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"Just wanted to be sure," he says softly. "I didn't want to mess things up again like I did last time."

Last time hadn't been about the sex, he doesn't think, but he needs to be sure because he doesn't think he can handle another heartbreak and he doesn't think Natasha can either, even if she might not admit it to him or anyone else.

"I just want you to enjoy being with me, you know?"

"I know." And she did know. He wanted it so much, it was almost painful to hear. But Natasha firmly pushed that aside; there was no room here for regrets. "And I do, James." She could give him that. It was only words, after all.

Nevertheless, one of her eyebrows quirked. "I wouldn't have begged for you just now if I didn't." Well, mostly. Some of it she could chalk up to her hormones, but Natasha didn't really think that was all fair.

"Just wait," she heard herself quip, "before long I'll look like I swallowed a pumpkin and won't be able to keep my hands off of you." Then her cheeks heated, skin flushing all the way down her breasts, as she realized just what she'd said.

"I'm gonna be real happy when we hit that stage," he teases, then tapers off and goes quiet for a moment. It's not often that he's quiet but he's just worried and he needs to shake it off before he starts worrying Natasha and getting them in a spiral all over again.

"Do you think you might be able to love me someday? I just want...I feel so much, you know? And I want you to feel it too. It feels so good to love someone, Natasha. I don't want you to miss out on that."

Bucky rolls over but he pulls her close, not willing to be away. "I'm not like him."

"...I hope so." And it was the truth. Natasha chewed on her lower lip, stifling a squeak when Bucky rolled them over, but shivered and snuggled into his warmth. She did voice a very soft sigh when he mentioned Alex, however.

"I know you aren't. And I thank God for that." Every day since finding out she was pregnant, in fact. "It'll just...take me a while, you know? To figure it all out. To get this baby born." Because she was definitely committed to that, now.

Time for a new segue. "What's for supper? More breakfast?"

"Mm, probably need real food," Bucky says. "But I'm going to order it in because I don't really wanna cook or go out. We had Thai, maybe Italian? I don't know, we can look at all the menus. Everything delivers so we don't really have to worry about choices."

He can eat anything but he wants to make sure the baby has everything it needs to grow but he's not gonna harp on Natasha about it. It's her body.

"I'm not a salad guy but there's a couple places that do that. I remember you said you liked those, right?"

"Real food sounds good," Natasha agreed. And ordering in sounded even better. She really didn't want to put on normal clothes right now. "Italian sounds great. I could put away some manicotti or some chicken parm." Alfredo sounded great, too, and just thinking about garlic breadsticks had her stomach growling, to her mild embarrassment.

"Your son agrees," the redhead observed with a light chuckle. She gently wriggled out of Bucky's hold and hunted around for her nightgown, haphazardly tossed to the other side of the large bed. "Add some garlic bread to the order? And yeah, I love a good salad." Natasha slipped the gown over her head, saying as she straightened the fabric, "Do you know of a good Italian place up here that delivers?"

"Yeah, I do. There's a family style place that delivers. I'll put an order in online for extra breadsticks and the rest of it. I eat a ton and you need to eat a ton so they'll make a good sale. Manicotti and chicken parm for you? Both?"

If she wants both, she gets both.

"I'll get 'em to bring the salads too. I usually eat stromboli but we might as well just get a little of everything and share it around."

"That sounds good." It really did, when she thought about it, and Natasha gave an approving nod before slipping into the bathroom to clean up a little. She figured since she'd been wearing her nightgown for a day and a half, it was high time to put on some normal clothes, even if she planned on getting right back in bed after eating.

Well, so to speak.

She had to stop and stare at herself in the mirror for a long minute, or three, and wonder just how in the hell this was going to work. Why was this so hard? Her fiancé was gorgeous, rich, sweet, and head over heels for her, so what was the problem?

Alas that she didn't have a ready answer.

Bucky orders half a restaurant and when it gets delivered, he goes out to the car himself and starts helping to unload it all. He had tipped through the app but he tips the driver again with cash and goes to the staircase to yell up for Natasha.

"Hey, food's here! It's gonna get cold if you don't get your pretty ass down here."

There's no one there but them and maybe it's not something he'd say around people but it's something he'll say now.

Natasha was actually on her way down the stairs when she heard her betrothed bawling for her from the kitchen; she just huffed an exasperated laugh and meandered into the labyrinthine room, not surprised to see the plethora of paper bags decorating the marble island.

"Good God, James," she had to laugh, peering into one to discover about twenty breadsticks, complete with four different dipping sauces, "are you feeding the homeless?"

She could smell garlic, butter, cloves, and the truly wonderful scent of vinaigrette dressing, all of which were making her stomach even more insistent than it already was. However, "Mm, this I suggest we eat here in the kitchen, because it'll be way too expensive to get red sauce out of the carpet in the living room."

"Yeah, we're eating in the kitchen. Not getting sauce on my good carpet. I got some class, you know," Bucky says, winking at her. He actually decorated parts of this house and Becca did the rest but there's bits of him in it. It's not a designer home necessarily, it's lived in.

"And I got so much food so we'd have leftovers and so I made sure to get everything you want. If you get everything, you can try everything. If I don't order everything, you might not get what you want."

Perfectly logical.

She'd slipped into "her" room for a change of clothes: soft cream-colored sweater and black yoga pants, very comfortable. The house was a little cool, utilizing the open doors and the Pacific breeze instead of centralized heating and cooling, but the salty chill nevertheless felt wonderful. Brooklyn agreed, Natasha noticed with a smile, since the pup was stretched out in front of the open patio door, the ocean wind lightly ruffling his fur.

Coming around the island to fetch plates, Natasha let Bucky unload the feast. She did sneak several delicious garlicky breadsticks, biting into one even before filling her plate. "Mmmm," it was a full-mouthed moan of approval. "These are great." She polished it off, adding, "I hope you have this place on speed-dial, because we should definitely order from here once a week."

"Oh, yeah, they know me. I love this place. So does Becca. Plenty of late night orders from there," Bucky says. "We go in person sometimes too which...I'm not always gonna keep you locked up in here. We just gotta fight the cameras and it's a pain in the ass. I miss when I wasn't famous."

The money is great and being able to do what he loves is a dream but Bucky hates the press and notoriety that comes with it.

"Can't even have a disagreement in a bar without someone taking pictures. Damn shame."

Natasha could relate. She'd built a career around smoothing over those "incidences", after all. "Yeah," she said slowly, spooning manicotti on her plate, staring at it absently. "I know how it goes." She slid onto a stool, picked up her fork, lowered it again, and sighed.

"And we're going to have to deal with more than our share, aren't we." It wasn't really a question. As a PR lawyer, Natasha knew the press were going to go berserk when this news made it out, and just the thought of it was enough to make her head ache. But she knew Bucky kept good security, but she also knew that he had a temper - even if he did his best to keep it under control - and she also knew that he knew how to brawl, if it ever (God forbid) came to that.

Glancing up, she caught his gaze, held it, and said seriously, "Just...promise me, right now, no fights. No punches. No shoving. No physical remonstrance of any kind. Please?"

"Yes ma'am," Bucky says, giving her a contrite look. "I'll keep my tattooed hands to myself. I won't do anything wrong for at least the next five years."

It's a joke, he's not intending to do anything wrong after that either but he has to play around a little or he just doesn't feel like himself. He reaches for a breadstick and spins it around his fingers like a drumstick but fails miserably, dropping it on the bar.

"Nothing to make you be a lawyer."

Natasha wasn't...entirely fooled. Nor satisfied with the lackadaisical answer. She put down her fork, placed her hands in her lap, straightened her spine, and stared back at her intended, a single arched eyebrow slowly climbing over dark green eyes.

She'd worked her ass off to get his reputation out of the sewer that he'd crammed it into, and she really didn't appreciate the levity when trying to speak about serious matters. Handling this crap was her job; she'd built a reputation of her own by doing so, and, even though she knew he didn't mean anything by his joking, it still irked her that he didn't seem to take it all that seriously.

But getting in to an argument was pointless; she'd learned that with Alex. So instead of calling him out about it, Natasha instead inhaled a quiet but deep breath, picked up her fork, and cut a bite out of the ravioli on her plate, leaving the frost hanging over the island between them.

Bucky sees the frosty look and he drums his fingers against the counter, wondering what the fuck he did this time to ruin this shit. He's always ruining it, that's a given, but there's no telling what part of it was the fuck up. Probably just his general personality at this point.

"I'm just fucking around, Natasha. I've got a kid, I'm not going to get arrested. You have got to learn to take a joke or it's never going to work between us. Life is supposed to be fun and if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?"

She'd learned the hard way to keep her temper contained. Restrict herself to small, deliberate motions. Histrionics were something she'd never allowed herself to experience. Thus Natasha again put down her fork, touched a paper towel to her lips, and lifted her head to meet his eyes again.

"This isn't a laughing matter, James," she said quietly, tone level. "It's serious, and could do a lot of damage to the both of us if we aren't careful." A pause, a slight breath. "I'd appreciate it you'd show a little concern about it, fun, life, and joking aside."

Another pause, this one a little heavier.

"Is that too much to ask?"

"Sure. I'm starting to think you don't actually like me, though, and just whatever PR image you can make of me. I'm not perfect, I don't say the right things, I'm not...good enough for you. I'm messy and I joke around and do all the wrong shit that you don't want me to do but you can fix me, so it's okay."

It's probably stupid to get this worked up about it, especially with Natasha of all people, but it's how he feels and he's always been able to be open and expressive with that, whether it's a good or bad thing.

"Honest truth - if it wasn't for this kid, you wouldn't even be with me, would you? I'm good enough to fuck, sure, but you don't even like who I am. Is that it? Because I'm in love with you, just as you are, because that's what you do when you love somebody. You love everything about them. Even the fuckups."

Caught off guard by the sudden, explosive tirade, Natasha simply sat, nonplussed, absorbing all of Bucky's verbal venom with her expressionless marble façade. Though her hands were white-knuckled in her lap, below the island's curved edge, nothing showed on her face, save for the slightest flaring of her nostrils as she forced herself to keep breathing, just keep breathing.

He's upset, I took it too far, I asked for too much, now he's upset, just be still, don't antagonize him further, he'll break something then start on me...

When he ran down - thank God with nothing getting broken or punched - Natasha kept absolutely motionless for several long minutes, then, a muscle at a time, pushed back her plate and slipped off of her stool. White around the lips, pale as a ghost, and trembling, she turned aside and began to back away, saying in a voice only a hair above a whisper, "...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. ...good night, James..."

"No, Natasha. Sit back down," Bucky says, but it's softer and without the venom of before. They need to learn how to fight if they're going to be together and he needs to be able to be honest with her and she with him. They can't keep doing this shit over and over.

"I'm not going to hit you like he did," he says plainly. "And I'm not going to throw you out. I'm fucking terrified, okay? In a second, you can take my whole life from me and I can't do anything about it. You walk out that door and I lose everything I care about most. My fiancee, my kid...everything. So I tiptoe and I hold it in and I stuff down all the bad things about me so you don't leave me. Cause what happens when I'm not perfect? It all gets taken from me."

He knows his voice is breaking a little and he needs to just calm down and get through it. "You've got all the power here. I hear you say, James it's not funny, James, don't laugh and all I hear is be better. be perfect.."

She didn't sit down again - that was far too close right now - but Natasha did stop inching for the stairwell, and braced herself when Bucky started up again. But this time, it was a litany of fears, excuses, and terrors, all tied up in underlying anxiety she hadn't even realized he carried.

The stuttering and his voice breaking suggested sincerity, and Natasha took a breath, trying to control her own instinctive reaction, especially when he mentioned Alex. She stiffened, then, but gradually eased, though not enough to slide back atop that barstool.

She didn't answer right away, just kept her eyes on the perfect floor tile, trying to choose her words carefully. "...I don't expect you to be perfect. I never have. I don't...judge you about anything, James. I don't find anything 'bad' about you at all." Slowly, Natasha lifted her head to gaze at him from beneath her lashes, still wary.

"I just...I just take reputation seriously. Very much so. All I was asking.." she paused, swallowing, "all I wanted was for you to, too. At least for our sake. Nothing else."

"I do take it seriously. I also like to make fun of myself because I do stupid shit sometimes. What you think of me matters, you know? You fuck me up, Natasha. That's not a bad thing. If you're not feeling anything about someone then it's not really worth having...and I feel everything all the time."

Bucky motions toward her, toward the other side of the kitchen island. Maybe she'll come, maybe she won't, but he wants to make the offer.

"Sometimes I think if I was...the non-shitty version of Alex with the military career and the straight and narrow look, you might like me better. But that's a me thing, I guess."

His latter words brought her head up, a frown leveled his way. "Don't ever say that," she flashed, folding her arms beneath her breasts. "Don't even joke about that." She wanted no more reminders of that horrible man, let alone coming from the man she was supposed to marry in just a few months.

Bucky invited her to sit, again, but Natasha just rubbed her forehead, sighing a resigned sigh. She did, however, take a few more steps back into the kitchen, but halted just shy of the island's end. Hands tucked into her sleeves, arms still crossed, she slumped a little, feeling so tired of it all.

"I like you just how you are," she finally told him, looking at him directly. "You don't have to be...different for me, James. And really, it's...kind of unfair to expect that about me. Isn't it?"

"I'm not joking about that," Bucky says, lifting his hands. "But yeah, I'm not really bringing that up ever again. He can be dead for all I care. I was being serious that I was insecure, not...you know what I mean."

Natasha doesn't sit with him and Bucky guesses he shouldn't have expected it given how he exploded on her but it makes him sad anyway. She seems calmer now, at least.

"It's unfair," he agrees. "Most of what I want is unfair. At the end of the day, I want to be loved. But I can want that and wish it and try for it and never have it because it's not up to me. I can't make you love me. Only you can do that."

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