April Showers | Bucky Barnes x Reader AU

5 | pancake breakfasts

"I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found how to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it."
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

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Y/N leaves Steve's office after signing her contract feeling, dare she say it, a little lighter. She feels the most secure she has in a long time. Both financially, thanks to the hefty advance she'll be receiving for her second book, and in her abilities as an author. She initially used raising a child alone as the excuse for taking eight years to perfect her first book. Now she'll happily admit that she threw the towel in on more than one occasion and refused to write for months at a time just because she believed everything she'd written was absolutely shit.  

She pushes down the small feeling of dread seeping into her mind like ink in water. It's anxiety over the fact that she still has to write two more books, she knows that. But she has ideas. She has notebook after notebook filled with ideas, there's got to be a good one in there somewhere.

She was lucky with her first novel. She had been handed inspiration in the form of James Barnes and had a notebook brimming with lines of dialogue and potential passages from the moment they met. She might as well have called it "The Diary of a Lovesick Teenager".

Y/N rounds the corner into the lobby, expecting to see April where she left her, reading quietly under the careful watch of Wanda who promised to keep an eye on her.

What she did not expect to see is Bucky sitting crisscross at the coffee table and their daughter on a cushion beside him. April is enthusiastically dumping blueberries and raspberries onto pancakes. Seeing them together for the first time stirs something in Y/N. The similarities between them are clear as day as they sit side by side. They both laugh at something, their noses scrunching in the exact same way and Y/N's breath hitches in her throat. She can't hide the smile on her face as she watches them talking animatedly and Bucky opens a small tub of maple syrup for April when she struggles with the lid. It's a perfect tableau of the only thing she's ever wanted for the past nine years.

When April spots Y/N, she grins with a mouthful of pancakes and berries.

"Mum! I met Bucky, I recognised him from your photo albums! He bought me pancakes!" She exclaims, swallowing her food and then loading her mouth up again.

"What did I say about talking with your mouth full?" Y/N replies. April mumbles an apology, again with her mouth full, and Bucky tries to hide the chuckle that's desperate to leave his lips.

"I hope you thanked..." She pauses, the name she's about to call him already feeling unnatural before it's even left her mouth. "Bucky...for the pancakes, April?"

"She did." Bucky answers, "you wanna talk in my office?"

He feels a little guilty for spending time with April without Y/N there and he can't quite tell whether she's okay with it or not. She nods, turning to April before they head down the hall.

"You okay to wait a little while longer before we go to the zoo?"

April's mouth is full so she nods and gives them a thumbs up. She opens her book again and holds it open with one hand, stabbing her fork into her pancake with the other as Y/N and Bucky walk away.

"Give the girl pancakes and a good book and she's in her element." Y/N laughs as Bucky leads her through the mahogany door of his office. She has to laugh or she'll cry. What kind of tears, she's not sure. She's good at masking her emotions, letting them stir up inside of her to a point where she's not even certain of what she's feeling.