Marvel Short Stories

Book Two: Bucky's Lover

My life is not normal. I won't lie, it used to be. I was a normal girl living in a normal city. There was nothing extraordinary about me except for my kindness, if anyone bothered to say hello to me when passing. No one saw past my average brown hair and blue eyes. I had the average height of five feet five inches, and while I wasn't what people considered "fat," I definitely wasn't a stick. My family loved to go out dirt biking and hunting, and I had good parents, even though they were divorced, as well as a younger brother with autism who had passed in the attack of New York. He was eighteen.

Two years later, I met him. He was injured, and I knew enough first aid from enough motorcycle accidents. It was no question for me to bring him to my flat and help him. I wanted to take him to a hospital first, but with one glare I knew that wasn't an option, so my bed became his home. I can still remember the first time he actually spoke to me.

"Why are you helping me?" He had asked while I cleaned his wounds for the millionth time. Not literally, but you know what I mean.

Ringing out the rags, I had wondered just what the hell kind of question that was, and decided to ignore it as I put new bandages on him. He had grabbed my wrist when I finished, and meeting his eyes, I couldn't just leave him without an answer. "Why wouldn't I? I wasn't going to leave you out there to die."

"I could be a bad person," he warned, and I laughed.

When he didn't laugh with me, I glared at him. "So could I. For all you know, I could be part of the mafia and I'm helping you just so that you're forced to be one of my lackeys for eternity."

Faster than I could have reacted, the man grabbed my throat and pinned me against the wall next to my bed, his eyes burning into mine. The metal of his hand was cold against my skin, and even though my breathing was limited, I could still breathe. My only thoughts at the time were how I was going to have to stitch his wounds back together after this show of power, and it had irritated me. I had just replaced his bandages, dammit. "I could squeeze the life out of you right now, don't you get that? I can feel your pulse quicken under my fingertips, and I could very easily stop that pulse."

I didn't even hear him. I was paying attention to the pain in his eyes. A pain I had seen in my own eyes for two years. Brushing his hair out of his face, I still remember the words I told him. "You're not going to," I told him. My hand moved from his hair to his artificial shoulder, the metal under my finger tips hard and cold. My other hand wrapped around his wrist and I gently pulled his hand away, the man staring at me with a shocked expression. He very easily could have protested, keeping his hand around my neck, but he didn't. I moved my eyes from his, looking at the metal arm.

Flipping his hand over, I had focused on the arm, how the metal parts moved with every movement. He got insecure at one point, trying to pull the arm away, but he stopped trying when I pulled his arm back, placing his hand over my heart with my right hand. Then, I did what I used to do to calm down my brother. My eyes returned to his, the pain still evident and I placed my left hand over his face, brushing my fingers down from his forehead to his chin.

To say he was bewildered at first would have been an understatement. He stared at me, silently stunned, and I did it again. "Relax," I order. After a third time, he finally closed his eyes, and I press my forehead against his. "You're safe."

He cried, then. It was silent at first, but when I placed my hand on his cheek and felt the wet tears, he let it go, and the only thing I did was pull him into a hug. Since then, there was no going back to ordinary. He stayed with me for the next month, his wounds taking longer to heal thanks to his outburst, but when he left, it was in the middle of the night. There was no goodbye, not even an insinuation that he would be leaving. He hadn't even fully healed yet, but there I was, waking up alone. Or so I thought. I didn't know until four weeks later that I was pregnant.

And I wouldn't see him for yet another two years.