One Night In Brooklyn | Bucky Barnes 1940's

9.30 AM

The minutes that followed seemed to be a blur. Eloise did everything she could to put herself together again. Piece by piece. But nothing felt like it was sufficient enough. Not the hair. Not the make up. Not the clothes. Not after he had spent so many hours unraveling her, layer by layer.

She had felt safer when exposed in the darkness of the night. But in the daylight, she could hardly look at herself in the mirror. She had no interest in knowing what it felt like to meet her own eyes, at least not in this state. There wasn't an inch of her body that didn't carry his scent, or his touch. She would never be able to wash away the confessions resting between the folds of her sheets. The secrets they had shared felt like a tattoo. Or a scar. She was forever marked. It was the stuff she used to roll her eyes at.

Her body would always know his touch, his scent, his laugh, the way his tongue felt against hers. The way his mouth felt on her skin. The weight of his arms wrapped around her body. The way he said her name. She would never be able to un-hear it.

Before the start of the night she had always been under the impression that sex was the most intimate of moments you could share with somebody. But her mind had been changed. There was a strange sensation in her body. A tingling down her arms that fluttered out to her hands. A shooting of sparks reaching her fingertips. She felt like if she touched something it would catch on fire. An obsessive itch, almost.

The pounding in her chest grew more intense. She had to bend over the sink and grip it hard to regain her normal breathing.

"What's wrong with you?" she gasped to herself.

She tried to focus her mind on reason, but all she could think about was how she had revealed the darkest parts of herself to someone who had held them up to the light. The fact that Bucky had lingered on her skin wasn't the most intimate they had been, it was the fact that he now seemed to reside under it.

"No" she shook her head violently. "Don't do this, Eloise" She told herself.

She decided another cup of coffee before heading off to work would do her good. She needed to distract herself. And she needed the energy, having barely slept. But as her hand reached for Bucky's mug to put it in the sink, her fingers twitched oddly, and the cup slid of the edge of the table and straight onto the floor.

"Great" she sighed to herself, grabbing the broom and pulling out the chair. She swept all the broken pieces into a neat little pile on the floor, but as she bent down her eyes caught something that wasn't a broken piece of cup. She carefully reached her hand out and picked up a green button. Eloise flipped it between her fingers, carefully examining it. The feeling in her thighs came back, the same feeling she had felt on the balcony. A jolt of electricity. Making her want to run.

Her eyes flickered up quickly to the clock hanging on the wall. It was 9.35.

Without even thinking twice, she grabbed the closest piece of paper, scribbled something quickly and bolted for the front door. She grabbed her coat on the way out as she threw herself down the stone perron leading up to her apartment. She took off down the street.

"Where's the fire?" Someone yelled at her in passing as she pushed past people on the street.

"Sorry. 'scue me. sorry. watch out. 'scuse me" was all she was able to blurt out between shoving herself into people that were coming and going.

She lived 12 minutes from the station. 10 if you were walking with purpose. She hoped she would make it in no more than 8.