so bad guys can't see me bleed

•tape thirty-six•

I will start by clearing some confusion here.

Am I bitter that Bucky and I broke up? Yes. Was he for a little while? Sort of, but he cooled down quickly.

We were doing great after everything that happened. We were thriving. We were happy. It was all I could ever have asked for.

And then he started getting distant. Little by little, he would drift farther and farther away from me. I hadn't thought anything of it—I didn't want to think anything of it.

And then one night he sat us down and talked to me about it. I thought it was going to be some stupid reason. Some reason that really didn't matter. But it wasn't.

He told me that, despite them getting all that HYDRA shit out of his head in Wakanda, he was still scared that it would come back. That something would somehow trigger it.

The nightmares that would wake us both up in the middle of the night scared him.

I comforted him every night. I didn't care if I was woken up, or if I didn't get the slightest bit of sleep. As long as he was okay and calm, that was okay for me. If that meant that I had to wake up every five minutes to help calm him down, I would be fine with it.

I'd wrap my arms around him and whisper to him, placing a kiss on his cheek or temple to help him feel better. I'd run my hands through his hair or along his face. Sometimes it took him longer to calm down, but the result was the same because the dreams were centered around the same thing.

Somehow he thought those nightmares meant there was still something of the Winter Soldier inside of him. And he ended it. He told me he didn't want to risk hurting me. That he loved me too much. That he just wanted to make sure I was safe, and if that meant that we were no longer together, then he would do it.

So, yeah, I'm bitter. I understand where he's coming from. But at the same time, when he had no fucking clue who I was and he was still the Winter Soldier, he would trip up. When he stopped me from jumping in the water after Cap.

And we didn't talk for a long time. We distanced ourselves from each other. Then we talked every month or so. He would call me if he needed something. Or if we were at the store and we were going to pass the other's place, we'd ask if they needed anything to save the other a trip.

Then he would be the only one to call because I didn't want to get hurt. Not by him but because of him.

Those two things are completely different.

All caught up?

Good.

—

"Stop watching that," I tell Bucky, pouring two cups of coffee as he sits on the ground in front of my TV, watching the poser talk to a reporter woman on his old high school football field. It's screwing with Bucky's head. I can tell because he keeps furrowing his brows and looking at the TV in shock.

"Why?" he asks me as I take the mugs and walk over to him, "because it's annoying you?"

I shake my head and hand him on of the mugs. He takes it and blows on it as I sit down next to him. "Well, that too, but it's annoying you."

He rolls his eyes. "No, it's not."

"You're a horrible liar," I say, sipping the coffee. We both turn to the TV and start watching it.

"Now you're watching it too," he says.

"Shut up, I wanna hear this shit."

"I followed his career very closely as an Avenger," the poser—John Walker—says on screen. "Uh, I like to think that I modeled my work after his."