Oleander - Bucky BarnesxOC

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: I WALK THE LINE

Content Warnings: Brutal violence involving pens, gun violence, blood, violence, smut, orgasm denial, choking, spanking, slapping, daddy kink, dirty talk, oral sex (m receiving), power play dynamics.

I'm not a historian, so history people DON'T come after me! I was watching a doc on the French Revolution while I wrote this. Dahlia's monologue about the French Revolution is my way of trying to showcase her intelligence and the way she thinks things through aloud (because it's something that I do too lol). People might disagree with her philosophical stance, and that's fine. You'll know that scene when you get to it.

They lay on the couch after dinner sharing a bag of chocolate covered pretzels that Dahlia found in the cupboard. She put on The Lost Boys and they cuddled up on the couch, James's fingers tangling themselves in her hair as they watch. He keeps staring at her and she keeps telling him to pay attention, but it's difficult when the most beautiful person in the room is sitting right next to him. He hasn't felt like this in a long time about anyone, or anything. He's getting that vigor back that he thought he had lost.

Maybe Father Paul was wrong. There's nothing wrong with his psychology, his soul is perfectly intact, he was just missing this - this puzzle piece that fits perfectly into his life. He barely had to work for Dahlia, it's like she just fell into his lap. He's grateful. She's fun, cute, and she makes him feel like a teenager again. She points out every trivia fact about the movie and keeps apologizing for it. James chuckles.

"Don't be sorry. It's endearing."

"Wanda won't watch it with me anymore because I'm such a know-it-all, apparently."

"I like it," James says softly. "I like the things you're interested in."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. What other things do you like that I don't know about?"

"Besides flowers?"

"Yeah."

She hums softly.

"When I was a kid I used to be obsessed with Greek mythology. Like, weirdly obsessed with it. It was all I wanted to talk about. And then the French Revolution."

"The French Revolution?"

"Yeah, weird, right? It was a week long unit in my history class and I read everything I could on it. And then I got another taste of it in university when I got to take an entire history class on it. I read the entire textbook in advance over the summer. Twice."

"What made you so interested in it?" James asks.

She shrugs.

"Well, what I was really interested in was the destruction and transformation of art and buildings as symbols of power. The palace of Versailles was this massive expression of French royal power and rubbed nobility's wealth in the faces of people who were starving and being taxed out the ass because the country was broke and they kept losing wars." Dahlia scoffs. "I'd start a revolution, too."

James bites his lip as she keeps talking.

"It was this way to say fuck you to nobility, fuck you to oppressive power, fuck you to the church - these institutions that had strangleholds on people's lives, and then the people were emboldened by these Enlightenment philosophers who said, 'you don't have to be told what to think.'" She pops another pretzel into her mouth. "I mean, this is all romanticized, of course, and the revolution ended up eating its own. The ideas that they brought forward never really became something truly positive and beneficial for everyone, they just set up new regimes of power, but..." Another shrug and she takes a deep breath as she licks the chocolate off of her fingers. "The whole thing was just really interesting to me, I guess — did you know that Marie Antoinette actually never said 'let them eat cake'?"