Little Secrets, Little Bucky

Owies And Stitches

Bucky knew he was being stupid. He knew that changing his clothes on the jet so that no one would see the gash on his thigh was a bad idea. He knew that eventually somebody would know what had happened. But maybe if he was lucky, then by the time it was discovered, it would be healed enough that he wouldn't have to get any procedures done.

The downside to this plan was that there was no way that he could be little right now. If he regressed he'd never be able to hide his injury from Y/n, so no matter how badly he wanted to run to her, to let her clean him up and baby him until the horrors of the mission faded away, he had to stay big.

But little did Bucky know, Y/n already knew something was up. Bucky had walked off the jet clearly favoring one side and then immediately gone into his suite. Usually after a rough mission he'd come to her right away to get a bath and a bottle so that he could have the release that he needed, and this mission had definitely been rough. The Hydra missions always took a toll on him, something that Y/n made sure to pay close attention to.

She walked into his bedroom, not bothering to knock, and stopped in her tracks when she saw him. He was sitting on his bathroom counter, trying to clean blood off of his leg. It was streaming down and dripping into the floor, making a pattern of little red polka dots on the tile.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She asked once she'd gotten over her shock. "How long ago did that happen? Where are you bleeding from?"

Bucky's head shot up but he couldn't answer, too focused on the fact that he'd been found out. His mama was right there and he had to fight every instinct in his body to not reach for her to make it all better.

"Buck?" Y/n's voice went softer as she approached the bathroom. She could see in his eyes how close he was to slipping and knew that if she was going to get him to go to the lab he needed reassurance first. "Can you talk to me, honey? Why'd you hide this?"

He shook his head, looking down at his leg that he was still trying to clean up. She came into the room and picked up a gauze pad, finding the laceration on the side of his leg. It was big, at least 4 inches, and bleeding heavily. She applied pressure to the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, but she knew that he needed to go see Bruce. If she could ease him into his headspace now it would avoid him slipping in the middle of getting checked on and make everything just a little bit easier. She thanked god that Bruce already knew about Bucky's regression, and that he was understanding. He was the only one that any of the little ones in the tower would even let near them while injured.

"My poor baby," she said softly, using her free hand to guide Bucky's face up to meet hers. "You've been such a brave boy the last few days, haven't you? You did that hard mission all by yourself and you managed to get back home to me in one piece. I'm so proud of you." Bucky's eyes filled with tears. "Do you think you can be brave for me again right now? You need to see a doctor, little one."

"I can't," he choked out, barely holding on to adulthood. "Please, I can't."

She frowned and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Can you tell Mama why you're so scared, baby boy?"

That was cheating. She couldn't call herself Mama and call him baby boy in the same sentence, he didn't stand a chance at staying big after that. A few tears spilled over as Bucky plummeted into his headspace and his bloody hands came up to grab at the sides of her T-shirt. She took that as a cue to step closer, moving her free hand from his face to the back of his head, cradling it against her shoulder while he tried to take deep breaths like she taught him to.

"Gonna hurt me, Mama," he said shakily, trying to make her understand. "Not gonna help, just hurt."

"Bruce would never hurt you on purpose, sweetheart," she reassured him. "And Mama won't let anything happen without your consent."