Redemption ||Bucky Barnes||

22. Adventurous

The temperatures continue to punish us through January and into February.

You can definitely see a change in us both now. Bucky is more relaxed, I think more so because we're together. I sometimes think that it's a bad thing, that he's too off guard now. When we first got to Washington, he was all about hiding here in the cottage and lying low. Now, he wants to be the social butterfly and go one place every day at least.

Maybe he's losing his mind.

Valentine's Day was spent outside of the cottage. It was a sweet time, and we pretty much treated it like a normal day. It was your traditional Valentine's Day: dinner and a movie. The dinner we went out for, the movie we came back to the cottage to watch.

February became nothing, and soon March rolled in. I learned a few things in March: Bucky is not a winter person, although I learned that once the cold started to settle in. His birthday month is March, the exact day being the tenth. He's technically ninety-eight now. It's hard to swallow that I'm legitimately dating a ninety-eight year old man.

With April came the showers and the warmer temperatures. We got a lot of rainy days, very little sunny days. The rainy nights were when Bucky and I snuggled more, it seemed. I didn't know why, but the thunder bothered me. Maybe it resembled gunfire, and gunfire reminded me of Vanessa and her killer. How she sacrificed her life for both of ours.

While the hours, days, and months fly on by, I constantly think of S.H.I.E.L.D. and what's left. Our phones haven't gone off once, not even for an alert. I sometimes forget they even exist, the phones. What if they never get used? What if Bucky and I have to spend the rest of our lives in hiding? I expected finding a new base would take some time, sure, but this long? Not that I was complaining. Bucky and I had settled in, eventually, in Washington. Almost like we were normal people living normal lives.

Oh if only.

Maybe we could live our lives in the shadows, we are doing a pretty decent job now. We haven't had any incidents. We want it to stay that way. For once, S.H.I.E.L.D. is avoiding Hydra's detection nicely. It's harder to find your enemy when they're spread thin.

I yawn hugely to a nice May day. I stretch my arms, hear Bucky shift beside me in bed. I roll my head to see him still asleep, or faking sleep. His hair seems like it's grown very little, it's almost shoulder length now. It looks more unruly by the day, more so in the morning.

I massage his scalp gently, he smiles. He's definitely awake.

"I'm not a dog, Dani," he groans, forcing his eyes open.

"Good morning to you too," I retort. "What's on the agenda today? Are we going out again?"

"Why wouldn't we?" He pulls me so that I can lay my head on his shoulder. "I'm thinking we should go a little more...dangerous."

"Dangerous?" My brows come together.

"I think adventurous might be a better word," he admits. "We've been kind of quiet lately."

"Buck, we've been the quiet couple since we've gotten here."

"I think you'll like what I've got in mind. It'll maybe jog your old college memory." He smiles coyly.

Something twists inside my stomach. I'm not sure how accurate Bucky is about me liking his "adventurous idea".

* * *

Adventurous is definitely the better word to describe what's going on.

We're at perhaps one of the loudest, busiest clubs Washington has to offer. We got here just as the sun went to bed. Most inside are people around our age—I should say my age. I keep forgetting Bucky looks around my age, but he's far from twenty-seven.