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Oh, God, why did he have to say things like that? Natasha felt her cheeks heat again, and she reflexively ducked her head into the hollow of Bucky's throat to keep from meeting those earnest blue eyes. Because she honestly didn't know if she'd be able to refuse him, not right now.

Natasha nibbled on her lower lip, but she tried to explain, anyway. "...I need my space," she murmured, voice low, muffled by his neck. "At least for a while." A small hand gently cupped his cheek, and she nuzzled his jaw tenderly. "I need to figure things out...on my own." Just how she was going to do that, she really had no idea.

Now Natasha did meet those beautiful eyes, her own soft, liquid. "...is that okay?"

"I can't make you live with me, baby," Bucky says, brushing his hand through tangled curls. It hurts, sure, but he's not going to pressure her to move in with him when she says she needs space and she just got out of a bad relationship. It doesn't make him better than Alex if he does.

"If you wanna stay down in the guest house, it's fine. If you want to get your own place somewhere else, I'll foot the rent. Whatever you feel is comfortable. I'd like if you at least stayed down in my guest house so I knew you were safe, though. Easier to protect you if you're on my property."

Edited 2022-01-28 03:31 (UTC)

"I like the guest house," she replied, still quiet, still soft. "It's basically brand new, I don't think anyone has been in there for more than a week." One of her eyebrows went up. "Right?" Either way, though, she was still close by, and hopefully that would be enough. She wasn't broke, but having to foot her own living allowance right now would be...tight, and taking advantage of rent-free space wasn't entirely horrible, was it?

"I do feel safe here," Natasha told him, shivering lightly before hitching a little closer. "...and I know eventually I'll have to...confront Alex, and I'd rather he not know where I'm living right now, or be able to get to me if he somehow manages to find out."

"It's part of the reason I want you in the house with me," Bucky admits. "But there's security down there too. Maybe you can let Brooklyn stay down with you - he likes you well enough."

Bucky rubs his hands over Natasha's back and falls quiet for a moment. "But I also want you in the house because I love you. I wanna fall asleep with you here and wake up with you here, you know? But that's kinda selfish of me. I shouldn't be asking you to do that."

"Well, unless he rides a dolphin and climbs up the cliff, he can't get on the grounds at all," Natasha quipped, then brooded a moment, recalling just how many of her former boyfriend's friends owned boats. Another shiver coursed over her; she didn't want to think about it, or him, at all.

And hearing Bucky's declaration yet again only darkened her former euphoria further. "No," Natasha suddenly clipped, pulling away slightly, "you shouldn't." Averting her gaze, out of frustration this time, she tried to untangle her body from his, determinedly scooting out from beneath him and pulling the rumpled sheet with her, a buffer against the chill and also a shield for what modesty she could muster.

Tousled scarlet hiding her profile from him, Natasha muttered at the floor, "I wish you'd stop saying things like that, James. I don't--I don't know how to feel when you do, and it just makes everything awkward..."

Shit. He's really fucked it up this time. Fuck. Bucky takes a breath and pulls even further away so there's more space between them than she'd even put. This is why he shouldn't have said anything. He knew he was only getting one night and fucking ruining it by opening his big mouth was a colossal failure on his part.

"Natasha, I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he says and he knows his voice is cracking a little. Goddamnit. This is why he both craves her being around him and can't trust her being around him at the same time.

"I shouldn't have said anything. I won't say anything, okay? I know you just wanted it for tonight and that's fine. I need to stop...whatever this is I'm doing."

Naturally, the headache chose that moment to leap to the front of her brain, gleefully throbbing away behind her right eye. Natasha ducked her head and stifled a pained groan; she didn't want even more nursemaiding.

"Stop apologizing," she whispered, pulling the sheet up around her bare shoulders. "Just...just stop talking altogether, please." It took her a few tries, but Natasha finally managed to get to her feet, gathering up the yards of sheet so she wouldn't trip.

She didn't bother hunting for her clothes, and thank God no one else was around to see, but it didn't take her too long to navigate a direct path out of the main house and down the path to the guest house, closing the door behind her with hard finality. Breathless and miserable, the redhead collapsed in a different bed to cry until she couldn't, then fall into a restless, exhausted sleep for the next several hours.

Bucky feels like shit now that she's left and it takes him a while to go to sleep. He can't figure out if he coerced her or not, the alcohol has made him too hazy, and he doesn't know if sending her flowers to apologize will just make her be more angry at him or not.

He loves her more than breathing and she left his bed because he's an asshole.

The next day, he doesn't bother trying to call and he doesn't try the next either. He's moping around and Becca asks what's up; he doesn't volunteer. What he does do is ask her to go down and check on Natasha so she does, even if she's confused as to why. Becca raps at the door of the guest house.

"Hey, Natasha? My brother wanted me to come see if you were okay. Something about you being sick? He's busy in the studio but wanted me to see if you needed something."

She hadn't emerged from the guest house in the last forty-eight hours. Thankfully the rest of the weekend had been quiet, and Natasha had divided her time between moping in bed, trying to read a few of the novels she'd never gotten around to reading, and watching silly cat videos on YouTube. Nothing seemed to hold her attention for very long, however.

Nevertheless, the knock on the door surprised her, and a moment of sheer panic washed over when she heard Becca's youthful voice. Throwing on a robe over her customary t-shirt and shorts ensemble that served as pajamas, and opened the door just enough to see the girl's young face.

Natasha smiled a little wanly. "Hi, Becca. I'm...better. A little touch of the stomach bug, I think." Not quite a lie; her nerves had been making her nauseous since Friday night."

"Damn, I'm sorry. He's acting like you just got diagnosed with cancer and have six weeks to live but if he's so worried, I don't know why he didn't come down here himself," Becca says. Who knows. Bucky's going to Bucky sometimes and she's not one to question it.

"He's been in the studio for two days drinking vodka from the bottle so I figured you got told you had a brain tumor or that guy came by or something. I'm glad to hear it's nothing. You want me to get Mom to send you over chicken soup? It's homemade. It's the best shit ever. You'll be better in no time, I promise."

It was...surprising, but somewhat of a relief, that Bucky hadn't divulged the details of just why they hadn't been speaking, but hearing that he'd been in the studio these last two days drinking wasn't entirely reassuring. But, Natasha firmly reminded herself, she wasn't the man's keeper, nor was it any of her responsibility what he did with his time.

So she forced another small smile.

"No, just haven't been feeling my usual self, is all." She wasn't going to offer any insight on why Bucky Barnes might be brooding, or sulking, behind a liquor bottle to the man's younger sister. "But chicken soup sounds lovely, I'm sure it'll do just the trick. Thank you, Becca."

"I'll let her know and send it over. Maybe Bucky will sober up and bring it himself but I doubt it. He really reeks," Becca says, wrinkling her nose. "I had my money on cancer so bad, too. I'm gonna owe Carol money now. At least it was just twenty bucks."

She laughs, though, and shakes her head. "He's always been super dramatic. One time he failed this exam in college and granted, it was important, but he was like oh my life is fucking over, what am I going to do, et cetera and we all just told him to man up and ask his professor for extra credit. He just...he feels too much, you know? When he loves something, he loves it with every part of himself and he falls hard. It was like that with music, with engineering...I think he cares about you too. I haven't ever seen him have a depression spiral over someone with the stomach flu."

Becca shrugs. "Be nice to him, though. He'd probably put you on his joint checking account if you said you needed a dollar for the vending machine. He treats you different than he has ever treated a woman and you're just friends. I can't imagine what he'd do if he was in a relationship with you. Probably buy you your own island and build you a castle or something equally ridiculous."

Meanwhile, as Natasha was suffering silent agonies listening to Becca Barnes ramble on about her beloved older brother, Carol Danvers had arrived at the Winter Soldier studio and wasn't too surprised to see her boss and lead singer once again swilling cheap vodka right out of the bottle and moaning pathetically into a microphone while he tried to read the chicken scratch scrawled on a crumpled piece of paper held haphazardly in one tattooed fist.

"Mother of fuck," the blonde muttered, rolling her eyes as she opened the door to the sound stage and hit the overhead lights.

"Hey, Buck," she called, kicking an empty bottle out of the way with a soft snort. "What's the matter this time? You lose your invitation to the this year's MTV Awards?"

"She hates me," Bucky slurs, finishing off the bottle he has in his hand. He's impossibly drunk and the chords he's attempting to play sound nothing like music and incredibly like the atonal noise that people are trying to pass off as modern composition these days but aren't winning any awards for.

"Slept with her and she doesn't want me," he adds. Carol rolls her eyes. Of course. She takes the empty bottle from Bucky's hands and pulls a chair over, turning it around so she can sit backward in it.

"Ivy, right? She's right down in your guest house, Buck. Yeah, I figured that shit out pretty quick because you look at her with giant moon eyes whenever she's in the room and I know everyone else is gonna figure it out too. What'd you do, propose to her after one date? Sounds like you."

Bucky sighs. "She doesn't want me."

Carol pulled up a chair and turned it around, straddling it backwards and crossing her arms across its back. "You ever think she might need a little space? The woman's just gotten out of a shitty relationship. You saw how that asshole treated here the one day they were here. You wanted to pull out his guts with hot fishhooks, if I remember."

She tapped fingers on the chair back. Then squinted a little more speculatively at him.

"...are you even sober enough to understand what I'm saying? Or am I just wasting my breath? Because if I am, I'll just head back home until you've gotten your head out of your ass about this chick and picked up a few clues." Carol shook her head, nonplussed. "Christ, Bucky, when you fall for someone, you land like a fucking meteor, dude."

"Sober enough," Bucky says, frowning a little. When Carol says he falls like a meteor, she's not exactly wrong. When he falls, he falls hard and it's hard and hot and desperate for him when it comes to her. She has a point about Natasha's former relationship but he's so different. He's nothing like Alex.

"I'm the opposite of that guy, Carol," he says, sighing heavily. "I'm tryin' to be good to her. I'll give her everything and then two dollars more. I jus' wanna take care of her and be with her and she'd never have to worry with me. I wouldn't ever hurt her."

Carol Danvers wasn't one to pull her punches, and she was goddamn tired of having to slog through these mopey, broody, miserable songs. Yeah, that ballad album was well on its way to platinum, but for fuck's sake.

"No," she managed to agree. "You're nothing like him, thank God." Then she fixed Bucky with a hard blue stare of her own, cocking up a sharp eyebrow. "But did you ever think that it might not be about you? That jackass put her through almost a decade of emotional abuse, Bucky. Shit like that does a number on your mind, and come on, he's a douche of the first degree.

"The woman's out on her own for the first time in forever, then you barrel into her life with all guns blazing, it's no wonder she's freaked out and scared shitless. Everybody on the planet knows who the fuck you are - did you ever think she might think she's not good enough for you?"

"I'm just a guy from Brooklyn," Bucky says, brows drawing together in confusion. "I've never been like...stuck up. I don' care about stuff like that. She's more than good enough for me. I love her, she's good enough for me. More than good enough. Perfect for me."

All he wants, really, and what does it matter that everyone knows who he is? He wants her regardless of who is a celebrity and who isn't.

"What ya think I oughta do about it?"

"It doesn't matter what you think," Carol told him dryly, huffing an exasperated sigh. "It's what she thinks." She straightened in the chair, propping her hands on her thighs.

"You oughta go talk to her, apologize for being an insensitive idiot - even if it wasn't intentional, and try to be her friend, first. Yeah, you guys hooked up, but so what? Talk to her, Bucky. And for God's sake, don't start declaring your eternal love, your undying devotion, your unending infatuation, all that sappy shit. Save it for the lyrics, dude."

The blonde pushed out of the chair, easily sliding it aside with one graceful kick. "Just keep it casual, yeah? Take her out, do something fun, invite her over to your Mom's for dinner, that sorta stuff. Don't offer to solve all of her problems, buy her a goddamn private island, or give her anything her sweet little heart could want: that ain't gonna work, pal. Treat her like a woman, not a goddess."

She quirked her head, gazing unsympathetically at the tattooed heap still huddled on the recording stool. "Ya hear me?"

Yeah. He needs to change what he's doing. It doesn't stop the pipeline of depressing songs by any means but Bucky orders a giant flower arrangement of lilies and roses to go down to the guest house with a simple card that just says "I'm Sorry," along with the keys to his BMW in case Natasha wants to go anywhere. He doesn't make a move to talk to her, though, wary of overwhelming her the way that Carol said would be bad.

Becca comes to see him, rolls her eyes, and goes back down to the guest house to see about Natasha before coming back to the main house and punching Bucky in the arm. "Go down there, you idiot." Now that Carol and Becca are on his case, he goes down to the house but he brings Brooklyn as a buffer. And he knocks. At his own guest house.

"Natasha? You home?"

The flowers were beautiful, gorgeous blossoms of red roses and pale blue lilies, which now sat on the table in the modest kitchen/dining room, brightening the entire area. Seeing them in passing always made her smile. When she heard the knock at the door, and Bucky's voice behind it, Natasha scrambled out of the comfortable recliner, dropped her book, picked it up and placed it on the table next to the chair, tripped over the blanket she'd just dropped, but miraculously made it to the door without careening into it.

Shoving red curls out of her face, she managed to open the door without appearing too disheveled, offering the familiar face behind it a small smile, and then a truer one when she spied Brooklyn, already wagging and trying to bulldoze his way inside.

"Hi," she told them both, opening the door further to bend down and ruffle the pup's ears. Then, to Bucky, "...thank you for the flowers. They're beautiful."

"Owed 'em to you," Bucky says, shrugging. He's supposed to be casual like Becca and Carol said so he's trying to be casual without being aloof or seeming like he's angry or he doesn't like her anymore. It's hard. What if she thinks he just isn't interested anymore because it went bad? He guesses that's the risk he has to take.

"Somebody missed you so I thought I'd bring him down. He wants to go on a walk and I figured hey, I have private beachfront property, we can do a walk with a view. But he wanted another buddy so that's why I'm here. He's very insistent."

Yes, good, blame it on the dog.

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. "Oh. Um...well, sure." She hadn't been out of the guest house in four days. "Let me...put on some shoes, and grab a jacket." The wind was cool off of the Pacific. Natasha opened the door for both Bucky and Brooklyn to come inside; the back patio had a boardwalk down the small hill to the open sand.

Thankfully she'd opted for her comfortable yoga pants and a t-shirt; she didn't have to change, just add another layer or two. A light windbreaker sufficed, and it took only moments to pull on socks and tennis shoes. A messy ponytail completed the ensemble, and Natasha emerged from the bedroom with a friendlier smile than the one she'd offered at the door.

"All set."

She met Bucky's eye only once, trying not to let her mind's eye wander back to just a few short (long, devastatingly long) nights ago, when she'd been intimately tangled with this man in more ways than one.

"We can go across the patio, if you'd like."

"Patio's fine," Bucky agrees. It's the easiest way to get down to the boardwalk anyway and with his hands full of Brooklyn, he won't do something stupid like reach for her hand to hold it. Hopefully he can keep it together and not be an asshole or overwhelming or whatever else.

"You holding up okay? I think my mom probably sent over enough food for fifteen people when Becca told her you were sick."

It had been a convenient lie, at least, even if Carol hadn't seen through it. Carol sees everything, though, and she's not much of a talker. She's not one to spread gossip.

Natasha led the way down the staircase, saying back over her shoulder with a small laugh, "I'm good, promise. Your mom's chicken soup is wonderful, by the way. I have nearly an entire pot left over in the fridge. Which is great because I don't have to cook for a while." Yet another thing she hardly knew how to do.

When they reached the sand, she paused and gave Bucky a speculative glance of her own. "And are you okay? Becca said you'd been working nonstop, and trying to find inspiration at the bottom of a bottle." The disapproval in her voice was palpable; she couldn't hide it entirely.

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