find me

25. honey

September 27th - Madrid, Spain

Natalie couldn't bear it anymore. It had been almost three weeks of hiding in the same apartment, doing nothing but sleeping, cooking, taking showers and reading the occasional newspaper that Bucky would bring home. 

When they first moved into the little flat in Madrid she understood why out of the two of them it was less conspicuous if he found a job and not her; she also understood when he said it'd be safer if she hid as much as possible, avoided leaving the house as much to prevent people from noticing her. Creating a pattern was dangerous, so making friends was an obvious big no-no, which meant the only interactions she was allowed to have were of the random kind. So, yes, she spoke those few words with the shop keepers once a week, and sometimes even said hi to the postman when they happened to bump into each other while she took the trash out. But that was it. 

And that wasn't nearly enough. She was positively done with the whole thing. She was never a party girl, an extrovert, who needed social interactions in order to survive, but having Bucky as the only person she could interact with was starting to drive her mad.

She understood why those rules were in place. Hell, she had tried (and failed) to set very similar rules for herself when she moved to New York. 

And yet, she hated them with every part of herself. She was starting to feel caged, trapped. 

She felt alone. 

And the more time passed, the more those feelings grew, leaving her quite frankly keen to break said rules in favor of some taste of life, some fun... or just a normal conversation where she didn't need to hide her frustration or tiptoe around sensitive subjects. 

Of course it didn't help that things between her and Bucky weren't going great. They were drastically deteriorating. The distance that she had started feeling between them since he came to get her from Mar's apartment was growing more and more evident by the day. Whatever thought, worry, curiosity, desire she had was either kept for herself or wearily shared with Bucky, and oftentimes met with alienating coldness. Natalie didn't know if it was mostly because of her admittedly rebellious and passive-aggressive attitude, or if it was because he was being downright impossible almost all the fucking time. Speaking with a brick of walls had proven to be more successful. She could barely stand him as it was, but it really seemed he was trying particularly hard to antagonise her. Whenever she dared to ask for updates about her mom, or S.H.I.E.L.D. or god forbid the following steps of their escape and hiding plan, she would just be met with silence, deadpan stares, grunts and more silence.

She was so done. With him, with this life that she was forced into, with this fucking flat.

One thing was having to hide in a country far away from your home not knowing if she'd ever be able to actually be safe, another was doing that with a grumpy, stubborn man who would barely speak to her.

Not that she had that much interest in speaking to him, really. 

If spending the past three weeks together in Madrid had shown her anything it was how incredibly blind to reality she had been when she first met him. This man who went around carrying a gun, who checked for hidden devices in the flat every time before going to bed or started an argument over her "going out too often to get groceries" was nothing like the man she had met in New York. He was cold, and calculating and... scary.