Faces of Bucky Barnes - More One Shots

1. Which Bucky Am I Writing Today?

I set up my laptop in my writing room while my husband settled in to watch the football game in the living room. It wasn't really a writing room; it was actually our bedroom, with one of those portable lap desks. Being comfortable while I wrote was important and sitting on the bed, with a tea on the nightstand and my favourite ambient music was how I wrote most of my fanfics, specifically Bucky Barnes ones.

First of all, if you haven't already read fanfic, you should. There are some incredibly creative people who write it just for the joy of writing as there isn't any money in it considering that someone else holds the copyright for the characters. Fair use provisions in copyright law allows for "amateur" writers to use the characters as long as they don't financially gain from their efforts. There's more to it but that's the gist of it. I write Bucky Barnes fanfic because I like the character and imagine plots of him in different scenarios.

That's what my dilemma was ... which Bucky was I going to write about? I was choosing between three versions of the man. First, newly promoted Sergeant Bucky Barnes, in his dress uniform, strolling into the dance at the Stark Expo with two girls on his arms. He was handsome, confident, and a man on the cusp of greatness. The second choice, the Winter Soldier, with long hair, brooding, dark, circa 1991, a chilling year for him. My final choice was Falcon and the Winter Soldier Bucky, at a more vulnerable stage in his life, just after he confessed to killing the son of the elderly man he became friends with. With sad eyes, lonely, and feeling isolated from society but knowing he had to be truthful to move ahead in his life in the 21st century.

Trying as hard as I could I wrote introductions for each version of Bucky but just wasn't satisfied with any of them and deleted what I wrote.

"Hey doll." I looked up. Sarge was sitting on a chair in the corner of my room. "Having trouble?"

"Yeah," I sighed. "I want to write something different about you, something that a reader will like because they haven't read something like it before."

He nodded. "I could take a girl to a dance, have a few drinks, show her a good time then finish with some alone time in the back seat of my dad's car or maybe her flat. Her roommate could be spending the night with her fellow so that we have free reign of the place."

I smiled glumly at him. "That's usually what you do," I replied. "It's okay, but I wanted something different this time.

He nodded then smiled broadly. "Coney Island! I could clean up at the shooting gallery and win you, I mean the girl, a stuffed animal. Then we go on the ferris wheel, and at the top with the view of the fair below us, I give you a kiss to remember before I ship out."

"Yeah," I replied curtly. "It's been done."

"He's just a boy, still thinking of chasing the girl," said a deep foreboding voice, and a tall hulk of a man, with long hair and a metal arm came out from a dark shadow in the corner of the room. It was odd it was so dark there because the sun was still up and everywhere else in the room was bright. "You should write about me, of how I worship you, even though HYDRA continually wipes the memory of you from my mind."

"Yeah," I hesitated, "but that's been done, too, as HYDRA is always wiping your memories. I need something different."

He flexed his metal hand and bore his eyes into mine. "Sex with this in play is always dangerous," he intoned.

"Sort of, as some writers work it in as a kink. I'm just not good at that. It doesn't feel authentic to me when I try to make it kinky and dangerous."

"Then why am I here?" he huffed. "If you're not going to use my obvious attributes ...." He stopped talking suddenly, becoming alert. "We're not alone. Someone is here."