find me

43. keep it under control

21st October

When he woke up that morning he could feel it brewing in his bones. Something was shifting. It felt like a whisper in the air, and even though it was yet unclear what kind of change it summoned, he knew it was imminent and not good. It was a shiver, striking down his spine that froze his skin and his blood. That sensation, it always felt like a warning. 

It was never good.

He had felt it in his guts walking to work, and then again on his first delivery of the day. His head had swivelled back in urgency, thinking that someone must have been staring at him with the way his nape tingled, but there had been no one there. He didn't doubt himself though. When his instincts told him he was being watched, it was never a good sign. When his senses got alerted, there was always something lurking in the shadows. And even when no one seemed to be observing him in that moment, he still felt the certainty of near danger approaching, as clearly as he then felt Natalie's arm draped over his torso. 

He was aware of how easy it would have been to become a paranoid man, after everything he'd been through, and with the kind of job he had. But he knew the difference between paranoia and intuition. Maybe this was a sign that they needed to move on, that it wasn't safe here anymore. Maybe it was time to leave again. Part of him immediately hurt at the idea of leaving what had become a very comfortable little paradise. He was too aware that maybe that comfort was one of the reasons why his gut feelings might be signalling danger. Comfort was extremely dangerous in this kind of job. He couldn't allow himself to become lazy, and unfortunately comfort meant laziness too. He would inevitably start slacking, losing his sharpness and focus. That was the easiest way to not see trouble before it was too late, to not be ready when it inevitably came.

It was particularly hard thinking about leaving this place because of how much progress they had made with each other between these walls. Obviously he didn't think the house had been particularly active in helping, but the fact that most of those moments which had brought them back to each other happened there, it carried great sentimental value. 

And he really couldn't think of telling her. Forcing her away from yet another place she had just started to acclimatise to. Not that she wouldn't have understood. He knew she would have. This had been the deal all along, they both knew what their lives were going to look like for the foreseeable future. 

But prior knowledge of this reality didn't make accepting it any easier.

"Busy brain?" Natalie's voice suddenly shook him from his dissociative moment.

"I thought you were asleep." He responded softly, his eyes lowering to where her head rested on his chest.

She yawned and hummed lowly. 

"Not really." There was no tension whatsoever in her tone, and her body seemed completely at ease splayed around and over him. It had become very natural whenever they tangled together in bed to end up in that position. She basically used him as a mattress or a pillow; but he never once complained, because while being possibly one of the cutest and most adorable things he had ever experienced, it also somehow slightly softened the jagged edges of him that so often made him feel broken. 

Of course, the feeling of her sumptuous body pressed against him was also a welcome bonus.

Bucky's lips tilted in a small amused smile.