"Bed's too soft," Bucky half-heartedly explained.

"Floor's too hard," she countered. He grimaced and she sighed. "Fine, if you won't do it for yourself, do it for me. Can't have you cramping up in a fight because you woke up on the wrong side of the floorboards."

"The bed is not what gives me nightmares," Bucky reminded her. Mara nodded.

"Did having me in the room last night help?"