Taken. (A Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes story)

Chapter 5

Same day

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Bucky walked out of the bed room with his plaid pajama pants slung low on his hips and his damp hair in a small ponytail on the nape of his neck.

"So tell me about this 'crashing a flying ship into the ice' thing you mentioned last night." He said as he got a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with milk.

Steve froze with his fork, piled with hash browns, halfway to his mouth.

"Well, the Red Skull was sending nukes to multiple big cities here on the east coast and the only way I could stop them from exploding and leveling half of the east coast was to land the ship on the ice." Bucky was glaring at Steve and gripping his glass tightly in his metal hand. "Except I couldn't land it on the ice so instead I nose dived into it and sank three quarters of the way in. But nobody over here got blown up because of it so it's all okay."

Bucky was breathing heavily now, his nostrils flaring with each exhale. Steve heard a small pop and looked at the glass in Bucky's hand, watching as small cracks began to appear.

"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" Bucky asked through clenched teeth.

"Well, this one time at boot camp, before I got injected with the serum. Colonel Phillips threw a dummy grenade out to test our bravery. You see he wanted this other guy to get the serum instead so he was trying to show Doctor Erskine how brave this other guy was. And without thinking I jumped on top of it thinking it was real and that it was going to explode so I could keep everyone else safe." Steve had dropped his voice to a low mumble and wouldn't look Bucky in the eye.

There was a loud shattering as the glass in Bucky's mechanical hand broke, spraying milk and glass shards everywhere. Bucky's breathing was coming in heavy pants, his eyes were closed and his body was shaking.

"Bucky? Are you-" Bucky's eye snapped open. They had lost this usual playful shine and it had been replaced by raging fury as his pupils contracted to pinpoints and his irises turned a darker hue of blue.

"What the hell is wrong with you! What would I have done if that grenade was real?! What would I have done if you had died! Do you remember how tiny you were?! A strong breeze could have snapped you in half! You would have been blown to bits and I wouldn't have had anything to bury! I would have nothing left of you Steve! Did you think about that?!" Bucky paced over to Steve and grabbed him by his left ear.

"Ow ow! Bucky what are you doing, ow?!" Steve was dragged to the bedroom by his ear. Bucky took one of the dining chairs with them and set it down in the corner facing the wall.

"Sit" Bucky pointed to the chair after he let go of Steve.

"What, no, I'm not sitting in a corner." Steve said as he rubbed the pain out of his ear.

"Sit. Down." Bucky growled between clamped teeth, glaring Steve into submission. Steve cowered under the fierce look and slunk over to the chair. He sat down with his shoulders slumped and his head down.

"You're going to sit here and think about how stupid that was." Bucky started to walked out of the room. "And you're sleeping in the sofa tonight, too!"

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As Bucky made dinner that night he got out a ceramic plate for himself and a paper plate for Steve to eat off of while he was still in time out. Steve's stomach grumbled as the smell of the chicken stir fry Bucky was cooking wafted into the bed room, he'd been sitting here for several hours and he was getting really hungry. He tried to get up and stretch but every time he went to stand up Bucky would yell "Don't you dare move from that chair!". It was like he could see through the walls.