Honesty ♧ Bucky Barnes

Discovery

YOU GUYS HAVE A NEW COVER NOW which is exciting please let me know what you think of it. 

Also, If any of the previous chapters are messing up and looking a little odd (words all over the place and sentences repeated and stuff) let me know, because sometimes they do that if i edit them once theyre already published. 

Bucky knew that something was wrong before he even opened the door. It was too quiet inside, much too quiet. Usually, he was able to hear Erin pacing around, listening to music, but there was no noise at all from inside her little flat. His heart skipped a beat and he reached into his waistband, pulling out the semi-automatic pistol he always kept there. Yes, he hadn't been The Winter Soldier in a long time, but that didn't mean that he was able to give up his old habits easily.

A quick glance at the door told him that he was right in his suspicions. It was slightly off the latch, only a few millimetres ajar, but enough to hint to Bucky that something was up. He had closed the door when he had left. That either meant that Erin had gone out, something that he thought highly improbable, or the much worse option.

Somebody else had come in.

He burst through the door, pushing it open with his shoulder, his gun up and ready, but was greeted by an empty room. He glanced around him for warning signs, and realising that there were none, placed his gun back in his waistband and looked around himself. Everything seemed slightly too ordinary. Erin's hideously floral couches still hadn't moved from their place in front of the small television, and her papers and books were just as strewn across the wooden table as they always were. Crookshanks sat on top of a thesaurus, asleep.

Bucky bit his lip and looked up to the mantlepiece. Her notebook was still there, right in full view. That surprised him. He would have thought that she would try to hide it, perhaps even get rid of it after their fight, but there it was, staring him right in the face.

He walked over to it and picked it up, already hating himself for what he was going to do. He needed to stop this masochism, he should just let it go and forget about it, but there was a part of him that wanted to keep reading. He had only got about half way through her journal by the time she interrupted him. He was curious as to what else she said.

He picked the journal up from the mantle and was surprised when a loose piece of paper fell out of it and dropped to the floor. He quirked his eyebrow in confusion and bent down to pick it up, unfolding at and squinting at the familiar handwriting. It was a letter. A letter to him?

'Bucky,

I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry I don't know if words can even make it up. I know what my writing must have seemed like to you, impersonal and cold. And I admit, it was. Initially.

I've been obsessed with my work my whole life, through school and college and University, and then my time at SHIELD, so when I got the opportunity to work on the serum with you, I jumped at it. I can admit now that it was for selfish reasons. I was curious as to how it would work, and I admit that I was more interested in finding more out than I was in helping you at first.

Somewhere along the line, though, that changed. The lines between work and feelings became confusingly blurred.

I like you, Bucky. More than I should. More than I'm comfortable with. Much more than I'm used to. I think that was the reason my writing was so harsh. I didn't know what was going on, so I reverted to what I'm most comfortable with so I didn't have to deal with my feelings.

Hard facts.

I'm sorry, Bucky. I'm a bit out of my depth here. It's easier for me to write stuff down than say it out loud so I'm just going to go for it, and if I'm totally off the mark, don't hate me, OK?