ostavil | don't touch that dial

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wanda

don't touch that dial

They're the two most terrifying people on the planet and wanted by several governments but they're playing house in the middle of nowhere and not a single person can tell. Bucky's used to being invisible and silent and he'd managed to hide out in Romania for longer than he should have been able to by living on cash only, working under the table, keeping to the shadows. This is different. This is a real life that he can have, out in the open, and nobody even thinks he's suspicious at all.

It's a very, very good thing that HYDRA no longer has control of Wanda Maximoff.

When they're out in public, he keeps his face away from cameras and his arm hidden; a hat and Wanda's tricks do the rest. He can take his time picking out food, plan meals, pretend to have the friendly banter that a husband and wife would have. It's nothing he's never had before and this kind of stability almost feels like he's stealing the life he was supposed to have after the war. There's some other version of him who died falling from that train and maybe it's that version that's getting a new lease on life now.

It's autumn and the leaves have started to turn, yellow like the sun and scarlet like Wanda's hair and there's a brisk wind that says there's gonna be a storm in a day or two. Rain or snow, he isn't sure, but it's Canada so it can go either way. He has his left arm slid into Wanda's to cover up that it doesn't hang naturally the same as his right does and nobody suspects a thing. Their neighbors aren't ever curious, there's no surveillance, there's nothing to worry about. It's a strange feeling but a good one.

"You know, if you can figure out how to explain it to my tiny soldier brain I would love to know how you managed to keep our house invisible from everyone else. Small words, though. I'm all brawn and no brains."

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"That's easy," she says, her voice lower than usual as she practices her American accent, "you're just the brawn." It's easier to slip into her lighter Sokovian when she continues her teasing, "If you were the beauty, too, then we would have a very big problem." Wanda smiles sweetly at him and pats his arm, ensuring to touch his sleeve and not the heavy metal beneath.

Barnes might tuck his arm into hers to help convey their little charade of a happily married couple, but she knows better. She suspects that, despite having spent decades with the weight of his arm, he's still getting used to being conscious and wearing it. It's not easy being burdened with something permanent. And all she wishes for is not to remind him of it or to touch it without being asked to. She knows what it's like to be poked and prodded like she's nothing close to human.

She looks away from him as she surveys the street. She likes it here. She's always liked the houses and some of the picket fences. No matter how many walks they take and no matter how many she takes on her own, she likes observing the houses, the way the leaves fall, and how everyone around them takes it for granted. She remembers when the leaves stopped falling in Sokovia.

Looking away from him also plays into her hand slightly. She doesn't have any answers for him. All Wanda knows is that, lately, anything she wants, she gets. An inconspicuous house. Fewer prying questions. Easy waves and warm smiles and no lingering, strange looks.

Of all the things she's afraid of, it's questioning their seemingly good luck.

"Hey, I didn't mention which of us was the beauty," he teases, grinning at her. "Though I have to give that one to you. I don't fit into cute little dresses like you do. I guess I could, if I wanted, but I would probably attract the exact kind of attention we don't want."

Except that they don't attract attention, ever, and he thinks Wanda must be doing a lot of things in the background to make sure the façade is up permanently and that no one looks too closely at the picture. They're at least well matched for a couple. He might be over a hundred but he looks a comfortable ten years older than Wanda, give or take, and it is a natural enough age gap to pass.

Their house is an old-fashioned one, the kind with a big wrap around porch and a welcome mat at the door. It'd never be the kind of house he'd have back home because he'd always grown up in a third story walk-up but maybe the other Bucky, the one who came home from the war a hero? He probably got to have a house like this with a wife and maybe some kids. He reaches into his pocket for the keys and speaks softly.

"Just like every time, let me check the place before you leave the doorway? I know nobody is looking for us but I don't want to get lazy about keeping us safe."

She's a little grateful Bucky's back in Bucky Mode. His little comment about her dresses has her flushing almost as red as her hair.

Wanda sighs quietly, but she does so with a smile. She nods. "I'll stay right here," she whispers seriously. As much as she wishes to joke, there's a time and place—and now isn't the time, not when he's concerned for either of their safety.

While she knows no one's at the house—she can't hear anyone else's thoughts, let alone feel them—she knows how important it is to have control. And for someone like Bucky, she thinks he needs to have some semblance of it. He's been surprised one too many times by people and the truth. And as strange as it is to think he trusts her, even Wanda Maximoff has been surprised from time to time.

Truth be told, she's still a little surprised by her current situation. Holing up in a house that's come right out of her dreams is still a shock despite the good amount of time that they've spent here.

"But be careful," she says, as she always does, furrowing her brows seriously. "If you walk on the porch, walk lightly. The floorboards creak beneath you." It's something she'll have to fix later.

It's hard for someone as heavy as he is to keep a light step but he does because Wanda reminds him of it. He can give them away if he's banging around heavy-footed and thinking he can fight his way out of trouble. This is more about being stealthy, about maintaining a steady place to live where they don't have to worry about being tracked by any and every government agency there is. He'd picked this particular area because it's not that far from a city center but the neighborhood is quiet; there's an airport an hour away and plenty of ways to travel otherwise if they need to make a quick break.

It takes him a few minutes to clear the house and then he comes back out to get Wanda. "All clear, as usual. I need to teach you how to fight so I can stop being so paranoid you're gonna get hurt. I don't want us to be found out, sure, but I think I'm more worried about you getting hurt."

Is that a stupid thing to worry about? He's seen her move buildings with her mind and he knows she can probably stop bullets if she knows they're coming at her but it's his job to take the bullets meant for her. He has a healing factor, she doesn't. When it comes down to it, he's going to throw himself in front of Wanda Maximoff every time.

"Is this when you wrinkle your nose at me and say you can put me on the floor?"

Because he mentions it, she wrinkles her nose and smiles. "I can turn you into the floor. You can be the softest part of the porch." She glances over her shoulder and surveys it for a moment before pointing to her left. "I'll put you right over there."

It's easier to joke than it is to let herself sit with what he's said. It's better to think about it when she's in bed. She doesn't wish for Bucky Barnes to take a bullet for her, just as she wishes that Pietro had been faster than the bullets Ultron had shot cruelly at him. She wants everything and everyone to remain as they are—alive, still, and not jumping in front of any bullets that are flying in any direction.

"I know how to punch," she says as she steps inside. Toeing off her flats, she's quick to turn on the lights with a click of her fingers (a useful discovery, even if she's still confused as to how she can do it). When she turns toward Bucky, she's quick to punch his flesh arm. "See? I can punch. You don't need to worry about me. You'll get even more wrinkles." Impulsively, Wanda reaches up to brush her fingers between his brows where his alleged wrinkles happen to be.

It was hardly a punch. She'd held her fist all wrong. According to Pietro, her idea of a punch always felt like being whacked in the head with a very empty pillow.

"You punch like a newborn kitten," Bucky says, laughing at her attempt at it. Her fingers are brushing up against his brow and he feels his face soften the way it only does when he lets his guard down around her. He thinks that Wanda's the first person he's let see the real version of him since before he fell and Wanda gets to see parts of him that he even hides from Steve. Steve wants so badly for him to be the Bucky Barnes that he grew up with, the kid who was missing his front tooth and just got a nickel from the tooth fairy, and he's pretty far past all of that now.

Wanda is different. Wanda has no expectations for him one way or the other. She didn't know him before HYDRA and she's not scared of what HYDRA made him. She seems to accept him as he is, scars and all, and it's a sort of comfort and ease he doesn't have in anyone else's presence. He reaches for her hand and folds her fingers into a fist so she can give him a much better attempt at a punch.

"Tuck your thumb in your fingers so you don't break it and hit me. You're probably not going to hurt me but it's good practice to give it a shot. I'll even let you have a free shot on my face if you wanna take it. If not, just punch my shoulder or something."

Of all the critiques in the world, Wanda's never received any about how she holds her fingers. She's spent so long watching red tendrils slip from her fingertips to know how to hold her hands without thinking. She's learned how to move her fingers and how to hold them just right to let her power flow effortlessly through her. And now Bucky holds her hand and instructs her to position her fingers in a way that feels so unnatural to her. An enclosed fist feels as though it's stifling her power, even if doing so means she has more power in strength.

"I wouldn't hit your face," she says, not looking up at his face. It's easier to look at his hand. She doesn't need to have seen the photographs of Bucky in his youth to know that he's attractive. He still is with his bright blue eyes and the way he tends to hold his mouth in a smirk-like smile. Punching his face feels like it'd only cause her more problems than give her solutions.

But she does as he instructs, holding her hand awkwardly for perhaps the first time since the glowing sceptre had struck her down hard on HYDRA's metal floor. She looks at her hand intently, holding it for a moment, and then punches his bicep.

"One day, my punch will hurt you." It won't; it never will—and she hopes it never does. But she tilts her chin up and smiles at him, wanting to feign smugness. "And then you will not be the brawn at all."

Maybe he'd just be Bucky then.

"If I'm not the brawn, then we're in trouble because I don't know if I could be the brains or the beauty. Maybe you'll take pity on me and let me stay anyway. I'd hate to get thrown out in the cold when winter's on the way."

They need one another so he knows neither is going to be tossing the other out on their ass unless it's necessary but he doesn't think it's going to be necessary. He can keep her safe because he can fight like hell. She can keep him safe by keeping him invisible and out of sight. He reaches down and touches her chin lightly with his right hand, tipping it upward a little. He's always had a thing for redheads ever since he was old enough to understand that girls were worth running toward instead of running away from and Wanda is very beautiful. She has a delicate face and a haunting sadness that makes him want to just protect her and the fact that she doesn't even need his physical protection makes it even more confusing to him.

"You gonna let me stay inside your pretty little house, Wanda?"

He can be the blue eyes. Wanda's pretty sure if she tells him that, he'll never let her forget it. As much as Wanda wants to see Bucky be as comfortable as he's grown to be since hiding in the shadows, she doesn't particularly want to show any part of her hand. Not that she thinks she's showing her hand at all. There's nothing to show. He has blue eyes; she doesn't. It's a fact, nothing more.

She ignores the racing of her heart and the heat brewing at her cheeks when he touches her chin. It's not because she's surprised by him being gentle. She's observed him enough to know he's more capable of softness than he is being harsh.

She furrows her brows tightly in mock thought. "Hm." She hums long and loud, purposefully drawing it out.

"You clean and get the very high corners," she teases, scrunching her nose. He's pretty useful when it comes to things on high shelves. "When all the high corners are gone, well…" She clucks her tongue. Surely, he knows what that means.

"I'll start learning that traditional Sokovian cuisine," Bucky says, grinning at her. "I'm pretty good when I have a recipe book in front of me. If I can find a legitimate one written in Sokovian, I think I'll be on the right path."

There's a library in town and Bucky doesn't know how well stocked it is on foreign cookbooks but he thinks he's going to find out. There's the internet, sure, but he loves the feel of a real book underneath his fingertips a lot better than just reading words on a screen and he has the sense that anything committed to paper is probably going to be better than some modern reinterpretation of it.

"I'll get the laundry too. The Army taught me how to iron the wrinkles out of everything. Honestly, you should just take a whole night off and let me handle it. I'll cook the dinner, get the flowers, pick the music. You just have to show up."

"I remember a few recipes. I can write them down for you," she says before she really thinks about it. Wanda doesn't regret it. There are many things that she wants to remember about home. Without Pietro around anymore to remind her, Wanda wants to make sure she doesn't forget a single thing, whether it be a lullaby or a recipe.

Bucky provides her with a good excuse to write it all down. It might help with his memory, even though she knows from Steve that he's just a boy from Brooklyn who most likely never had anything Sokovian in his youth. It hardly matters to her. A trigger is a trigger, and she knows Bucky's doing most of these things not only out of the kindness of his heart, but from a desire to unlock something that's been hidden away.

"As long as you pick good music," she smiles. All of this sounds so mundane. It's not something that has any place for aliens. "I like the old stuff." Like him.

"Well, you're a lucky lady. I'm very old," Bucky teases. "So I also like the old stuff. How old are we talking? Because all my favorite musicians died decades ago and if there's any still alive they're probably on life support. I like the one show you watch...what is it, I Love Lucy? That one reminds me of when I was younger. The people all dress the same. I think it's a little later than me but it's close enough."

Women don't wear dresses every day the way they did before the war, though, and while Bucky knows he's got to make way for modern life (and has, honestly, because he'd be completely ineffective if he was still Bucky Barnes 1943) he does miss the things that remind him of simpler times before the world went all to shit. Dresses and dances and flowers at dinner are those kinds of things.

"Before the war, I was out every night with a girl. I used to love to dance. I guess I still like it - I just don't have any dance partners."

It delights her to know that I Love Lucy is exactly how he remembers the 1940s, even if it was a sitcom of the 1950s. It's close enough. Wanda would need everyone in the Avengers hands to count the number of times she wished she had been born decades earlier so she could wear the pretty dresses and learn how to dance and be driven in the cars that seem fewer and far between now.

Pietro never liked to watch her sitcoms as much as she did, but it feels… nice to know that something she loved so much is something that resonates with him. Another thing connects them, something a lot lighter and less traumatic than HYDRA.

"Are you saying you were a ladies' man, Mr Barnes?" she teases, cocking her brow as she peers up at him. If he says no, she'll know he's lying. Photographs don't lie. Wanda doesn't need Steve's stories to know what type of man Bucky Barnes was before the war tried to break him.

"Guilty," Bucky says, laughing softly. "I could lie but I think you wouldn't believe me. I have the sense you can tell when people are lying to you even if you aren't in their heads. I used to like to go out at night. I never found what I was looking for, though, and then I went to war. I was only twenty six, you know. Had my whole life ahead of me. I just didn't realize that my whole life was going to be decades and decades longer than it should be."

He strokes the fingers of his left hand down her shoulder and arm. "And I didn't think I would be playing house with a beautiful girl, either. It doesn't bother you, does it? That I'm honest about how you look? I know it might make you uncomfortable that I'm open about it but I think being open is probably best. If I'm around here mooning like a puppy about you, you're gonna feel weird about it."

Wouldn't anyone? He's the most feared assassin on the planet. He isn't exactly someone you bring home to dinner.

"It doesn't have to mean anything, though. It's just a fact."

There was a boy in Sokovia who used to enjoy making her blush. Wanda had thought that was long since over after joining HYDRA, but Bucky Barnes seems determined to embody that boy. She wonders if this is what he was like in the 1940s. The ease in which he speaks convinces her that he's remembering more about himself than he's aware.

Wanda doesn't particularly want to stifle that, even if she wants to stop flushing and feeling like she's about to be set on fire. Receiving compliments that aren't based on her powers' performance is strange at best. Even when Vision had called her beautiful, she'd always felt like she was about to burst through her skin with shyness. She's just Wanda.

But he gives her something else to think about—and something else for herself, too. His touch is distracting, but she knows how important it is for him to realise that despite all the things he's done, he's not brutal when he's trying to be gentle. He reminds her again and again that he trusts her not to get into his head and that when she accurately guesses what he's thinking that he knows she's not reading his mind; she likes to remind him that she trusts him not to physically hurt her.

"Do you miss it?" she asks, furrowing her brows as she looks up at him thoughtfully. "Going out at night. Dancing."

"I don't know. I haven't had enough time to be myself to know what I miss. I think I miss it," Bucky says, frowning a little while he works it out. "I miss being able to just be a person, you know? I was a machine for a very long time. HYDRA wasn't gentle with me and I know you'd never peek in there but if you ever saw something, even on accident, I'm sorry in advance. I know it's terrifying in there."

He lifts his hand and brushes it against her cheek, tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.

"I think I do miss it. I think I miss being able to go on a date with a beautiful girl and just have a hell of a time. You know, it's all online now. I heard someone at the store talking about it, about how they just look at profiles and meet people based on that. I don't think I could do anything like that. For me, it's how you meet. You bump into someone, you strike up a conversation - having your name and preferences just out there ruins the surprise of it all. What about you? You miss being with someone?"

When she shakes her head, she keeps the movement small as to not throw his hand away from her face. Even when his memories and nightmares are loud and seep into her view, she thinks it's terrifying, but she doesn't think it's something for him to apologise for. Her time with HYDRA is a different kettle of fish, and perhaps a nicer one in comparison.

"I've never really done that." There was no time with the war and HYDRA. She smiles small. "Pietro would never let it." He'd chase every boy off with a stern look, a severe talking to, or with a threat. She used to find it tiresome, but Wanda knows it had been Pietro looking out for her in the best way he knew how.

She doubts he'd like her shacking up with Bucky and pretending to be married. It's the undercover story Natasha used to tell her she often depended on. Being married raised silly questions about kids and anniversaries. Not being married raised the questions that she often wanted to avoid.

She furrows her brows as she looks over his shoulder. "I guess I had it with Vision." She had something with Vision. Wanda's certain that something would still be a thing if it hadn't been for the fact that she'd broken the law. He was needed to help Rhodey heal. She needed to avoid the Raft. "He was the only one who really talked to me at the compound."

"Vision was a good guy. Is, I guess. I just don't know how a relationship with him would work. He's...different, is all. Then again, so am I. Maybe we're the same in a way."

Bucky doesn't really think so. Vision is worthy enough to pick up Mjolnir and Bucky doubts it would even tremble in his hand. He's done too many bad things to be worthy of something so good and deep down, he thinks Wanda must surely know that. And yet, she trusts him. It feels good to be trusted by someone, to be under someone's guard, and he never wants to do anything that will revoke that trust.

"I haven't been physical with anyone since the 40s. Not until you. What few touches we have between us are the only ones I've had since 1943. It's a big burden you carry, introducing the Winter Soldier back into polite society. But hey, if anyone can do it, it's the cute little witch with all the tricks right?"

Wanda furrows her brows as she peers up at him curiously. She's slightly amused. He says all these pretty things while dropping little tidbits that reveal more about what he doesn't seem to wish to openly admit without some sort of cushion in the form of a tangent to fall back on.

It's interesting that he sees himself that way—as the Winter Soldier. He speaks of himself in the 1940s, back when the Winter Soldier hopefully was merely a faint idea brewing in the heads of cruel scientists, as though the soldier was always there, humming beneath the surface. Wanda doesn't think that's right. Sometimes, the person someone becomes was waiting beneath the surface all along. Other times, events force the person to become someone they can't recognise anymore.

"But you're not the Winter Soldier," she says, shaking her head. "Not if you don't want to be."

She still thinks of herself as 'the weird one'. It's easier to speak on someone else's experience than examine her own.

For Bucky, there's two eras: Before Winter Soldier and After Winter Soldier. He can date his whole life by these two fixed points and they're axes that never change. They're constant, whether he wants them to be or not, and he has to shape his life around them. This new era, the AWS, it's something he's still learning how to navigate. The tools that served him before don't quite fit and sometimes he has to force them. With Wanda, he doesn't have to force anything at all. It's nice.

"No, I guess I'm not. I'm just Bucky Barnes again, whoever he is. I was excited to go to war, you know. Not everyone who drafted was and for good reason - there were tons of casualties - but I wanted to go. I wanted to be a hero for my country and help stop evil. It was simple back then. The Nazis were evil and we were good. It's not so easy anymore. As the Winter Solider, I killed a lot of people. Some of them weren't good people but they were necessary cogs in the wheel, people who made whole countries run. I destabilized whole governments. Sometimes it's not worth it. It's hard not to think about it in the middle of the night, how many people I got killed both directly and indirectly."

He gives her a soft, sad smile. "I want to be different, you know? But I'm afraid I've done too much bad to ever make up for it. It doesn't feel like I have to be different with you here, though. I can just be Bucky. I don't have to think about all the bad things I've done and I can just think about the day to day. I can think about cooking you dinner or watching tv or curling up on the couch. I don't think I deserve all of that but I have it and I know it's because of what you do for me. So thank you."

Wanda smiles, softly gazing up at him. She shakes her head. "I don't do anything," she says before she scrunches her nose and widens her smile, "but put you to work. It's nice having a house husband who does all the chores." She laughs lightly.

She never wants to appear dismissive of the moments where Bucky opens up. Before they felt like few and far between, but now it seems like he's no longer sinking beneath the surface of not knowing who he is. Wanda's not entirely sure how she's helped—she's a stranger to his past life, hardly a walking trigger like Steve—but she knows what it's like to indirectly and directly kill. She supposes that's the difference between her and Steve. He's so good.

And she supposes that's the difference between Bucky and Steve. Captain America was manufactured as a weapon of good, a symbol to keep people going. The Winter Soldier was a force of dismantling that good, much like she was.

She touches his bicep and intends for it to be a brief pat, but she curls her fingers around the muscle and gives him a small squeeze. "I think you already are very different." She drops her hand from his bicep, but steps into him to press her fingers against the corner of his lips. Gently, she guides them up. "You smile more."

"Don't tell anyone. I'll lose my menacing aura and then people will talk to me in public."

It's a joke but it's a weak one. Wanda has been chipping away at the armor he has up the whole time they've been living together and he's not really sure what to do with the weakness inside of him. There's a part of him that yearns for human contact, for the things that could have been, and those hopes have somehow gotten wrapped up in Wanda and it's a dangerous game he's playing. It's a pretend marriage, not a real relationship. He closes his eyes when her fingertips touch his face.

"You deserve more than this," he says, thinking the Sokovian probably describes it better than anything he could say in English. Wanda deserves to live a life in the open as herself, not hiding him and herself from every government that exists. The world just isn't ready for the Scarlet Witch and the Winter Soldier, he guesses. Maybe it should be.

"You should be able to live a free life. You never did anything wrong." He could make the argument that he never did either, that he was brainwashed, but he could have fought more. Wanda was just a kid when HYDRA got their hands on her and experimented on her. How was she supposed to fight that? How was she not supposed to fall in their hands when he had a hand in destabilizing Sokovia into a state of endless war? Maybe Stark destroyed it, in the end, but Bucky had done his bit.

But she did do many things wrong. When their parents had died and their apartment building had turned to ash, she and Pietro could have chosen differently. They could've chosen to live and make do with what little they had. They could've chosen to live with their anger and be much like their surviving neighbours, helping each other amongst all the strife. If Pietro hadn't been so angry, maybe he would've doubted Strucker's claims as she originally had.

Wanda knows where her series of choices has led her. She knows where they led Pietro, too, even if she prefers to bury her head in the sand. Unlike the people she's controlled, she always had a choice. Sometimes she thinks Bucky is too kind to her, much like Steve often is.

It's her choice to greedily grab hold of Bucky's company rather than face the void of Pietro. It's not fair, but Wanda knows she's never been fair.

But rather than argue with him—there's no point; Bucky may exude charm when he lets himself relax into it, but he's as stubborn as an immovable boulder—she wrinkles her nose and drops her hands to her sides. "I think you should make me dinner first before you we start talking about that."

She thinks it's only fair.

"Far be it from me to deny a girl dinner. I'm gonna learn that paprikash someday but you're gonna have to live with American food for right now. I guess you'll survive, huh?"

Bucky is actually a good cook both between what he'd learned before the war and what cookbooks have taught him now. They buy the best food they can, too, because he knows that they pump chemicals into things now and he has no idea what that might do to Wanda even if he's immune to it. It's steak tonight and roast potatoes and he hopes his ability to cook makes up for Wanda's part of this whole deal.

"You just have to sit your pretty little self down on the couch and watch tv until it's done. I'm full service. You don't have to worry about a thing, Wanda. Never have to, with me. I should have bought some flowers for the table and made it real nice but I forgot. Next time, though."

Wanda thinks to ask him 'What flowers?' but she does as he suggests, sitting in the very corner of the couch with her legs curled beneath her and her body twisted in the direction of the kitchen. There are flowers now on the table in a nice little vase. She's chosen sunflowers, thinking something nice and bright is most suitable for his caretaking mood.

"One day, you'll be sitting here and I'll be cooking," she says. "Even though the kitchen will be a mess and something will most likely be on fire." She purses her lips and shrugs a shoulder dismissively. Her cooking gets her by, although she doesn't have a love for it as Bucky does.

Of all the things she anticipated of him, a love for cooking wasn't one of them. It's been a nice surprise. Despite knowing almost everything about everyone (or at least what they think about), she likes that his little biography at the Captain America museum doesn't include everything about him.

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