Flesh and Bone ◇ Bucky Barnes ◇

Chapter XXXIV: A Fire Red

Joana

Ever since that first night spent together, Joana and Bucky tried to avoid all attempts of physical contact. I should tell you that when the two woke up, they were facing each other, their faces only mere centimeters apart. She woke up first. The sun barely skirting over the horizon cast a youthful glow over his face. She breathed slowly, softly, hoping not to wake him. His arm was still around her waist. He looked peaceful in his sleep. He was handsome, the way he lay, with his hair cascading over his arm and face. With his stubble that needed to be shaved. With the way his lips moved...

Joana shook her head, looking anywhere but his face. She needed to control her emotions. She reused to force him to remember her the way she wanted him to. If she just straight up told him that he loved her, maybe he wouldn't remember the way he loved Natalia, or the girlfriend he had before her. If she just told him that she had survived all those years in HYDRA just so she could be with him again, then maybe he would think he survived the whole thing just for her too. She didn't want to shape his memory by telling him her perspective of things and if she couldn't get her emotions in order who knows what might. 

As she shifted, trying to move away from his all too perfect face, his arm tightened around her waist as he slept, the metal of his arm cool against her bare skin. Her stomach twisted and churned and all she wanted to do was scoot closer to him and kiss him like she used to. When she shook her head again to battle away the thoughts, he finally woke up. When he did so, he simply stared at her as she had done to him. 

"Good morning," he said finally, his voice gruff and coarse as one's is in the morning. She watched his lips move and then flitted her eyes back to his own. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, she rolled out from under his arm and off of the mattress. 

"It's late. I need to stretch before we train and then I need to go to work," she said, standing suddenly. She hurried over to where her clothes were stashed so that she might escape his gaze as she changed. When she emerged from their tiny bathroom, Bucky was just pulling a shirt over his head and her face flushed. 

She glowered at her self, shaking away the embarrassment that swept her. She was not some schoolgirl with a meager crush. She was a warrior, a survivor, a soldier, not a twelve year old girl. Bucky pulled up his hair into a bun. Joana saw fit to copy him. She pushed up the mattress against the wall to give the two of them room to do what needed to be done. 

You see, Joana spent years strapped to a chair, immovable. While the muscle memory is still there, it is the muscle in her body that has left. Ever since Bucky and Joana escaped, he'd been helping her regain that muscle that had left her. Days like today, when neither of them were required to be at work until later, they would train and practice. Joana was getting her muscle back and Bucky was still getting bigger. 

And it was during the training that they realized the tension that lay between them. At least, Joana did. 

After they stretched, Bucky and Joana began to spar, as they always did. Sparring was usually light between the two of them, with laughter and sharp wit, but Joana was in no mood for that, which Bucky quickly realized. 

"What's going on with you today?" He asked as she dodged a punch thrown her way. She didn't say anything, but instead she simply continued sparring. Bucky caught her around the neck with his arm and pulled her against his chest as you normally would, but the fact of being so close to him made Joana squirm.