heli0s-writes - Tumblr blog

heli0s-writes · 1 day

Text

Hi hi thank you for reading! I love writing silly banter and a sprinkle of angst 🥹

Sweet

A/n: You know how sometimes when you’re having a breakdown and nothing is helping but then something completely unrelated and stupid just does it for no reason. This is that. With pot brownies and kissing. Bucky is recovering and reader is an moron with a heart of gold. Angst, hurt/comfort, humor. Reader/Bucky. 3k words Warnings: Marijuana use; conversations about trauma, particularly food-related; language.

The path leading away from the cabin is littered with wet patches of morning. Rime colors of miserable winter in sludge grey are starting to be overtaken by sprouts of green, yellow, and brisk dew, springtime optimism come to life.

Pepper’s got the front of her house looking like a farmer’s market flower stand. Pots of tulips and daffodils explode up the steps and tri-color ribbons connecting porch-light to porch-light. The magnolia tree is soon to bud, and she’s hung hummingbird feeders and birdhouses all around.

When the cars start rolling in for the quarter-yearly potluck, you hang out near the garden, rocking back and forth on your feet. You'd shown up early but didn’t know what to do around a toddler, so outside it was.

The familiar Range Rover halts to a stop, Sam’s door opening as he makes his way out, holding ceramic handles of an enormous crockpot.

You call, “Bring your famous chili?”

“Damn right, I did,” he beams, “you bring your appetite?”

You waggle your eyebrows before looking to the SUV he hopped out of, Steve lingering by the back door with a brown paper box tucked beneath his arm, knocking on the heavily tinted windows with a long-suffering sigh. “C’mon, Buck. Up and at ‘em.”

A loud, decisive knock thumps back at him and Steve rolls his big, pitiful, puppy dog eyes in your direction. Beneath the blue of his left orbital is what looks suspiciously like the fading ochre stain of either an almost healed bruise or a newly forming one, which only makes Steve’s silent call for aid more pathetic and urgent.

Damn, okay. Since you’re kind of on thin ice already, this could go one of two ways.

Sliding up, you crack your knuckles.

“Barnes,” you call, “I got something illegal for you. Wanna see?”

“Dead body.” He responds from behind the still shut door, and you’re not sure if that’s a question. Steve glares at you accusatory, as if you’d actually bring a dead body to a potluck, good grief.

“Uh, no.”

“Knife.”

Steve shoots you another look—which is just ridiculous at this point, the both of them.

“Knives aren’t illegal.”

“Depends.”

Steve shifts the box of what looks to be cherry turnovers and mouths phrase day, which means that Barnes decided to stop talking in complete sentences sometime between when he woke up and probably when Steve over-crowded him and is now reducing all communication to two or three words as both a method of punishment for Steve and self-preservation for Barnes.

“It’ll make you feel better,” you urge, “Loads better.”

“Sex.” He rolls down the window just enough for you to get a glimpse of his eyes, narrowed and steely. “Drugs?”

You mouth bingo, outrightly ignoring the fact that it feels like Bucky Barnes nearly solicited you for sex, and Steve puts his hand over his own face, about to quip until he realizes that he’s probably said too much already—which is what got him in this predicament to begin with—and simply drags himself toward the house.

Barnes watches him go wordlessly before he opens the door and steps out, looking down at you, lightly shivering in the cold, and says, still one-worded, “Okay.”

He pops three brownies into his mouth and chews, opening just enough to get out a muffled, “too sweet” before returning to grinding down like he’s cracking pecan shells in there.

“I know you have like,” you make panicked motions with your fingers, snapping the red Tupperware lid back down frantically, “hella metabolism, but pump the brakes or you’re going to flip.”

“Flip,” he concludes, determined. He squirrels about two more in before you can do anything about it.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I was going to let you take those home later—oh my god, I’m going to get into so much trouble.”

The two of you are stopped at one of those cutesy stone birdbaths around the perimeter, leaning on the lip as Barnes licks remaining chocolate off his fingers, looking as pleased as punch. As much as he can look, anyway, you think, since you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him smile at anything other than the time Steve stubbed his toe bad enough on Tony’s kitchen island that he doubled over.

“Did you say sex earlier?” You suddenly remember the flash of silver from the darkness of the SUV. “Wait, actually, I wanna go back even before that—did you really think I’d have a dead body?”

He shrugs.

“Cool,” you reply, “cool, cool, cool, cool. I think I should be more concerned, but you know what, I like it. Feels like a vote of confidence.”

A wide grin stretches across your face and you temporarily forget that Bucky fucking Barnes has eaten about half a pan of brownies with 25 grams of pot baked into them, that in about 15 minutes you’re both expected to sit down like normal people and have a nice dinner without anyone doing… whatever it is that he might do when he’s blazed to high heaven.

You shake the thought of Steve’s disappointment out of your head. Maybe it’d be best to keep acting natural, get him into some kind of headspace.

“So,” you whistle, “what’d you bring to the potluck?”

He gives you a sidelong stare and if there were Olympics for how someone can convey eat shit and die without moving anything but their eyes, he’d win every 8 years for the rest of his unnaturally long life.

“Well, I brought myself,” you curtsy, starting back down the trail again, figuring that you’ve got five minutes walking forward before it’d be time to turn back to the house, “and your present,” to which he gives you a short nod, “and an empty stomach. You excited for Sam’s chili?”

“Spicy.”

“Spicy?” you recoil, suddenly finding the prospect of a man who gave Captain America a black eye last week or possibly this morning—the monster who ate half of your most lethal bake—panting and sweating over a bowl of chili astoundingly inconceivable.

“Oh wait, you live with Rogers. What’s he feeding you at home? Steamed chicken?”

“Baked.”

You sigh, “God, you’re fucked. Nat brought something with Carolina Reaper infused honey glaze. Barnes... we’ll have to do a prayer circle for your ass.”

His face twists into a look of disgust before he starts to notice his lips, pressing them together, pulling them apart. After a few more motions like he’s discovering his body, bit by bit, he turns to you, and announces, “Feeling it.”

You laugh, jealous, because although you had a bite about 30 minutes before he even arrived, the brownie hasn’t hit you yet. “Good,” you say anyway, “that’s good, right?”

He only apathetically regards a sparrow flying past. You suppress a chortle when Barnes repeatedly licks his lips and rubs at the sleeves of his sweater.

“Have you ever been high before?” You correct, “In the fun, recreational, consensual way?”

Another listless shrug before he turns his head. You push yourself off a nearby log and make a show of stomping through haphazard piles of sticks and dead leaves, curling your fingers in a come along motion.

He follows, boots crunching, steps short and patternless, making a racket behind your back. He looks like a kid, fingers tucked up into his long sleeves, bouncy knees as he attempts to splash into every puddle as he possibly can before catching up. He’s almost got a grin when he looks at you, remembering where he is again, and there’s a light brush of color along the tops of his cheeks from the chill.

Around a small bend in the path, you duck under a branch, hop over a stone, and when you land back on both feet, the ground wobbles just enough to notice.

The air smells nice. Your eyelids feel heavy in a good way.

“Steve really piss you off this morning, didn’t he?”

Barnes lands a couple of feet away, his face dropping into an exhausted expression at the question, which you can’t fault him for because Steve’s a lot of things. Simple things, on the surface, but Barnes has known him longer than most anyone else and you imagine all of his noble qualities—his longstanding patience and willpower and belief in the goodness in everything and everyone—you imagine that shit gets old.

Hell, it gets at you on occasion, and you’re not even the brainwashed best friend who’s probably hearing a hundred voices in his head and is too tired to hear one more no matter how well-intentioned it might be.

Sometimes, being inundated by language just breaks it all back into foreign, incomprehensible script. And sometimes, being exceedingly plied with something you can’t make any sense of makes you turn inward, makes you bare your teeth in self-defense.

Which makes you realize you probably should ease up, too, talk less, but then he takes a long step with his ridiculous legs and is by your side, walking as if you two do this all the time.

“He’s a fixer.” Bucky’s brows are scrunched together, hands buried in his pockets. You nod quickly, not wanting him to go into any more detail than that because it’s not news that the entire population is still wary of Bucky Barnes’ re-emergence as a United States citizen when he was, up until very recently, a—uh, Russian one.

This, obviously, puts many things at odds with each other, including Steve, who is Mr. United States himself. The Avengers, too, who are mostly Team United States, considering the location and overwhelming population. But most of all, Bucky, who is still cobbling together bits and pieces of his life each day, is faced with the knowledge that everyone in the world knows more about him than he does.

You rub the back of your neck sympathetically because that shit would kill your heart so fast.

“You know what.” You shake the Tupperware at him, “Have the rest of these. You deserve it. And like, a million hugs.”

He barks a laugh, gladly gulps down the rest, and there’s a dapple of fudge on his chin looking so silly and sweet as he chews.

Ah, shoot. You avert your gaze, feeling very bad ideas break out up your arms and neck, and the shudder that is about to overtake you seems less about Barnes’ sweet face and more about Steve’s disappointed one. Like, he’s going to read your mind and know you’re having ideas about his best friend. And he’s going to do that thing where his eyebrows drop and his lips press together as he attempts to hold back a few choice words. Until later, probably, when he corners you somewhere and unleashes them anyway.

What were you thinking?, he’ll hiss. Are you capable of thinking rationally?

“What?” Barnes prods. “What is it?”

“Nothin’” you take a leap forward, herding the both of you back. The closer you are to the cabin the more you’ll remember that you’re at a family event, with friends, who should all stay in the friend territory.

But you blurt anyway, “You said sex earlier!” Because you’re a whole ass idiot.

He makes a small noise, says, “Yeah,” like that’s any help.

“Are you…” what the fuck, your head is spinning, “like, in… need of some?” Your face feels hot.

“Maybe. My body is…” he frowns, so weirdly open right now, and then he looks at you with half is face in a weary grin, the other half lost and confused. “Responding to stimuli in ways I haven’t— responded to in... Trying to fix it. Steve wants me to be fixed.”

He tilts his face to the sky, glaring at it. “Can’t get it out.”

You’re trying to force your rabbiting heart down to a manageable pace. You’ve never had any in-depth discussions with him about anything, much less his sex drive. The most interaction the two of you get is the occasional mission or get-together where you crack jokes and get shitfaced when the job’s done. You’ve been told you’re sort of a pain and haven’t given a fuck too much to change that.

You’re sort of in trouble right now, having been “irrational” during the last mission, running across the iced lake instead of taking the planned route and falling in. It ended up working out, since you got to the enemy helicopter before the enemies, but then there was the stabbing because you were sort of outnumbered and the pneumonia afterwards because you fell into the fucking lake…

There was a massive chewing out. Steve and his many, disappointed words.

Something about motor-mouths and low-object permanence but sure, good on the inside when it counts.

You hope this is one of those times where it counts.

“Listen,” you start. “Take as long as you need, there’s no rush on recovery and pushing yourself too hard is detrimental to your health. It’s not a straight line.”

“I hit him.”

Your wheeling brain is making a sharp left, trying to figure out where Barnes is driving toward. Oh. The black eye.

“Aw, Steve?” You wave your hand, swatting nothing. “He’s a big boy.”

“I’m hungry. Then I’m not.”

“I mean, that sounds normal—“

“No, a lot. Fast. Cyclical. Endless.”

It must be his metabolism adjusting. The realization of his relationship with food comes fast, almost visceral. Scarce when he was young, then rationed during the war before it was taken from him altogether. He was given the bare minimum with Hydra—protein slurry, tube-fed—then purged—stomach pumped—before being put on ice.

For decades.

Starvation must have truly felt endless.

And now with food being a surplus, with his body readjusting to it, yet his mind still struggling with habits—it must be so confusing. Another seemingly natural function to be confused about.

“Ah,” you manage, a lump in your throat like a blockade.

“I get nightmares.” He’s glaring at his hands, one flesh, one metal, opening and closing his fist like trying to get a grip on himself, and his voice is so small and pained. “These thoughts. All sorts. Can’t sleep.”

You extend your hands, shake off the dry sob that wants to erupt from your chest, and declare with flourish, “On the fourth day, God made Purple Kush, and it was good. So, we can—we can fix that.”

He takes another one of those long looks, through his lashes, lips quirked in quiet humor.

“You’re not really a fixer.”

He shakes the container of crumbs in your face.

You gasp, snatching it back in offense. “I can fix… some things! I replaced the utility light in the kitchen yesterday!“

Your cheeks are hot, face twitching like a broken screen because all you can think about is how handsome he is, out here like this, nose blushing, eyes lazy and crescent shaped, the heavy creases beneath them less pained and more relaxed.

And how he’s teasing you—- and he’s kind of a little shit.

“You fucker,” you say.

He grins—all big and silent, and for a second you count your blessings that he’s not going to say anything else shitty until he quips, “Not unless you’re offering.”

He’s staring at you intently, a curious expression winding its way up his face. His eyes are huge and blue and the most alert, glazed-over, pair of bloodshot, redder-than-the-devil’s-dick eyes you’ve ever seen on anyone stoned halfway to the moon.

His tongue darts out, sweeps a slow, careful line over the width of his bottom lip, practically asking, and you’re just the simple idiot who openly gawks at him.

“Ah,” you nod. “Yeah you’re definitely right. I’m—“ you gulp, “more of a fuck-up.”

Because what’s another fuck up to add onto the long-running list of fuck ups you’ve had recently, anyway? Kissing Barnes might count as a really serious one, sure, but at least it’s not pneumonia.

It’d make him feel better, probably, it’d make him feel something, at least. Steve would appreciate that, if Barnes came to the dinner table verbal, maybe even laughing. No one has to tell Steve that his best pal kissed your face off in the woods.

The idea of your face being kissed off is doing a number on you. The idea of Bucky Barnes, this gorgeous, miserable, godly, tragic contradiction, your at-arm’s-length teammate, your quickly-becoming friend, kissing your face off because he needs to feel something soft in the midst of the rest of the horrible, jagged things he already feels every second of his life—and he can get it from you.

You’re stupid and simple and how could anyone say no to that? So you take one last second to steel your heart, push forward, and lean in.

It’s, frankly, bizarre.

He kisses you gently, fantastically, inconsistently, wavering from assured one second to apprehensive the next, like he remembers how but can’t quite execute.

You meet him where you can, respond to the parting of his lips with your own, adjust to his tension with grace, and when he starts feeling like he’s getting the hang of it, like muscle memory has finally settled into his body, you let him lead.

One hand finds the base of your skull, the other placing itself on your waist. His kisses grow greedy, like he remembers desire is a thing that occurs to him. He tilts his head down, kisses up like he wants to swallow every sigh between your lips, like he’s hungry for the sounds you make—and you’re making, embarrassingly, a lot of them. He’s good—dominant but kind, mouth wide, lips full, tongue cocoa-sweet and clever as it strokes yours again and again.

When he backs you up into a tree, you barely register it. His hand has moved to cushion your head, and he’s urging his entire body forward into yours, grip tight at your hipbone, moving his mouth to your jaw, then your neck, and you stutter a string of letters that refuse to make words.

Barnes is expertly sucking marks beneath your collar, right beneath the neckline, his breath hot and coming out in a near snarl and when he scrapes his teeth down, sinking them into the soft skin of your chest, you yelp loud enough to send a few birds scattering from the trees.

He jumps off like he’s burned you, eyes frantic, afraid.

“No—” you clear your throat, hands out, “Hold on.”

He’s blinking, head clearing, head trying to assess what he’s done, the situation, the pulled loose neckline, the wet shine of his spit up your throat.

“S-sorry—”

“No, don’t be sorry.” You give him his distance but take a small step forward. “That was hot. But,”

He blinks, confused, and this whole thing could easily go pear-shaped, your well-intentioned explanation might turn into unintelligible speech at any moment, but you have to try or else he’ll tailspin into catastrophe, and you suddenly feel so sorry for Steve, the poor fuck who’s doing this every day, clinging onto the hope that what he’s saying doesn’t set Bucky off, doesn’t push his boulder back downhill.

He's still stuttering sorry, starting to pace.

“Listen,” you say firmly, clipping your own panic, “that was wow, let me tell you. But if you don’t stop, I’m going to like— hotwire a car.”

Somehow this stops him in his tracks, “What?”

“Well, I didn’t drive here. Because you know, I was going to like, get really shitfaced.”

“What?”

“Yeah, and like, take you to a hotel or something.”

He frowns, obviously completely lost. “Why?”

It’s your turn to be lost. Both of you open-mouthed and panting at each other like two dumb dogs chasing each others’ tail in an ouroboros of idiocy.

“Huh? What do you mean why? You just tongue-fucked me, do you think I’m immune to getting on my knees for that?”

Now you can see it happening—the incomprehensible speech like a marquee as it runs across Barnes’ brain. Tongue-fuck, immune to getting on my knees. He doesn’t understand any of that, and god bless any soul who can. What language are you even speaking right now other than hot-brained, hot-skinned, hot-hearted to him, who’s still struggling to defrost?

“Never mind,” you redact, “ignore that.” You put your hands on his shoulders to ground yourself, vaguely thinking that maybe you shouldn’t touch him but the firm slap of your palms seems to break him out of his new trance. “Can we kiss again, later?”

He blinks, staring at you, at your hands on him, at your lips all swollen up.

“Yes.”

You sigh, relieved and thankful that other than you, no one’s freaking out, that your plan to get Bucky Barnes high worked out after all, and that he has agreed to make out later because he’s really, really good at it.

“Wonderful. Let’s go back now? Are you ready?”

He mulls it over and shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “Sure, but I’m not eating chili.”

“Well, you’re in luck, there’s plenty of chicken.”

He grimaces, cuts a sharp look up to you before a twinkle settles in his blue, blue eyes. “Okay,” he agrees, “guess we should do a prayer circle for my ass.”

You clap your hands together and recite Our Father.

“It was sex, wasn’t it?”

Sam’s got one hand over his belly, snickering. Everyone else looks your way, gullible, scandalized, and you can’t blame them since the two of you were gone an awfully long time and came back extremely disheveled.

Bucky had walked in dutifully behind you, wiped off his boots, sat down at the dinner table, and asked for seconds saying please and thank you and he even threw in a that was delicious just to watch Steve’s head explode.

And Bucky, who you’ve come to realize is genuinely a shit— still one-worded and knowing full well the repercussions of his one word— only shrugs and responds, “Yes.”

The room erupts into shouting as you throw a buttered roll at his head. He catches it easily and brings it up to his grinning mouth, shimmer of spit glossy and fantastic on his lips.

#reader x bucky barnes #comment reblog

131 notes · View notes