Secretive - Bucky Barnes

29 || Golden Boy || (a little 🌶)

[Nova]
»..yeah, it's fine. We're gonna get back there tomorrow.« Steve's voice grumbles from the corner of the room, his annoyance almost dripping down onto the candle on the worn, rotten table he leans on, facing the wooden wall.

We ran until our knees gave out, until we found a place to be safe and find some rest in. Rain set in at some point shortly after our head start, to our luck, wiping of every piece of track we would have left behind otherwise. In the middle of nowhere, hidden in between thick trees and moss and bushes, we crashed into some shack, merely as large as my room in the tower. Without the bathroom and the walk-in wardrobe. 

Seemingly left for decades, almost all of the furniture in here is broken or bitten on or rotten. I am thankful to the electricity being shut down for once, because I do not want to know how much spiders hide themselves in every hidden corner of the small house. There only is a single bed in one edge of the room, the mattress hard with wires sticking out then and now, and a small, empty night stand next to it. In the only drawer, small and thin positioned next to what seems like a foul open toilet, we found two blankets. Except for this and a chair-less round table next to a broken window, water pouring in from it and wetting a decomposed piece of wooden plank on the ground, there is nothing inside the small room. And the smell. Lord, the smell. No wonder it was left. 

While Steve managed the call and committed our very wrongly turned-out mission, I started cutting the bullets out of my skin, not wincing once. Steve has been facing everything but me the entire process, and while I am sitting on the mattress and finally finished wiping out the last piece of evidence of our failure, he lays down the phone next to the candle.

Ever so slowly, his huge frame moves a hundred and eighty degrees, leaning back onto the drawer. All his clothes are soaked, as are mine, but neither of us cared to that point. We are both resistant to any ever so small disease, a cold is nothing for our body. Nonetheless, with him staring down at his feet wordless, head lowered and glance fixing onto an imaginary point, blonde hair still dripping and creating a puddle right before the tips of his shoes, the situation grows too unpleasant for me to stand.

»I, uh, gonna take off my clothes now, so do me the favour to turn.« I mouth, standing up. Without a single glimpse onto me, Steve faces the corner again, giving me the freedom to undress as I asked for. Soon enough, the dusty and holey blanket covers my shoulders.

Another wave of silence after he turns around, me standing on the opposite side of the room, trying not to drown in discomfort.

I know what is about to come. I know he will scold me like a child. I know, for once, I have been wrong. But it would be far more pleasant to not bring it up at all than it would be apologizing. Heavy rain falls onto the roof, being the only sound so far, like wanting to crash the wood and interrupt the silence inside.

Finally, his stare breaks from the bottom, throwing me a glance so intense and binding I almost start shivering. The blue of his eyes is darker than ever, a storm raging in America's Golden Boy, but contrary, his voice is as calm as the ocean on a summer's day. It is confusing. »Tony sends some food in the morning, could not get a soul running through that rain miles into the forest and honestly, I don't think he was even trying.«

His voice grows more tensed in the end, arms unfolding. The aforesaid storm incoming, making his vocal cords tremble. His dark eyebrows narrow, facial features hardening, gaze not leaving mine, imprisoning me like nailing me onto the wall behind, fixing me. I never have seen him so angry, the vein on his neck peeking out bluish underneath his pale skin, his hands forming fists. »What do you think that was? Who do you think you are? I thought we had enough talk about solo action!«

It is not enough to make me lose my posture. There merely is one thing in this world that could. »You've been too slow. Too much explaining.«

»Oh yeah, is that the case?« he tilts his head, sparks in his eyes from how angry he is, almost outrageous. Not enough to make me retreat or feel threatened, but the tsunami of testosterone and adrenaline, this time, not in the complimenting way. »If you had only once listened, we would not be in that mess! And how did you get yourself free? Why didn't you do it before, making me watch you being tortured?!« He takes another step into my direction, now merely a metre in between us. Heat radiating from him, but not physically touching me as it would evoking shivers. No one can do this anymore. »Stars, Nova, keep your shit together!«