Edelweiss || Bucky x Reader

Chapter Forty Seven

"Mmm..."

"Good morning, sleepyhead." He says as I become aware of him softly stroking my hair.

"...ngh..." I mumble, burying my face deeper in his bare chest.

"Alright." He laughs with a kiss to my brow. I snuggle in closer to him, my leg draped over his, his arms wrapped around my torso, our bodies pressed together. After a moment, he speaks. "Any voices this morning?"

"Only yours." I whisper, so happy to have new words from the same speaker instead of one, short, overplayed tape.

"Hold on." He says. "I thought it was my voice."

"You..." I say, opening my eyes just slightly, seeing the dumbass grin on his face, and closing them again. "...shut up, Barnes."

"Yeah, yeah." He chuckles as he twists onto his back, pulling me on top of him so that my entire body covers his.

I lazily reach up to his lips, kissing him haphazardly.

"You're just a mess, aren't you, honey?" He says as he pulls me higher up on him, putting our faces closer together and making his lips more accessible.

"No." I mumble defensively.

"Stubborn..." He laughs softly, kissing my cheek much more neatly than I had him. "Let's get you cleaned up."

He moves me off his chest so that I lie on my back. My eyes open just slightly at the loss of contact, blinking at the ceiling, a little more awake. I hear him stand and walk around to my side of the bed. His arms come carefully underneath me, lifting me from the sheets and carrying me from the room like a bride. I hold onto him, lifting myself the extra inch to his neck and kissing him on his bare skin, as if to make up for the tired and messy one I'd given him earlier.

"Careful, sweetheart." He says through a smile as he uses his back to push open the bathroom door. "I don't wanna drop you."

A sleepy laugh escapes me with the rest of my fatigue. I yawn and stretch as he sets me down on the toilet.

"Wait a second while I get the temperature right." He says, turning on the shower.

Water spits from the faucet, momentarily dousing the room with chilly air, a crime committed by the initial icy flow. It reminds me of worse days. Cold hallways, cold metal, cold chairs, cold guns. More than anything, it wreaks of loneliness. But as warmth rushes through old pipes the cold is replaced by steamy wisps that fog over the mirror. I find myself admiring the man in front of me, his back turned and bare, a vulnerability I don't know I've earned. But looking at him, there's something that makes me forget, in a beautiful way, in a way that proves I am more than tool. More than the weapon I have been made. Proves I once was—and maybe can be again—something more.

It's one thing for me to trust him. It's another for him to trust me.

"Warm enough?" He asks. I shake myself from my thoughts and stand, running my hand under falling droplets. Though the water is a comfortable temperature, I shiver. This is so new.

"Different." He says, taking my hand as I step over the tub's edge, ensuring that I don't slip on my way. "I know. My first shower felt weird too, but it'll feel good to be clean."

I almost don't hear him over the feeling of steaming drops hitting my skin in perfect rhythm, drumming heavily on the curved tile walls of the bathtub, every second I spend there filled with a wonderful song that sounds like being human.

Water runs in streams down my face. It collects in my hair, bringing each strand together into a point down my back from which a larger stream flows down my body. The warmth is intoxicating. My lips are pulled wide by my cheeks, so wide that my teeth are exposed.