before the storm / bucky barnes

014

"DAD brought something to my attention last night," I bring up as Peter and I walk onto my floor, where Bucky and Steve are chilling on the couch and watching the news. Old people things.

"Which is?"

"There are cameras everywhere in this building,"

"You seem scared?" Peter laughs as we take a seat at the couch. I seat myself next to Bucky – making sure to keep some distance between us while I scan the room for cameras.

"And you're not?" Peter looks at me, confused, before shaking his head at me. "FRIDAY, show me the footage of the living room last Friday at around 10 am,"

Suddenly a video of Bucky and I sitting on the couch pops up, and Bucky quickly sits up straight as his personal life is broadcasted on the screen instead of his regularly scheduled programming. We watch as there's some muted banter between me and Bucky, before I get tugged towards Bucky and pulled into a kiss.

"Thank you FRIDAY, can you wipe that video please?"

"On the authority of?" FRIDAY asks.

"Cassandra Stark," I say lamely

"Tape wiped,"

Bucky's eyes are wide and Steve turns to him with a knowing look – one that seems disapproving yet impressed.

"That's why I'm scared, because now, as much as I hate it, we need to go through every piece of footage and wipe any trace of mine and Bucky's relationship that exists,"

Bucky groans loudly, leaning himself back into the couch where he allows his head to dangle off of the backing.

Bucky then begs for my attention as he blindly allows his hand to come to my face, when his fingers roam over my cheeks and across my lips.

"Are there cameras in the bedrooms?" Bucky asks and peeks up at me. I roll my eyes and shrug his hand off of my shoulder.

"Nope," the sides of my lips quirk up into a small smile and Bucky's right eyebrow jerks up suggestively. I shove him so he loses his balance on his seat.

"Why?" Steve turns to us with his eyebrows furrowed and I instinctively shuffle away from Bucky.

Bucky and I both ignore him.

"Guys, why are you worried about cameras in the bedrooms?" Steve asks again, sternly, before turning to Peter for some answers. Peter avoids his gaze almost instantaneously — pulling his phone out and beginning to scroll. Peeking over, I see he's scrolling through his notifications from two days ago.

"FRIDAY, wipe all footage of the living room from the last minute and a half,"

-

Peter and I make it to his place at around 3pm, after a brutal hour spent looking into Bucky and I's personal life and wiping any trace of it caught in the eyes of our surveillance cameras.

"You two have been together for less than a month, what have you done with that man?"

I stop walking up to Peter's front door to look at him, shocked at what he just said.

"Dude!"

"I'm just asking!"

"Okay," I snort.

Peter and I jump onto his bed simultaneously and discuss our homework for a bit. I tease him about his ever growing crush of MJ — which is so blatantly obvious by how often he mentions her in every conversation we have, ever.

Feeling as though I need proof of this conversation, I whip my phone out and begin to film him – a devilish grin taking over my features as I do so.

"I don't know, I mean she keeps coming to sit next to me during the decathlon meets. Does that mean anything–? Cass!" Peter's hand shoots out almost instantly and snatches my phone from my hand. In an instant, Peter had ended and deleted the video.

"What's this?" Peter asks as he hands my phone back to me. The phone of the note written in Russian is displayed on my phone screen.

"I completely forgot about that!" I say and urge Peter to grab his phone so we can translate it. "Someone gave me some files to give to Dad a few weeks ago and while I was snooping around I saw this – took a photo of it so I could translate it later,"

"Are we looking past the fact that you took photos of classified documents?"

"Yes, translate it please!"

With a few taps on my phone, I watch from over Peter's shoulder as all the text on the document gets faintly highlighted and the loading symbol pops up in the middle of the screen. Peter and I stare at it in anticipation as the request continues to load. And load. And load. And load.

At least 3 minutes pass and Peter and I sigh in defeat, placing the phone to the right of us while we wait for it to finish loading.

"You want some cereal?" Peter asks me, taking quick glances at the phone every few seconds.

"It's two in the afternoon, of course I want cereal," I snort, before getting up from the bed and walking with Peter into his kitchen.

"What cereal do-"

I don't let him finish before I reach over beyond his face and grab the cinnamon toast crunch.

"Friends for over a year now and you don't even remember my favourite cereal. I'm hurt, truely," I gasp, placing a hand over my heart while the other clutches onto the box of cereal.

Peter scoffs and within an instant the box of cereal is ripped out of my arms and into Peter's.

"You know what? Rude,"

Peter decides to take his time whilst pouring me a bowl, and by the time he's handed it to my the cereal had gone soggy.

"You are my least favourite person right now," I pout, shovelling the cereal into my mouth.

"Aren't I always?" Peter responds, smiling at me before we walk back to his room together.

Both mine and Peter's eyes find my phone instantly, watching as the loading screen suddenly disappears, and No Matches Found shows up on the screen.

"Well, I guess that's a dead end."

yall????? 8k reads????? im finna cry i love yall sm

I'm so sorry for such a short chapter but i've hit such a brick wall it's insane and i just wanted to give y'all a new chapter asap. hopefully it's up to yalls' standards and pls if y'all want to see anything in particular now's the time to tell me lol.

im writing extra scenes about cassandra (with her childhood etc) would yall be interested in that? if so when (not if, when) i get writers block i'll just upload one of my extras lol

also go read my other book unmasked pls cus its flopping i might just unpublish it and publish it later lol thankq and goodnight