Bucky's POV
"Don't you want me to be your girl?" she'd asked.
I would've ripped my heart out of my chest and given it to her if she'd asked for it. But she kept asking for things I didn't have—stability, consistency, sanity.
It was well past two in the morning, and I was in my apartment. I could still hear music coming from down the hall. Stark's, in the common area, it sounded like. At least she wasn't too far away.
I hated not being there in case something else happened. I hated the fact that I didn't need to be there anyway, because she was better off with someone else looking after her. I hated that I felt like I was lying to her, like I was hiding things from her, because she didn't understand what I used to be (or what I felt like I still was at night).
I wondered what exactly she imagined I was having nightmares about. She kept asking me to talk, and she must've been thinking I was having flashbacks about being hurt, the way she'd hold me and touch me. I didn't know how to tell her I wasn't usually the one being hurt in them.
I kept alternating between pacing and sitting. I wanted to hit something.
I tensed at the sound of pounding on my door.
"Bucky!"
Sam.
Maybe if I didn't answer, he'd leave.
"Bucky, if you don't open this door—"
I yanked the door open and stared at him expectantly.
"Your girl is drunk and helping Tony and Bruce test out some motorized roller skates right now," he told me, laughing. "It's not going well. They're the three smartest people I know sober, and the three dumbest people I know drunk."
"Is it just them? What if something happens while they're all drunk?"
"No. There are some others. I think about 5 drunk Avengers equals 1 sober Avenger, so—"
I made to push past him.
"Relax," he said. "Steve is there, too. Designated super soldier, as always."
I did relax. If Steve was there, then it was fine.
"Why did you come here to tell me about it, then?"
"I was worried. I've barely seen her without you hovering over her since I got back here. Wanted to make sure you were alive."
"I'm fine."
"I went to see her yesterday. In the lab," Sam said. "I thought it might be good for her to spend time around here with someone other than you."
"Great."
"But when I talked to her, I realized something."
"Good for you."
"Not many people can handle the talking."
He looked at me meaningfully. I stared back blankly.
"You know...how she talks?" He added.
"No, I don't know." I did know. He was just pissing me off.
"Well, what I realized was that it's special that you can handle it. Because lately, I see you and her together and think 'oh, so that's what she needs.' Because you two sit there together, both of you happy, her saying a thousand words for every one word you say. It's nice."
I really couldn't take the thought of Sam or somebody else being with Grace and taking her for granted, not listening to her, making her feel like she did something wrong for being smart and having shit to say.
"Fuck off, Sam."
"I'm trying to be nice to you! Listen," he said seriously. "I don't know how the hell you're managing it, because it should be hard to do with how much she adores you, but you've somehow found a way to mess things up. I'm here to intervene. This is an intervention: Stop messing things up."
I heard Grace's voice from around the corner, and I didn't reply to Sam so I could listen to what she was saying.
"—because softness is way more common in nature. Like, think about your body. You've got bones, sure, but you're mostly soft. Do you ever think about that? How without softness, you'd just be a pile of bones and a shield?"
"Can't say I've ever had that thought, no."
Steve was with her. I only heard his footsteps, though, not hers. Was he carrying her? She was that drunk?
Grace spoke again. "How long is this walk?"
"Very short."
"I'm gonna nap on the way there."
Steve came around the corner, carrying Grace in his arms. She sounded tipsy, but she didn't seem too drunk to walk. I scanned over her body until I saw her ankle, which looked like it was starting to swell. The Oxfords she wore so much were only half on her feet, like she'd slipped them on so she wouldn't have to hold them while Steve carried her.
Motorized roller skating accident, I assumed.
She was trying to figure out a comfortable way to rest her head against Steve, apparently so she could take a nap on the way over here.
He's your best friend, I reminded myself. He never gave up on you. He's all you have left. Murder is not an option.
"Hey," Steve called when he saw me and Sam. "Did you want her, Buck? Otherwise I'm just gonna leave her on the ground somewhere, I think."
He didn't mean it. But he really did seem to want rid of her, and he definitely didn't give a damn about her soft robots, and that made me wish I had never left her. I didn't get what other people thought was annoying about her. I missed her when she wasn't around. I liked her being in the room, and talking or laughing next to me. I liked hearing her tapping or the pages turning in her book or when she'd count out loud when she crocheted. I liked her perfume, and the way my bed smelled a little like her too now. The smell was 'light, crisp rose'. I'd checked the bottle when she left it on my dresser.
Since she'd been staying with me, being around her had become as comfortable as being alone, so her presence didn't wear on me like other people's did.
For the first time, the thought struck me that I was actually the best person to be protecting her. I'd known her for the least amount of time, and I was the most poorly adjusted person in this building (which was really saying something). But I loved her more than anybody else did.
Steve would die to protect her because he'd die to protect anybody. I'd die to protect her because it was her.
(I'd die for her even if I wasn't already itching for a reason to die for somebody anyway, even if I wasn't already itching for a good way to die that could balance out some shit in the universe.)
"Bucky?" she asked in a small voice, looking up at the sound of my name. "Pass me over, Steve."
She reached out to me, wanting me to hold her instead. My heart clenched. She always did that; she always forgot when she was supposed to be mad at me. I stepped outside my room. Steve extended her out, and I took her.
She settled into me immediately. One of her little hands came up to grip my shirt, the other wrapping around my shoulder. In her fistful of my shirt, she'd accidentally caught the chain of my dog tags too, and I pictured how good she'd look wearing them, with my name hanging from her neck. But giving them to her would definitely be a boyfriend thing.
"Adores you," Sam stressed as she stared up at me fondly, and I entered my apartment and pushed the door shut with my foot. He called through the door, "Fix it or we'll have to continue this intervention later!"
"Steve only carried me because the braking mechanism on the motorized roller skates was faulty and I hurt my ankle," Grace explained as I carried her into my room, as if she owed me an explanation.
"Yeah, I figured, doll."
I helped her to the bathroom, then into bed. When she was tucked under the covers, eyes closed, looking comfortable and adorable and fuckable, I turned to leave.
"Where are you going?" she asked. I turned back around to see her eyes open again, just visible in the light coming from the open bedroom door.
"To the living room."
"No," she said sadly, reaching out to me the way she had in the hallway. "Stay."
And I couldn't fucking say no to her, so I got into bed and held her until her breathing slowed and her feet did this little twitching thing that they only do when she's asleep. Then I slipped out from under her and slept on the living room floor again.
A/N: 💖💖💖💖 thanks for reading!! Idk why but I think it's cute that Grace probably always liked Sam more than Sam liked her, even years ago. Like bc he would've realized that and not taken advantage of it. The safest man to have a naïve infatuation with😭😭😭 pls