𝖗𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗 | 𝖇𝖚𝖈𝖐𝖞 𝖇𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖘 𝖝 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗

𝐼𝒱

Bucky didn't like to admit it, but he was nervous. Like, stupidly nervous. So nervous that he was sitting across a table from a girl and didn't even know what to say. No, it wasn't that he didn't know what to say - it wasn't like he was overwhelmed by her beauty, he'd spent too many years suppressing his emotions to be overwhelmed for too long; even though there were about ten seconds that he gave himself to take all of it, all of her, in - but that wasn't it. He'd mapped all of what he wanted to say out before this, and all of that still swam about his mind, but in fragments and in jumbles. There was so much on his mind, so much apprehension and so many bits of the past and fears for the future that he felt he was going to mess all of it up. Plus, he didn't want to ruin everything by revealing who he really was. Y/N seemed to view him as just some guy, and he wanted that to stay that way, he didn't want her to treat him like an Avenger, and it would kill him to realise that she feared him, so he remained virtually silent as if all of his life events and secrets would slip out if he opened his mouth. But then, Y/N asked him a question that could decimate his whole plan.

"So, tell me about yourself! We've barely even talked, and I want to know everything..." she trailed off. "Not everything, actually, just the stuff you wanna share." She seemed flustered and stopped talking before she could correct herself anymore.

Bucky breathed in sharply, trying to only disclose the bits of his life that wouldn't scare Y/N off. "Uhm, I grew up here in Brooklyn. I recently went to Delacroix, that was pretty fun. Oh, I'm an avid book reader, but you've probably guessed that already..." He stopped to think, but his thoughts were interrupted by Y/N's voice.

"I mean, what's happened in your whole life?" You could tell through her voice and tone that she was trying to seem as polite as possible.

Bucky spent two seconds trying to figure out what to say before he landed on it. What he told her wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't the complete truth either. It had the same meaning but under vague circumstances, he told himself in order to convince himself that it was the moral thing to do.

"In the accident that made me lose my arm, I also lost my memory. I go to therapy to try and get them back, though." He explained and repeated his reassurance in his mind - vague circumstances.

Y/N's eyes began to flash with the glow of a madwoman, and a small, excited gasp that wasn't exactly dainty flew out her gloss-covered lips.

"I can't remember anything from before I was thirteen! Sorry to make this about me, and I know it's not exactly under the same circumstances, but it may be! I haven't been told anything about before I was adopted by my adoptive parents, I could have been like, genetically manufactured in a lab or something and I just wouldn't know." Y/N giddily exclaimed, voice rising gradually until she received a death stare from a nearby diner. She muttered a quick apology and then continued. "God, don't you wish you could remember. Everything is such a mystery, and it is just itching to be solved, like a drill whirring in the back of my brain." She described vividly, using extreme hand movements to illustrate her thoughts but making an effort to remain quiet enough not to irritate other customers which didn't exactly work out by the end of her monologue.

Bucky felt sweat rise through him, thoughts racing on how to respond. How could he break her by saying that no, he didn't want to remember. Although he didn't like it, he used another one of those helpful half-lies.

"I don't know, I'm worried about what I'll remember. What if everything about the accident comes back to me and I have to relive that for the rest of my life." He responded, thinking about those awful nightmare-memories that greet him every night upon the closing of his eyes.

"Why do you go to therapy to remember then?" You could read on her face that she felt she was prying a bit too much by now.

"Oh, my doctor said that I had to." He had a sick feeling at the back of his throat now. He had to hide it all from her, for her own good, but he hated doing so anyway. She deserved someone who wouldn't lie to her.

"Sounds like a great doctor." She joked, "But, uh, if your therapist does memory stuff, could you maybe give me their number? Heavy question to ask on the first date, I know, hey cute guy I met at the library, I need therapy!" Bucky had an emotion rise in him that he wasn't sure he liked, one that he desperately tried to push down. He wasn't sure if it was some form of pity, or the realisation of the emotions that were hidden behind the self-deprecating humour, and the thought of how much he related to the self-hatred.

"Nah, nah it's alright. Just you can only see her if you get a doctor's note, I'm pretty sure." He wasn't even sure if this was a lie, it wasn't as if he had asked Dr Raynor how somebody else could be under her delightful care.

Y/N looked inquisitive, or some emotion along those lines.

"If you don't want to remember, why don't you just quit therapy?" She asked, voice laced with something that Bucky didn't want to face: concern.

"Oh, it's not that easy - I have this whole program I have to follow before I can leave." He said solemnly.

"Woah, the way you say that it almost seems like a prison sentence." Bucky laughed in a way that he hoped confirmed her theory. "Can't you just speed through that program and leave?" Her voice trailed off at the end, showing how wary she was in her mind.

Bucky felt his lip furl into a pensive smile that was somewhere between biting the side of his gum and a full-on beam. How did he never think of that before? How did that never cross his mind? In all his days of sulking and moping about his obligation, he'd abandoned any rational thought of dropping the torture.

"You know, I might just do that." He smiled wistfully.

Y/N leaned back in her seat, clapping joyfully and receiving yet another pointed dagger-like stare from a posh-looking man nearby. She ignored that, and loudly called:

"See! I'm not just a pretty face."

The man seemed to just give up on his attempts to silence Y/N. Bucky laughed, and tried to do something he hadn't really done in around a hundred years. Flirting. Flirting with a pretty girl, on a first date.

"But you do have a very pretty face." He muttered, dropping his voice in a way that he hoped was somewhat suggestive, not awkward.

Due to the silence that then hung over the room, he bit the side of his gums - too soon? Y/N then blinked, as if processing the concept of a compliment, but once she opened her eyes, she was smiling.

"Shut up!" She murmured playfully, desperately averting eye-contact for a minute. "But you're handsome, too." As she looked up, she said this, and almost made Bucky forget how to breath.

Despite the fact that she had agreed to go on a date with him, despite the fact that she had waited in the dark, outside of a library in a drafty-looking dress just hoping that he would show up, this was what confirmed to him that she was actually into him, that she wasn't stringing him along like the type of girls he had heard Sam complain about when they tried to make awkward conversation. When the waiter came with their starter, he was glad that he didn't have to try to respond to that without making a fool out of himself. Y/N shoots him a coy smile, holding up a slice of garlic bread in a toast, a way to clear the air.

"Bon appetit!"

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A/N: So I may have went on a 10 month hiatus, but school and work has absolutely been consuming all of my free time, so I've barely had any time to work on this. But I'm going to try to update more often now until I get suffocated by (school)work again. Thank you for reading this after so long <3.