|1| Promise Me ✦ {Bucky Barnes}

Chapter 5: Falling In Love At a Coffee Shop

A/N: Hey guys! The next chapter is out, and ready for reading! Hope you guys enjoy it, and Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate now (I don't know when exactly it is in the States, just some time in November, whoops). Anyway, enough of my ramble.

- Harper E. Pierce

BRIAR:

After that day in the car, a lot had changed between Bucky and me. Excluding the fact that we had begun talking to one another not like we were forced to, but as friends, we actually hung out together. Sometimes, I took him to the movies to immerse him in today's culture. We had recently seen the new movie Kingsman: The Secret Service on our last night out, and he loved it. Some nights, we went out to restaurants, where he tried new foods he hadn't eaten before. I had discovered that he really liked Japanese food and sushi, but spicy food was definitely not his thing. I learned that after taking him to an Indian place in town, where he tried some of the phaal curry I had ordered. I laughed until my sides hurt at his reaction to it. But even after that, he agreed with Steve saying that the food from today was much better than before. I had to agree with them there, at least food had flavour nowadays.

Bucky had been living with me for almost four and a half months now, and we were nearing the beginning of November. Thanksgiving would be coming around soon, and I still didn't know how I was going to get to see my family. I wanted to see my nieces and nephew, and I knew that Christmas with them was probably not going to happen this year. Fury had been saying that the reports were definitely improving from the first few, so I was hoping I could maybe get the week off to go see them, and Bucky could stay with Steve for the week or something. I had already put in the request for time off for the week the twenty-third to the thirtieth, and now I was just waiting on Fury's approval.

Even with almost four and a half months passing by since he started living with me, I found it hard to keep my promise to Bucky about just being myself around him. I had to be careful because if I revealed too much, I could give away my identity. But finding that fine line between giving away revealing details about me versus secrets I had to keep was the hardest part about this whole arrangement.

I knew that he had nightmares, and sometimes I tried to calm him from them, which often resulted in him waking up, but it was nothing I wasn't already used to. I had them too sometimes, and I remembered what it was like when I first came back from HYDRA. I was just like him, even after four months of being in SHIELD's care facility.

However, I didn't know much about his memory improvement. I noticed that he preferred to talk to Steve about it since he figured that he could help confirm it and relive it with him. I had to give our blonde best friend credit, he definitely did better with the memory progression than I did. But the stupid bugger didn't tell me anything about his memory, and always just told me to ask him. That bothered me. I needed the intel in order to speed up this process so that he could get more privileges from Fury for starters because as of now, it was still twenty-four-seven watches with no breaks for either of us. But I had to figure out a way to get the information from someone about his memory progression and asking him directly and out of the blue wasn't going to give me a lot of answers. I had to make it so it felt natural for him... and I really needed something good for my report due the next day that I hadn't started.

But suddenly, an idea popped into my head one night. If I wasn't careful, this could go very poorly for me, but if I was, it could get me all the information I needed on his progress... and we could get to know each other better.

I felt like I was in high school again as I ran from my bedroom to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels and two shot glasses out of the cupboard. I noticed Bucky reading a book I had given him on the couch, completely in his own world. Part of me didn't want to interrupt him, he looked so focused on what he was reading- too bad I needed to know what was going on in that gorgeous head of his. I hopped on the couch beside him, clearly startling him out of his focus.