Monster

I found Barnes a few of Steve’s things he could wear. Steve left them there to allude to our false relationship but I didn’t think he ever wore them. I knew Bucky was shorter than him, but I also figured anything was better than what he currently had. So I folded them neatly and carried them back down to the hall to the bathroom. I could hear the shower running so I knocked gently.

“Bucky? Are you covered? I’m going to get your clothes and leave clean ones, okay?” I asked loudly.

“Okay,” his voice responded from inside.

So I popped the door open and made a quick check to be sure he was behind the floral print shower curtain. His clothes were lying in a pile on the floor so I put Steve’s clean clothes on the counter and gathered his dirty ones. The second I stood to leave the shower curtain ripped open and I shouted, “Oh!” before quickly turning to face the wall.

“I wasn’t sure about washing my arm,” he said from behind me.

“The stitches or the metal?”

“Metal.”

“Um… okay… How did they clean it before?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Okay, well just… do your best and I will… try to help you dry it out when you’re done. If there are any problems I know someone who could give us some advice. How does that sound?”

“Fine.”

“Okay. And nudity, Bucky. That’s not… you know… something we normally show off to one another. Unless asked.”

“Right.” The curtain closed and I ducked my head and left the bathroom. I was trying not to laugh. I didn’t want him to take it offensively.

When I got back downstairs I threw his dirty clothes into the washer and started it up. Then I looked through the kitchen cupboards to find something to cook. Despite my mother’s insistence that I was naturally maternal and would amount to nothing but caring for small children, I couldn’t cook very well. My mother had always been very traditional and that’s probably why I took her prediction about my life so offensively.

Clara and I were what was considered “miracle babies.” More specifically me. Our parents hadn’t met until they were passed 30 and then they had trouble conceiving. Clara was the “miracle baby.” I was the “where in the hell did this one come from” baby. Being that our parents were so much older than most kid’s parents, they also had a different set of values. Our mom had always stayed a home, didn’t drive, and spent the entirety of her day in the kitchen.

I never wanted to be like my mother. I loved her dearly but her telling me that I would amount to nothing but staying home all day popping out kids and baking cookies made me feel incompetent and worthless. My mother enjoyed her lifestyle. It was what brought her happiness. And I respected that. But that wasn’t the life I ever wanted for myself. My mother had done 100% of the cooking when we were growing up and Clara and I never really learned. Not that our mother didn’t insist that we wouldn’t survive without learning basic cooking skills. Just that we avoided her lessons like the plague.

It wasn’t that I was completely incompetent in the kitchen though. I mean, I could open packages and I could boil water. I could follow recipe instructions if I really wanted to. I knew how to make spaghetti and scrambled eggs and waffles and things like that. But I only ever had to cook for one person. And when Steve was over we usually just ordered take out. The rest of the week I usually just ate frozen dinners or made myself a sandwich. So I decided that Bucky probably hadn’t had pizza in a long time and that was the most delicious thing that didn’t require me cooking.

So I ordered a pizza and sat down at the kitchen table to clean up the mess I’d left behind with his stitches. A few minutes later I heard the shower shut off and I waited patiently for him to come back downstairs. As usual I didn’t hear him until he appeared in the shadowy hallway wearing Steve’s clothes and holding my comb in pieces.

“I broke it,” he said as he held it out on his metal hand.

“Oh my gosh,” I said standing. I took the comb from him and threw it into the trashcan. “Do you want me to…” I motioned toward his wet matted hair and he gave me a quick nod.

“Please?”

“I’ll go get a few things. Make yourself at home. I ordered a pizza.” I left the room and went back upstairs to get my brush and a few other things. When I got back downstairs he was sitting in the same chair examining his metal arm, flexing his fingers and trying to stretch it.

“How does it look? Should I call my friend?” I asked him.

“I should be fine,” he replied, as he put the wrist brace back on his other arm.

I went around to his back and looked at his tangled dark hair. It was long enough so that it brushed his shoulders but it was clear he hadn’t washed it or combed it in a long time. It was a good thing I’d brought my leave-in conditioner. I began to spray down his mane when he flinched.

“You’re not going to make me as pretty as you, are you?” he asked. I froze with the bottle still raised in the air. I was expecting the short answers, confusion, and detached stares. Even anger. But I didn’t expect him to make flirty comments. I sat the bottle down and reached for the brush.

“Steve told me you were a bit of a flirt,” I replied as I pressed the brush against his head and tried to comb out the mess. He held still and didn’t show any indication of the pain he was probably feeling on my behalf.

“I don’t remember,” he finally said.

“Maybe it’s just in your nature. Do you remember anything else besides falling from the train?”

“I remember one thing.” He hesitated.

“What’s that?” I prodded.

“A woman. I don’t remember her name. Just that she was like you. Kind.”

“What do you remember about her?”

“I remember driving. I told her I was going away. She said she’d wait for me.” I brushed through the tangles and felt a heaviness on my heart. She probably had waited. She’d probably waited so long she forgot she was waiting. I sighed.

“I’m so sorry, Bucky,” I said.

“You have no reason to be sorry for me,” he replied.

“Do you remember anything else?”

“A few things. Some things are starting to make sense. The train. The Commandos.”

“You remember the Commandos?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you think it’s because you’re free now? Do you think that’s why you’re beginning to remember?”

“I think I always started to remember after a while. And then they would…” He stopped and I kept brushing.

“Did it hurt?” I asked after a moment.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Do you think all of your memories will come back eventually?”

“What about you? Did all of your memories come back?” I paused for just a second before running my fingers through his hair so I could secure it into another ponytail.

“Um,” I finally stuttered. “My memories were never really lost. I don’t think you can lose them. That’s now how they work. They just… get shut off sometimes. Like putting them on a back burner to make more room for new information. But… I forgot my name sometimes. I couldn’t remember what my family looked like. And sometimes my sister tells me stories about our childhood and I have no idea what she’s talking about. I can see that it hurts her. And that’s why I moved so far away from them. But the worst part isn’t really the memories. It’s the nightmares.”

“I know.” I secured the ponytail at the back of his head with an actual hair-tie and not something he’d snagged from a newspaper. I stepped away from him and gathered my things again. “I’m done. Let me get something on your cut and then I’ll let you shave.”

“Okay.” I returned my hair supplies to the upstairs bathroom and then came back to apply ointment to his cut. He was waiting right where I’d left him, so I took a seat and gently applied the antibacterial salve. He watched me as I smoothed it over the newly pink scar and the scabs left behind from the stitches. And then I looked up at him and smiled.

“You can shave now if you want,” I said as I motioned toward the bathroom. “You do know how to do that, right? I mean, your wrist isn’t going to cause a problem?”

He stood slowly and still took time answering my question. He appeared a lot larger in Steve’s brighter and cleaner clothes. Steve never wore shirts that fit but the shirt fit Bucky’s body perfectly. His arms were bare for once so I could see the shape of his bicep on his real arm, and the incredible workmanship of the metal arm, which acted nearly as realistic as his own. Aside from his inability to judge his own strength. But I suppose that was the purpose of it. To destroy and cause pain.

He was taller than I thought he was too. But I supposed that was the reason for all of the black. He could hide in it. He could disappear into the shadows easier. But now he wore a blue t-shirt and khaki pants and he appeared almost average and comfortable. With his hair pulled out of his face and cleaned, he no longer looked like he lived in an alley. I still wanted to see what he looked like without the beard though. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the beard. Just that I wanted to see more of Sergeant James Barnes from the file pictures I’d been given.

“I think I’ll manage,” he told me.

So I nodded and headed into the living room to wait for the pizza or for him to finish. The pizza came first. The doorbell rang and I went to get it. I brought it into the kitchen as Bucky was leaving the bathroom, clean shaven and a lot more handsome and youthful than I originally thought with the beard.

“Pizza,” I said living the box to show him, since he seemed uncertain of the pizza delivery guy. I sat it down on the table and went to get plates and cups. Bucky sat down cautiously with his back against the wall. He examined the box but didn’t speak. I sat the plates down on the table and looked down at him.

“I didn’t know your eyes were blue,” I said. They met mine and he gave me an expression of curiosity. As if he himself didn’t realize his eyes were blue.

“Is flirting in your nature too?” he asked. His expression was stoic but I felt my face blush hot anyway. I looked away at my feet.

“I’m just stating a fact. You’ve been hiding your eyes since you first came here. It was hard to tell.”

“Your eyes are always showing. But they’re black.” I focused on opening the pizza box.

“They’re brown actually,” I told him. “You just never see me in sunlight.”

“I’d like to.” I kept quiet as I put a slice of pizza on his plate. I slid it over to him without meeting his gaze.

“What would you like to drink?” I asked, but I regretted the question the second I asked it. He was probably only ever allowed water. Something necessary for survival. “How about soda? I think I still have some left in the fridge. Steve doesn’t like it. He says it’s not ‘proper soda pop.” I mocked his voice and the corner of Bucky’s lip twitched into an almost smile.

I took that as my answer and went to pour us both a glass of soda. Then I set each glass down at the table and sat down across from him. He had his back to the wall. My usual seat. He hadn’t picked up his pizza. Or his soda.

“Is everything okay?” I asked him as I examined that same curiously befuddled expression.

“Why are you being so kind to me?” he finally asked me.

“Why wouldn’t I be kind to you?”

“I have a hard time trusting people who are kind to me.”

For a moment I felt offended. Especially offended that he had waited so long to tell me he thought my kindness was threatening. Maybe I was overdoing the kindness. Maybe he didn’t mean that he wanted to see what my eyes looked like in sunlight. But then I quickly realized it was probably because his captors had been kind to him on occasion. To make him think that he was safe with them, that what they were doing was good. And for a moment, a very brief one, I considered telling him who I really was. Even if only to gain his trust.

“I think that’s a risk you’re going to have to take, Bucky,” I said, reaching for my soda. He held his glass in his right hand as he watched me behind those narrowed blue eyes again.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” he replied as he lifted the glass toward his lips. I lifted it up in a gesture of cheers.

“To kindness and distrust,” I said. There was another almost smile, but he brought the soda to his lips and finally took a sip.

Notes

You could say he was... Buck naked. *Snickers uncontrollably for ten minutes*

I'm sorry. That was stupid.