R A N D O M || OS

139. (MCU) Bucky Barnes - Buggy Code

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➽ pairing: bucky barnes x fem!reader (y/n)
➽ word count: 4.1k
➽ summary: everyone on the team has nicknames, and you wonder why bucky doesn't like the one you gave him.
➽ warnings: mentions of injuries, insecure bucky

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Everybody had a special name for the Winter Soldier. For mostly everyone, he was Bucky. It fit him; short and curt, the hard K sound in the middle demanding attention. Bucky didn't quite care for any other name. He had lived his entire life being called Bucky and, even after waking up in a different world than the one he left, he didn't think a name change was in order. Nobody did.

And then I came along. The nicknames started as a joke between me and Thor when I couldn't pronounce his hammer's name right (in my defense, the name starts with M-J-O and only gets worse from there). Jokingly, one day, I called it Mojo, and Thor laughed. I don't think that Y/N is a particularly hard name, but Thor found a way to butcher it every single time he spoke to me. The joke bled out from Thor and me and into me and Tony, which then led to the whole team having their own name for me. Wanda called me "ducky"; Steve called me "little one"; Thor used every nickname for Y/N that he could find (which was different every day, but the theme was consistent); and Tony called me "kiddo".

However, once the nickname precedent was set, nobody bothered to tell me about the Bucky situation. He was nice, albeit cold at times, and I had only seen him truly angry once. I had called him James. He got quiet and I saw a muscle in his jaw jump as he clenched his teeth, and he said, "Don't ever call me that again. You hear me? Ever." He absconded from the room quickly, leaving me and Steve alone, and my heart sank. I felt like an absolute shitbag for upsetting Bucky like that. Steve sat down next to me quietly. Steve was one of those quiet and understanding types, and he cast a glance at the door that Bucky had stormed out of.

"That was... Odd," Steve said.

"You mean you don't know what that was about?" I asked.

"No," Steve said. His brow furrowed, and he mumbled, "No clue."

"Should I apologize?" I asked.

"For what?" Steve asked, turning back to me. "You did nothing wrong."

"I still upset him, even if I didn't mean to," I shrugged. "I... I dunno. I feel like I should."

"If you want to," Steve said. "He'll probably get mad at you for trying to apologize."

I scoffed. "What's new? Bucky's mad at everyone, all the time. I just... He never snapped at me like that before."

"Don't take it to heart," Steve told me, and his icy blue eyes helped convince me.

The door to Bucky's room was closed like always, but even the energy that came from it made me uneasy. It was quiet– again, not abnormal– but it frightened me. I hated saying sorry; according to some, it was one of my major character flaws. I felt sick to my stomach as I knocked on the door. Would he even answer? I felt the burning of tears in my eyes, and I pawed them away with the sleeve of my sweater just in time for the door to swing open. My breath caught in my throat once confronted by the White Wolf, and I could barely stutter out, "I... F-Fuck, I'm so sorry, Bucky."

His jaw was tight, his eyes unwavering. I couldn't stand when he did that. I understand where the whole "no emotion" thing came from, but it was infuriating sometimes. This wasn't Russia. I wasn't Hydra. Finally, Bucky took a deep breath, and his demeanor loosened up. "Don't," he said softly. "Don't be... S'not your fault."