Overactive Imagination

22.2K 1K 425
                                    

TWO WEEKS LATER

Bucky awoke with a heavy feeling on his chest, a weight on his sternum that gave him an unexplained sense of anxiety. He rubbed his tired eyes with his hand and unexpectedly the weight lifted. Confused, he looked down at his bare chest to see Crookshanks, annoyed at her regular 'bed' moving, getting up from his sternum and hopping off the couch, padding over to the kitchen. Bucky smiled to himself. Okay, so that explained the weight on his chest. The fat orange cat had taken his stomach as her new sleeping place for the last two weeks.

He sat up groggily, his mind still racing to catch up with his body. It had been a long time since he had slept that well. A long time. His blue eyes glanced towards the clock on the wall of Erin's living room and his eyebrows raised when he noticed that it was already ten O'Clock. He had slept in until ten O'Clock? It was a rare occurrence for Bucky to wake up later than seven. Usually, his nightmares brought him out of unconsciousness long before that. He saw this as a good sign. He was getting more comfortable here, returning to normalcy.

"Erin?" He called out. There was no answer. She must have gone out. It was weird to think that at some point that morning, she had walked right past him and he hadn't even stirred. Something like that would never have happened a month ago. He used to sleep so lightly that even the slightest sound would wake him. He pushed himself up from the couch and walked into the kitchen with the intent of getting himself a glass of water. His mouth was dry. On the side of the kitchen table was a letter, hastily scribbled in Erin's spiky scrawl.

'Bucky,

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

'Bucky,

I've gone to work. Might be a bit late back, I have an appointment with Dr Kennedy.

Lasagne in the freezer.

Please don't steal Crookshanks and run.

Erin x'

Bucky rolled his eyes to himself and picked up the note, reading through it again, a smirk on his face. He wasn't going to steal Crookshanks and run, no matter how much Erin thought he was. He didn't want to leave here. There was something about this little flat that made him feel at home, despite the fact that there was so much mess that he could barely see the floor. He didn't fail to notice the fact that she had placed a small 'x' under her name, a kiss. His heart warmed slightly at that. He scrunched the letter up and tossed it in the bin, narrowly avoiding the cat, and poured himself his glass of water, downing it in one, revelling as the cool liquid soothed his dry throat.

So she was visiting the psychiatrist again, Dr Kennedy. He guessed he shouldn't be surprised. She had been to her regular appointments, twice a week, since she had first met him. The sense of guilt still clawed at his insides. The fact that he was responsible for her nightmares. He had done this to her.

He had noticed a distinct difference in the way that she acted around him since that night. The night when he had brushed his lips against her tear soaked cheek and hugged her so tightly it was like he was trying to meld their bodies together. She was calmer, a lot less tense around him. She no longer jumped when she caught him unexpectedly out of the corner of her eye. She'd even gone as far as to walk around the flat in a pair of loose fitting pyjama shorts once, not even trying to hide the crosshatch of scars on the tops of her toned legs. He could tell that she was still self-conscious about them, but she seemed to be trying to make an effort to normalise it.

Seeing her like that, her long toned legs bare in the warm light of the flat, didn't exactly help Bucky. He had been trying to stay at an arm's distance from her since that night. It wasn't that he didn't like her, quite the opposite, he felt comfortable around her in a way that was incredibly rare for him. She was beautiful and refreshingly ignorant of it. She joked with him, made him smile. It wasn't uncommon for her brown eyes to flash across his dreams at night.

To his embarrassment, it certainly wasn't uncommon for Bucky to wake up in the middle of the night, panting, sweat covering his chest and his grey sweatpants feeling uncomfortably tight, the image of her small body under his much larger one still echoing in the back of his mind. He held his overactive imagination responsible, but it didn't stop the faint blush he felt rise to his cheeks every time Erin would bend over in a loose-fitting top and he would catch a glimpse of her cleavage. It was like he was a 16-year-old boy again, he had no idea what was happening to him.

But nothing could ever happen between them. She was broken, and so was he. She needed someone stable in her life, a person who she could lean on. What she didn't need was a guy like Bucky, a guy with so many cracks it was a wonder he was holding himself together at all.

You couldn't put two broken people together and expect them to fix each other.

So he had taken a step back, still been polite, still been friendly, but he had made sure not to get too close. They had carried on the MFCTS treatment, and Bucky just kept learning hidden things about his past. He had met Steve when he had punched a broad, loud-mouthed bully called Jake Smithe in the nose for stealing Steve's lunch, and the two had been friends ever since. His mother's name was Sarah. He used to wear rolled up newspapers in his shoes to try and get them to fit.

Erin had, every time, written down her findings in that old leather notebook, her black scrawl spidering across the pages. Bucky hadn't read it yet. There was a part of him that didn't want to.

He pursed his lips and glanced over to Erin's work-table, where her essays and papers were fanned out so messily that he could barely see the mahogany wood underneath them. There was a mobile phone thrown carelessly against a folder that contained published works on the function of the lungs. He walked over and picked it up, the heavy weight in his hands stabilising him slightly. Jabbing the only number he had memorised besides Erin's into the keypad, he held the phone up to his ear, listening to the dialling tone.

"Hello?" The deep voice on the other side answered.

"Steve," Bucky smiled upon hearing his friend's voice, "Erin's gone out to work, I don't suppose you fancy coming around?"

"Erin's place?"

"Yep."

Sometimes, Bucky just needed to talk to his best friend. This was one of those times, and, after all, he did have a lasagne in the freezer.

Bucky could practically see Steve's eyes crinkling at the sides as he grinned, "I'll bring the beer."

***********

AAH THERE WE GO (And also u have to try to read my illegible handwriting aaha) Bucky is starting to get feelings ooh dear. Sorry for the short chapter, but I can promise SEXUAL TENSION AS FUCK in the next one

Honesty ♧ Bucky BarnesWhere stories live. Discover now