Hurt // Marvel [2]

9

I wake up as the sun peaks in through the dirty windows of Bucky's apartment. It's been three weeks since I moved in, so I guess I could call it our apartment if I wanted to, given the fact that Bucky hasn't kicked me out yet and I have been paying my share of the rent.

I sit up and notice that Bucky is no where to be found, but there is a note next to a plate of food sitting on the counter, as there always is if he leaves the apartment before me.

I'll be back by noon. No later.

The no later means that if he is late, something's wrong. Bucky is cautious and sometimes a little paranoid, but no one can blame him for it. I would never be able to understand what he went through.

I put the note into a bowl by the fridge filled with all the others we leave for each other.

Going for a walk ~R

Getting your stuff. Don't move. ~B

Picking up orange juice. Be back by 10.

We reuse the paper, otherwise we'd be buying more every week it seems like. We also gave up signing the notes after the first week. There's no point when there's only two of us around to write them.

I rub my eyes as I yawn before grabbing the plate off the counter and lightly walking over to the couch, the soft noise of my bare feet being the only noise echoing through the apartment. I look up at the clock on the wall to see that it's already 10. I'm not surprised I slept this late. I've been having trouble falling asleep at night, and then I'll wake up every few hours from some nightmare. Memories, I guess.

I tell Bucky about them. Almost all of them. He isn't a very deep sleeper because he is constantly on edge, always waiting for someone to come after him, so he usually wakes up when I do. He is a good listener.

I sit and eat the two pancakes sitting on my plate, staring at the wall in front of me. We couldn't exactly afford a tv. I did take quite a bit of money with me, but we have to ration it and make a budget. We don't want to go spending it on things we don't actually need.

But of course coffee is a necessity.

I quickly change out of my pajamas into plain black leggings and a slightly tighter quarter-zip long sleeve and throw my long blonde hair into a high bun before leaving Bucky a note and walking out the front door.

I make my way down the road towards the coffee stand I commonly make my way to in the mornings. I adjust the sunglasses on my face, making sure they don't slip down my nose. I grab money out of my backpack as I approach the stand so I'm ready when I order.

I dilute the coffee with lots of cream as I usually do and take a seat at an empty table. I still have an hour until Bucky gets home. I want to meet him there so we can eat some lunch together.

I dig through my backpack and pull out a book I had recently found in a shop I had been wandering through. It was a book meant to teach about psych, and more specifically, memory. I had already read through part of it, learning about the hippocampus, long-term memory, short-term memory, retroactive interference, the likes. I knew that memories were never truly gone, and this was good for both mine and Bucky's sake. We just had to figure out how to retrieve the memories.

I become engrossed in the book, reading about retrieval failures, encoding failures, retrieval cues, and much more. This book had all the science behind our memories, and I can only hope that this knowledge may somehow help me to help Bucky.

I look up at a clock mounted behind the stand and find that it is already noon, meaning Bucky should be home. I pack up my book and throw my empty coffee cup in the garbage before heading back down the road to the apartment.