Bucky is wearing a leather jacket again. It's different than the one from yesterday. That one had a simple zipper. This one has several zippers and some buckles, and some straps that fold and overlap. I don't understand how he gets it off and on.
"Are you gonna take your jacket off?" I ask, because I want to watch him do it.
"No," he says.
We're standing just inside my back door. His eyes are scanning over my kitchen, into my living room, all the way over to the armoire barricading the front door.
"I'm sorry I scared you," he says, directing the eye-scan to my face. "You didn't hear me call out?"
I shake my head.
"Before I jumped down," he explains. He ducks his head down at me, just the way he did in the alley. "I was trying not to scare you. I told you it was me."
I shrug. I already figured he must have called out to me; it'd be insane not to. But I'm deducing that whatever had made me think his image on the feed was Rumlow also made me think his voice was Rumlow, and I hear Rumlow's voice in the back of my head pretty frequently anyway when I'm stressed, and I've been getting better at shoving it down and not letting it travel far enough through my mind to become a thought, so—Bucky went unheard.
Then he settles on nodding down at the shattered wine glass at his feet, at the white wine puddled on the linoleum. "You got a rag or something?"
If I was polite, I'd protest his help and do it myself. But if he was polite, he would have given me some warning before staking out all night inside the roof of the gazebo outside my apartment. So, I move toward the pantry to find him something to clean with.
"No, stay there," he says, watching my bare feet near the glass. "I'll get it. In here?"
He's nodding to the pantry, but he doesn't wait for me to say yes before he opens it and sticks his head in.
"What the hell is this?" he mutters to my modified swiffer. The question seems rhetorical, so I don't explain. He turns around and holds it up. "Was this a mop at one point?"
"Mhm," I say. I want coffee.
"Does it have a fucking engine?" He holds it up toward my kitchen light, squinting at the bulky apparatus duct taped mid-pole.
"Yeah," I say. "Don't turn it on. I don't remember what I fueled it with, and I think I took the batteries out of some of my noxious fume detectors."
He props the swiffer back in its place. There's a pause while he keeps looking, and then he's rifling through my shelves. I feel like this is my cue to disclose the location of the roll of paper towels that I think is around here somewhere, but I don't actually know that information myself.
"All that's in here is—tech." He clunks a computer monitor out of the way. "I don't think there's cleaning supplies in here."
I take a big step over the mess, toward the coffee maker on the counter opposite me, tip toeing carefully. The glass scattered pretty far, so I'm still in the middle of the scene of destruction. I take another, carefuller step. Bucky turns around.
"Watch the—Grace. Stop," he says. "It's in a thousand pieces."
"I wanna make coffee," I say.
"Wait. Sit up on the counter."
I do what he says, because he says it with a lot of authority. He closes the pantry and commences opening and shutting all of my other drawers and cupboards. He's slamming them pretty loudly, but I don't think he's mad; I think he's just kind of an aggressive person. I think.
"Don't keep SHIELD files under your sink," he sighs. He's crouched down, ducking his head out of the under-sink cabinet. He pulls out a manila stack and flips through them. "Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to have these at all."
He tosses them back where he found them.
"Meredith Warren says you tried to kill her," I say, swinging my feet.
"That so?" he asks flatly, clanking the cabinet shut.
"Mhm."
He stands up, crossing the room to check over my stove.
The coffee maker is on the counter along the wall perpendicular to the counter I'm currently on. My sink is in the corner, at the right angle separating the counters. There's no room for me to climb onto the counter to be with the coffee maker, because the surface is too cluttered with textbooks, my equipment for synthesizing my meal squares, and other notes, but I think if I stretch across from this side, I can reach the coffee maker.
I scoot along the counter to test my theory. When I'm at the corner, I pull my legs up, kneeling. Then I stretch as far as I can go. My fingertips brush the lid. I drag it closer by the cord, all the way to the edge. It rattles and knocks a stack of research articles on rodent trauma to the floor.
"Grace," Bucky says.
"Hm?" I look up at him, bracing myself on my palms at the edge of the counter, my knees still on the other side.
"I asked if you believe her," he says. He's turned around from my cabinet, facing me directly and folding his arms, as if we're supposed to be having a serious conversation.
"Who?" I ask.
"Do you believe that I tried to kill Warren?"
"Oh." I snort. "No."
The problem is now that I can't reach the cabinet above the coffee maker from my current position. I didn't think this through. I'm not sure if I can get my legs to the other side without flashing Bucky a view up my skirt two days in a row.
"No follow-up questions for me on that?" he asks.
"Yeah, um, could you maybe get me the coffee from that cabinet up there?" I ask, carefully removing a hand from the counter to point.
I look up at him again for the answer. There's a ghost of a smile on his face. It's so quick, there and gone, that I barely believe I saw it. He opens the cabinet. There's a roll of paper towels. He gets the tub of coffee, hands it to me, and then grabs the paper towels. I hear glass clinking as he cleans the floor and I get to brewing my coffee. There's a shuffling of paper while he picks up the articles I knocked down. Then he opens and shuts my cabinets a couple more times, and I think he might be reorganizing my cleaning supplies or maybe looking for more SHIELD files, but I'm not really concerned about it.
"I'm gonna leave these out here where you can see them. Just keep them on the counter," he says, presumably about the paper towels. I don't turn to look, because I'm watching the coffee brew. I've got my elbows propped on the counter, my palms digging into my cheeks while I wait. I tap my fingers against my face in sets of four. I can smell it already.
"You can step on the floor now," Bucky says behind me.
"Kay," I say, but I kind of like my new perch between the two counters, so I don't move. I might start sitting like this more often.
"You're right to think Rumlow might come in the front door," he says after a beat of silence. "He likes to make an entrance, and he's not gonna be too worried about stealth if he thinks you're the only one here. But that wardrobe's not gonna do much to keep him out."
The coffee is done. I hop down to find a mug.
"It's an armoire," I say. "Not a wardrobe."
"What's the difference?"
"I don't know," I say. "Do you want coffee?"
"No thanks."
"Something else?" I ask, pouring the coffee for myself. "Water?"
"No thanks."
"Wine?"
"I'm fine, Grace." Leaning there against a counter, his head coming a few inches short of the light fixture dangling from the low ceiling above him, he makes my kitchen look even smaller and more cramped than it usually does, I notice, remembering to make eye contact with him again.
I raise the scalding mug to my lips. It's way too hot, even for me, so I'm just pressing it there for comfort. I like the steam on my face. "I also have gasoline?" I say.
"You're offering me gasoline to drink," he repeats.
"Yeah, I think your metabolism could prob'ly handle it," I say.
"Oh, well, if that's what you think, doc, then sure."
"I mean, I'm not a doctor for humans."
"What about cyborgs?" he asks, nodding down to one of his folded arms. I can't see, but I assume it's the cybernetic one.
I pause. "I dabble in cyborgs."
"Pour it in a glass," he says. "I'll drink it."
"Okay," I say. I nod to the living room. "You can sit down if you want."
I leave him there on my couch while I look for the bright red, five gallon can of gasoline that I know is in my office, which is actually just a room with a desk covered in monitors for my surveillance feeds, the rest of the floor space dedicated to some blinking servers and the equipment Meridian sent me for synthesizing IVY's original polymer blend. This is also where my finished crochet projects go to die, so some of the servers are draped with cozy blankets, and there's a pair of mittens stuck on two radio antennae. I always meant to put a bed in here, but I secretly don't understand why I'm supposed to need a bed when I also have two couches, so I haven't bought one yet since moving here.
The gasoline can is half empty, and it sloshes while I walk. In the kitchen, I pour some into a stemmed wine glass, about halfway full, like it's a sauvignon blanc that he needs room to swirl. It makes the whole room smell like sweet, pungent benzene. He thanks me sarcastically when I hand it to him, and his hand brushes mine, which does something to my stomach that I don't bother to investigate. I sit down across from him, instead of next to him like I did with Steve, and I think the need for distance might have something to do with the stomach feeling. Then he takes a long drink, downing all of it in two gulps, and sets it down on the Mechatronics textbook coaster without a comment or a change of expression.
There's a beat of silence while I wait for him to say something. He doesn't.
"Did you like it?" I ask finally.
He leans his elbows onto his knees, raises his eyebrows, and takes a deep breath like he's about to tell me something profound.
"No," he says.
I finally laugh, in that suppressed way that makes it more uncontrolled than it would have been if I hadn't tried to reign it back, the side of my hand blocking my mouth. That's what we've been holding out for, I realize. That was the stomach feeling, I think. He lets the corners of his lips twitch up, once, on purpose, to let me know he thinks it's funny too.
Trauma-induced dysregulation in the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex manifests in outcomes and behaviors that vary between individual subjects and stimuli. Hypersensitivity and emotional blunting are two sides of the same coin. I tilt my head at him.
"Do you have PTSD?" I ask.
He squints at me. There's a pause.
"You know you're kind of a little freak?" he asks.
"Sorry," I say. I tuck my feet up underneath me. "Did you not want to answer that question because it was really personal? Sorry."
"Do these vibrate?" he asks, nodding down at the vibrators on the coffee table between us.
"Did Steve tell you that?" I ask.
"Why the hell would Steve tell me that?"
"My question exactly," I say.
He leans back, man-spreading, resting his arm along the back of the couch. The tips of his fingers catch the light. I wish again that he'd take the jacket off, now because I want to see the rest of his arm. I take another look, because wait, that doesn't look like titanium. I assumed it'd be titanium. If I were to make a cybernetic arm, I'd use titanium.
"Is that vibranium?" I ask.
He blinks. "Yes."
"Where'd you get vibranium?"
He blinks again. "Wakanda."
"Well, yeah, but—" I start, but I drop it, because that's not my most pressing question. I've stood up, crossing the distance toward him. I lower myself onto the couch next to him, mesmerized. "Can I look at it?"
I make eye contact with him, because I know I shouldn't keep staring at his hand while I ask him that. He makes eye contact back at me, but he's close enough that I can tell he's scanning my whole face, brows furrowed at me like he knows there's something wrong with me and he's assessing whether it's harmless or not. He sighs.
Then he finally undoes his jacket, but I forget to pay attention to the unfastening process until he's already almost done, because I'm distracted by the hand that's doing the unfastening. He shrugs it off and drapes it over the arm of the couch. Then he extends his arm toward me, almost completely uncovered in a tee shirt.
"Go nuts, doll," he says tiredly.
So then I'm hunched over his arm, holding it in my hands. I just want to feel it. Well, I'd also like to take off one of the panels and get a look at the circuitry, but I don't want to push it. Steve quit letting me look at his shield when I got too touchy/blowtorchy with it.
I run my thumb over the joints/axes of his fingers, and then manipulate them gently, exploring the natural fluidity of their flexion. I'm not learning anything; just admiring. It's beautiful. I want to put IVY into an incinerator.
He clears his throat. "Steve told me you won't work with weapons anymore. Says that's the reason you gave when you left."
I look up. "Yeah. Why?"
"Hate to break it to you—?" He glances down.
"This is an arm," I say incredulously, like he's stupid.
"It's made for fighting," he says flatly, like I'm stupid.
"It's made for whatever you want to use it for. You don't, like, open jars with it?"
"I do that with my right hand. I'm right handed."
"I bet you use it to take pans out of the oven."
"I don't do a lot of baking."
"Not even, like, frozen pizzas?"
"When I do use an oven, I take things out with my right hand."
"If you just used the left one, you wouldn't need an oven mitt, and then that arm wouldn't just be for fighting."
"I don't use an oven mitt anyway. I just grab it real quick."
I know that's weird, but I don't get hung up on it. "There's nothing else you do with it?" I ask. "Carpentry? Woodworking? Other...high stakes arts and crafts?"
"All I do is fight," he says with finality.
"Well, maybe you should try something new," I say, because I get stubborn when I'm right. "It's not designed to solely be a weapon."
He turns his hand over to catch mine, stopping my movements, gently holding me still. Then he lets go.
"Are you gonna drink your coffee?" he asks.
"Meh." I forgot about it. It's still in the kitchen where I left it. "Prob'ly cold now."
"You should get some sleep, then," he says.
"Meh," I repeat. "I might skip it tonight."
Colin's pointed out to me before that "skipping" sleep is a bizarre phrase, and actually not a normal thing to do at all, but Bucky isn't fazed. "Why?" he asks, concerned but not exactly curious, and so I think he might already know the answer.
That makes me feel uneasy, so I shrug and look down like I'm suddenly interested in the vibrators. This is very unlike me. I almost never stop talking. Then again, nobody ever asks me direct questions like this. Usually, people are actively trying to get me to shut up.
He brushes underneath my chin, guiding me to look at him with the side of his finger. The touch surprises me, in a warm way.
"Hey," he says. "Why can't you sleep?"
I shrug again, but this time I widen my eyes at him, so it's more like I'm saying yes obviously you're right; my brain is a living hell and I'm consumed inside the deepest, darkest pit of it during sleep; leave me alone about it. He drops his hand and nods.
"I'll stay here and watch you," he says. "You want that?"
At this point, I'm realizing that I might not have asked enough questions about why he was outside my apartment. Reverse trust issues again. I know I should be on edge, but I'm not. I do want him to stay.
"Do you not have better things to do than staking out my place? No offense. It's just, there's a pretty low probability that he'll ever come anywhere near here, and this seems like a waste of your time."
He rests his arm on the back of the couch again, casually, as he angles himself toward me. It's kind of, a little bit, exactly above where my shoulders are, and when I glance up at it, he moves it back down and rests his palm on his knee.
"Look, it's not out of the goodness of my heart, if that makes you feel better," he says. "I've got my own personal issues with Rumlow. I worry about him hurting people. Keeps me up at night."
"That still sounds like it's out of the goodness of your heart?" I say.
"Go to bed," he says, ignoring me. "Try to sleep. I'll be here."
I stand up, like I'm about to do what he says, because he said it with a lot of authority again, but then I sit back down.
"Usually I sleep out here," I say. "I don't have a bed."
"Ok," he says. "You want me back outside, or?"
I snort. "There's two couches."
A/N: thanks for reading :)