Rosalie Kasten is out of luck and out of time. For the last two years, she's been living on borrowed time. After her involvement with the death of Edwin Pierce - Alexander Pierce's son - it's only a matter of time before Hydra comes for her.
James...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
« 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒓𝒕𝒚-𝑺𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏: 𝑺𝒖𝒎 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒚 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒔 »
"𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝛐𝐮 𝐬𝐭𝛐𝐩 𝐦𝛐𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠!?"
"I'm fuckin' sick of Strange, and I won't stay for even a minute longer," James grumbles while trying to get on his feet.
Rosalie can see how much it hurts, and it has to be so much greater than the small amount he's actually showing. He keeps in everything, pain included, so the fact she's seeing anything at all, tells her a lot. He pushes her helping hand away and supports himself on the wall.
"Fine. We'll leave, but only if you let me actually help you because that right there is just pathetic," she scoffs while gesturing to the wobbling that he's pretending is walking.
"Shut up, Kasten."
"Not with the last name again."
She rolls her eyes. He only uses it when he's angry at her, which is pretty much every time he needs her help. It's always such a battle until the end, where he reluctantly agrees. It's clear he's either too proud or too untrusting to say yes to her help, which is stupid because God knows he needs it.
"Oh my god, come on," she mumbles and pulls his metal arm over her shoulders.
"I don't need-"
"Yeah, yeah. You don't need my help."
She smiles. Bucky doesn't need her help when she's awake. When she sleeps? As soon as he's sure she's knocked out, he cuddles up to her. Rosalie can feel her heart swell each time it happens, and she finds herself pretending more and more to be asleep to have his body close to hers, arms wrapped around her. It does feel a little pathetic, but there's no way she's going to admit it to him and ask him to cuddle her. It's just... nice.
He doesn't make more of a fuss as she helps him over to the counter, where all their trash is. Most of it is hers, but he still starts cleaning up. They could leave the mess for Stephen to clean, but he said he'd never patch either of them up again if he could see they had been there. Rosalie had no trouble agreeing to that.
Rosalie works as fast as she can because there's no doubt in her mind that he'll try to climb his way to the car downstairs. She had left the two men alone for less than a minute and suddenly, James wants to get out as soon as possible. She's curious, but too exhausted to question it again. Of course, she couldn't coax anything from him. Smiling and Sam's techniques doesn't even work on him.
She puts the mattress away and makes sure the rubbish all goes in the right places before starting to wash the floor where they stayed. Rosalie will get it out of Bucky eventually. She's too curious about their strained relationship not to. Honestly, anybody who interacts with him is interesting to her. Seeing him navigate the world is... fascinating.
