100 Marvel One Shots✔️

If You Love Me, Let Me Go >> James "Bucky" Barnes (Winter Soldier) X Reader

Title: If You Love Me, Let Me Go

Paring: James "Bucky" Barnes (Winter Soldier) X Reader

Warnings: general rating; has mentions of rough behaviour between adults, domestic violence, fluff and dance music

Spoilers: none. Takes place after Captain America: Civil War. 

Author's Note: I'm supposed to be doing my uni work but my house is under renovation and it's hard to study about text and culture when there's a jackhammer above your head...sorry if it's not my best work, but I had to pass the time some way. 

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James Barnes had talked to you first, well, first after Steve. As a regular human being, and not that much of a general superhero, it stunned you; he had turned to you, eyes flicking from the bottom to the top of your form like predator assessing prey, and instead of striking, uttering a good morning. Steve had been silent while the interaction took place, watching carefully. But now it was four months after, and while cautious, James - now, remembering the nickname Bucky - would speak to close friends, fellow Avengers, and on the odd occasion, the mailman (but only if he dared to come up the driveway to get a signature-on-delivery scribble.

But as much as the team would claim, you knew he wasn't the A-OK Bucky he used to be. Nobody can come to hell and back again, and still be the same person they once were. He would flinch when a camera flash would click. Recoil at a bang! – whether it was a car backfiring, or a dropped dish. He was in all senses of the term, a veteran, and a victim, and more importantly, had a very bad case of PTSD he hid quite craftily from even Steve himself.

But he couldn't hide it forever.

It was the week after Christmas, where everything is hectic in retail, and slow at home and at the office downtown, when someone noticed that you had a hickey on your inner neck, and that was when everyone discovered that you liked to go downtown and stay down by the party scene. It woke something up in Bucky; he never knew you liked the pounding of bass, the throbbing of humans crammed into a warehouse party. It was a recent thing in your life, too, and you shook off the attention the Avengers gave you like a stray fly landing on your arm. 

"So what, I'm a party-goer," you laughed, "It doesn't make me less of a focused fighter for the team. I'm still your arsonist. Just with a little EDM." you winked at Tony, who, having the conviction you were a sweet young thing, was quite visually flabbergasted at the awakened news. 

But the next time it came up was when you arrived on mission after a rough weekend bender, and returned with a third of your face twisted and marked like a rotten plum, sore as a bruised peach. It was Bucky's first mission, and at seeing your face at the back of the quinjet half hidden, his heart dropped; you could see it in his eyes. 

"Holy martini," Tony gasped.

"What - Ms. ___________, what happened?" Steve, ever the formal man in the work environment, got down to the problem. His face was contorted into worry, much like you imagined Bucky to look like back in the 40's when he found the little punk fighting. He was watching you. In fact, all of them were. Waiting. 

You gave a weak chuckle. "You should have seen the other guy," you pull half a lip up to smile, but only achieving a wince with your sore face. If anything, you rose the tension in the air, and at this, your face dropped. "I fell down a fire escape, okay? Not a big deal."

Thor crossed his rope-like arms across his broad chest, brow set in a frown. He did not seem convinced. Neither did Bucky, who sat there, watching you without moving, without blinking, like a cat assessing its prey or toy before pouncing. But you knew the new Bucky; he did not like public spectacle, not since the incident with the Accords and such. So he stayed there, watching you, and you sat there, trying to avoid the judgement of the team.