The Hurt And The Healing: Bucky X OC

Chapter Fifty Three: Doctor Plans, Hard Headed Patient Laughs

For a woman who had only been in two serious relationships, Mara Anderson had a very specific type. Tall, dark, handsome, and harboring a death wish masquerading as nobility. At least, that's what she told Bucky. Repeatedly.

This was a bad plan. A plan somehow worse than every other bad plan they had made thus far. Take the recently brainwashed former assassin with two bad legs and a bad arm, give him a gun, drop him in a former Soviet state, and have him attempt to kill the man responsible for his second- no, third major imprisonment. Fucking brilliant. The fact that said plan had been cooked up by a man whose life Mara was actively trying to ruin did not add to her sense of security.

Bucky, bless his hundred and six year old heart, did his best to keep her calm.

"I won't leave until you say I'm healed," he said.

"Sam and I will take things slow with my training," he said.

"I'm following my PT plan to the letter," he said.

So why was Mara sitting at the kitchen table watching Bucky and Sam train in the snow, waiting for him to do something that he was not physically ready for? Because Bucky Barnes was a shit liar.

"Are you sure, man?" Sam asked worriedly, glancing back at the cabin where he knew Mara could be watching. "Your right arm is still healing."

"Yes, Samuel, I'm sure," Bucky replied condescendingly. "I've been doing hundreds of pushups every day for the past week, I am more than ready to go back to one armed ones."

"But Mara said-"

"Mara is brilliant, but she hasn't worked with super soldiers before," Bucky assured him, stretching his flesh arm with his distinctly larger metal one. "I heal faster than other people, you know this."

"I also know that she will whoop your ass if she catches you," Sam warned. Bucky laughed.

"Then it's a good thing she's busy helping Nonna."

There was her cue. Mara stood, set her cup of coffee down on the counter top, grabbed her coat, and headed outside just in time to see Bucky's arm collapse and his face plant into the snow. She walked over to the two men, boots crunching in the snow, and crossed her arms.

"How's training going?" she asked brightly as Bucky pushed himself to his feet with his left arm. She looked at him with head cocked and a smile stretched too far before glancing back and forth between the face-sized indent in the snow and the flakes dusting his eyebrows and eyelashes.

"Great," Bucky lied, moving as if to cross his arms before wincing and leaving them at his side. Mara arched an eyebrow and her smile became close to a barring of fangs.

"Just needed a cool off?"

Sam laughed and started to walk back to the cabin, but a raised hand warned him to stay put.

"Remind me, how many doctorates do you two have?" she asked sweetly. They looked at each other guiltily. "'Cause I know that I did not spend three years in med school followed by three years of residency for two fuckwits to assume that they can do my job better than me."

"Darling-" Bucky began, but she cut him off with a look.

"Don't darling me," she warned, taking a step back from his advances. "Pushing yourself too far too fast can strain your muscles, reopen your wounds, or better yet result in you breaking your arm a fourth time."

Bucky nodded, thoroughly chastised, though the glimmer in his eyes warned Mara that he still thought he could get out of trouble.

"You are absolutely right," he agreed, taking a small step forward. "Doctor Anderson, could you look me over and make sure I didn't injure myself again?" He smiled cockily and if Mara were a weaker woman she would have been distracted by the sight of him starting to remove his jacket that covered his too-small tee shirt.