The Winter Cowboy || Bucky x Reader

Chapter 2

By the end of the first day you had come to realize that the sergeant, your father had taken to calling him that, was the least talkative person you had ever met. He spent all of his time focussing his eyes on his food or his work and when either of those were in short supply, he opted for brooding silently in a corner, simply waiting for time to pass. You felt quite uncomfortable at first, but by the end of the week you had grown used to the sulking man, assuming that he simply wasn't used to having any leisure time or hobbies.

In fact, the first sign of contact between the two of you had been on Sunday morning. As usual, the sergeant had sat down at the breakfast table as the clock struck eight. His punctuality was somewhat unsettling at first, but now you quite enjoyed the predictability of the man. You sat on the other side of the breakfast table with the book Into the Wild propped up on your knees as you chuckled at a particular passage which perfectly illustrated the stupidity of impromptu-adventurers ignoring life-saving advice from locals. The sergeant's steel blue eyes shot up to find you at the sound of your laugh, and somehow you felt his gaze burning on your skin, causing you to look up. His eyes were focussed on the small smirk that was still playing on your lips. Then, you found his eyes move shortly to your book before he looked away and returned to his scheduled morning session of brooding in silence.

That evening you laid a small pile of books by his bedroom door; some of the essentials he had most likely missed out on in the last couple of decades. You selected some of your favourites and sensibly tried to avoid the classics about war, mind control and the books you would never share with a living soul. You settled on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Angels & Demons, Cosmos, The Hobbit and a personal not-so-classic favourite called Don't Run, Whatever You Do, a book with stories of a safari guide and the dumb shit he's seen tourists do in the wild. It was one of the books that would always make you laugh. You left no note, but simply left the pile propped up against his door before you walked to your room to grab some shower essentials. When you returned from your shower, the books had disappeared and the sergeant's bedroom door was closed, but you could see light shine from under the door.

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The next day at breakfast the sergeant gave no notice of the books left at his door and focussed on his breakfast as your father instructed him on how the hayshed should be cleaned out and rearranged after the sergeant had finished fixing the tractor. You finished your breakfast, saving the last piece of bacon for Staples as you called him to you and headed out the door, failing to notice Bucky's eyes lingering on you for the shortest of moments.

Four hours later, you rolled up your sleeves and greedily drank from your bottle of water. It was surprisingly warm for a day in late August, causing the air to feel oppressively heavy with the smell of the cornfields and cherries ripening on the tress. With the coming of autumn, the inhabitants of Lewistown would always start harvesting its famous chokecherries that grow all around on this side of the mountain. This was one of the few things your hometown was famous for, prompting the town to organize an annual Chokecherry Festival. Even though the barn still needed a lot of work before it could host this year's Chokecherry Festival's annual dance, you were determined to replace the crumbling roofs of the cabins before the bad weather would start setting in.

You were working on the first cabin, stripping the roof bare till only the original framework was left which would carry the new roof. Chopping wood and stripping it was a lot of work, but you were determined to make the cabins as authentic as possible, which meant you refused to go to the hardware store and simply picked up the wood you needed. You found the hard labour comforting and it did wonders for your physique. You had been trained well and felt skilled enough to complete this project by yourself. Fixing the roofs in time would be a serious challenge, let alone finishing the barn in time for the Chokecherry Festival's dance. You were determined to see it through as such a large party would definitely be good for business and would really put you on the map with locals and visitors of the festival.