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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"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.

That blurb at the Smithsonian misses a lot. It doesn't tell you that he loves to cook, that he can't sing, that his favorite subject in school was math and he wanted to go to college for engineering but he could never afford it so he was working the docks until he could. Then the war happened and he couldn't go anyway but he still loved math, could calculate coordinates and angles in his head, and it made him a better sniper.

It doesn't tell you that he loves dancing because it's intimate, that it's a way to get close without giving away your whole heart. It doesn't say that he loves to read everything he can get his hands on or that his favorite weather is fresh-falling snow before the city can get it all dirty. Even after all that time under the ice, he loves the cold.

Cooking doesn't take him long because he's efficient; he puts his ingredients together mise en place before he ever starts. The potatoes are roasted with herbs and the steak is cooked over the stovetop and by the time it's done, he just has to get the wine and set the table. It makes this house a home, to do these things, and he enjoys it.

"All ready, Wanda. Yet another Bucky Barnes culinary masterpiece ready to be experienced."

Honestly, she could get used to this.

She knows she shouldn't take it for granted. She also knows she should stop him from taking on too much. He's still recovering from a decades-long ordeal and he needs to rest his mind and his muscle memory so he can regain everything that's attainable back. But she thinks that he likes this, that this is a part of Bucky Barnes HYDRA only smothered but never snuffed completely out.

Wanda's always surprised by the effort he goes to and the elaborate meals he opts to cook. She imagines it makes him feel somewhat normal. It must reconnect him to something that he truly enjoys—and she doesn't doubt that he does enjoy being in the kitchen.

"You continue to outdo yourself," she says with a wide smile. Most of the time these days, her cheeks pinch from smiling too much. Wanda's still surprised that she can smile after losing Pietro.

She stands by the table with her hands poised, ready to grab something—anything—that's needed, but she's unsurprised, yet again, that Bucky leaves nothing unthought of.

"You're going to have to leave something for me to do one of these days," she laughs. "I feel like you do too much."

"If I leave you something to do, you will no longer need me to provide you with food," Bucky teases. "Traditional gender roles say that I'm supposed to provide you with food and since I don't have to hunt, I've decided cooking is going to be the way I do that. If we were in the woods, I would keep you well stocked in game. I'm a machine."

They're in a two story suburban in a cul-de-sac though so hunting for survival isn't the kind of thing they need to do. Everything is easy for them, almost too easy, and Bucky is getting used to it. He never wants to leave. He wants to pretend to be Wanda Maximoff's husband for the rest of his over-extended life.

"You brought the flowers, though," he points out. "It's an essential part of the place setting. Now eat up before it gets cold. That steak needs to be eaten before it sits too long. You're gonna love it. I'm fantastic at this." Cooking, at least, isn't killing people and he can be proud of it. He takes a bite of his own steak and it's good, really good, and he's glad he can share this with Wanda.

"You know, as far as the neighbors know, you have the perfect husband."

"I'm aware," she says in a deep tone, ensuring that she speaks in her American accent. As she easily slices into the steak, she knows that this whole charade is too easy. She always wanted to be like Samantha and be the perfect witch and wife and solve problems while living efficiently.

Life isn't a sitcom, even though it's feeling very close to it right now.

She moans when she bites into the steak. Unsurprising, yet again. It doesn't matter to her how many weeks he's spent cooking for her, everything tastes better and better. Wanda will never forget what it's like to go without fresh food.

She'd thought Bucky Barnes would be a big walking question mark, someone to keep two eyes on and her back up around, but she's growing too relaxed. It's too easy to believe this is real.

"Is this what you did before?" she asks as she cuts into her steak once more. "Cook all the time?"

"I used to help my mother in the kitchen when I was a kid," Bucky explains. "She had her hands full with the baby after my sister was born and she couldn't do it all alone. I learned how to do a lot of things. I can mend clothes, too, if you rip a hole in your favorite shirt. I'm fully house-trained."

It feels nice, too, to have the stability of it all and it makes the nightmares a little more bearable if his days are idyllic and domestic bliss. Wanda doesn't have to hear him scream at night if he makes sure to stuff towels under the door to block the sound and then he can get through it all without embarrassing himself or betraying his weakness.

"I used to like to help people. Still do, I think. I would love to be like Steve, you know? I just can't. There's too much evil in my history to ever be inspirational. People can't trust me. They can trust him in a way they'd never trust me. Doesn't help that I have this monstrosity of a left arm. But with you, it's better. I don't dwell on it all day."

Wanda frowns thoughtfully. "You can still help people."

Steve might wear the Captain America garb, but Captain America is merely a vessel and not the heart behind all the good-doings. It's the same with Bucky's arm, even if it's more of a displeasing weight than something he can use to help guide his desires to help those around him. It's a reminder to be better. She thinks his arm is much more than what he considers it to be.

"I think Steve is inspirational in a different way." Looking down, she taps the prongs of her fork against the side of the plate. "People think of him and see Captain America. They don't see Steve, not as you do. People see someone unattainable who is meant to solve all of their problems. They put too much hope on him to be the perfect solution, but he's just a man."

And fallible, at that. Look at the mess they created in Germany. Although Steve is hardly the only one to blame for what's occurred, she knows that the world's idea of Captain America would never have played a part in the dismantling of The Avengers. Their version of him is too perfect and not real.

"You know that better than anyone." She looks up at him and gives him a small smile. "When Pietro died, he used to tell me some stories about you. You were a brother to him and I think you inspired a lot in him. Monstrosity of a left arm or not."

"Steve was always my brother. Even when I had nothing, I had Steve. It feels weird for him to be so unattainable now, like something I'm no longer allowed to touch. This is the same guy I used to snag double dates for in hopes we'd find a girl who would look past his physical appearance to see the good guy underneath."

Bucky pushes his food around on his plate and tries to find the words to say. He has a hard time talking about Steve because he misses him more than anything and the only thing that fills that void is Wanda. Wanda makes him feel like a whole man again, makes him feel like he's allowed to want things and allowed to be a real person again.

"Spending time with you helps, though. Sometimes I wish it was real and not a cover. I wish it wasn't...I know it has to be uncomfortable. I know it has to be something that's unsettling, knowing the weird guy you're hiding with started nursing tender emotions because he's finally being treated like a good person again. I know you should have better. You'd be happier with better than me but I'm selfish, you know?"

"We're friends, aren't we? I think that's very real."

Without Pietro, Wanda has no one. Her family is gone. Her home is gone. Her country is in ruins. Vision isn't here. All she has is Bucky, who's stuck around despite what she can do is very similar to the torture he faced for decades. She might not grip him tightly or box him in a magical cage to keep him close, but the ease with which she's taken to this life has been made easier because of him. Wanda's an odd fish in a pond she's only ever dreamed of swimming in.

She smiles and ducks her gaze. "You think too highly of me. I belong in the Raft with everyone else, but I'm here with you, where I'm being fed very big meals," she chuckles, "and being encouraged to sit on my ass when Barton made a big speech about getting off of it. I'm getting very lazy because of you."

"I'm not talking about friends, Wanda."

What he feels for Wanda isn't exactly friendly. It's beyond that. For the first time in eighty years he's felt desire and he doesn't know what to do with it. He doesn't know how to ease that ache or how to even broach the subject. He feels like he's getting close, talking about his feelings, but Wanda is putting up an invisible wall and he wonders if this is her way of saying he's too close, he's too much, she's not ready or willing to take him on as a romantic prospect.

It's hard, though, to look at her and want for the first time in so long and he doesn't know what to do with it. He should hide it, he thinks. He shouldn't change what they are and should keep them as friends. Friendship is safe, very safe, and he thinks the safety is probably better than the wild, tangled unknown that would be a romantic relationship. He thinks he should be telling himself this over and over until the feelings go away.

"I'm talking about more than that. And I don't have a right to want more than that, Wanda. Not after everything I've done. There's no amount of dinners and house cleaning that can make up for what I am inside, you know?"

She frowns as she looks at him. "But who you are inside is a good man."

If he was anything to the contrary, she sincerely doubts he'd entertain her, cook for her, and trust her. She started out as his best friend's enemy. She tried to kill his best friend. Wanda sincerely doubts that if Bucky was as horrible as he believed himself to be, he wouldn't be able to see past that.

Or the fact that she can easily read his mind if she so wished. Sometimes it was like flipping through a picture book. She's done it carelessly to people before. As tempting as it is to peek inside, she thinks it's only fair to let him reveal what he wants when he wants to.

It seems that he is, and Wanda flushes, her heart racing violently. It's easier to read someone's mind than to hear it. At least she can prepare for it or she can gently bat it away from being at the forefront of their consciousness. He credits her too much. She simply sits and walks with him and makes sure that no one thinks anything more about their new quiet neighbours who are a little odd and keep to themselves. She's not the one who has made this feel like a home.

"I'm… weird," she says, furrowing her brows tightly together before she laughs, but it's an incredulous, weak thing. As kind as most of the Avengers are, she had been alone in a crowded meeting room. And now that Bucky keeps seeing her—and making it a point that he can and does see her—she feels like backing into the shadows and to what was her normal. "This is the most normal my life has ever been and that's because of you. Anyone would be lucky to have you as anything in their life. I know I am."

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