Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)

50 Freezing

When the sun began to come through the windows in front of the couch, Bucky woke again. He didn’t feel particularly rested, but Natasha was still snuggled next to him and remained fast asleep and the sight made him smile, despite how heavy his eyes felt and how he didn’t think, by the way every time he blinked, he saw memory-erasing machines and grim-faced doctors, that he would be having a Good Day today. He noticed she didn’t have any blankets and he wondered if that bothered her as he carefully stood, unwinding her from around him and stepping away. She stirred a little now, rubbing her eyes, and he remembered, his shoulders drooping, her insistence that he promise her he wouldn’t die. She didn’t understand, he couldn’t make her understand, that death could be his only option in the end, and he couldn’t promise that away. That could be like promising to himself that he might have to become Hydra’s unthinking, inhuman killing machine again, physically alive and emotionally dead, and that was not something he could do. But she didn’t understand and he didn’t know how to explain himself.

Bucky would have started some sort of breakfast for himself, but he didn’t feel hungry. He would have begun exercising, as he had taken to do in the mornings, but he didn’t feel as though he had the energy. Instead, he began rummaging through his kitchen, pulling out ingredients for omelets, something Natasha liked.

“Good morning,” Natasha’s voice came from couch.

“Morning,” Bucky said quietly as he cracked eggs into a bowl, which was sort of difficult one-handed, but he managed just barely. “Are you cold? We never got blankets.”

“Cold? In Bucky Barnes’s apartment?” Natasha said and laughed. He watched her stand and stretch. “Impossible.” Bucky obviously did not have one hand to hold the bowl of eggs and another hand to stir, but he'd gotten used to these minor annoyances and had learned to work around it. This morning, he set the bowl on the counter and pushed it up against the wall so he wouldn't have to hold it, and stirred the eggs that way. He consistently refused to admit defeat.

“I guess I keep it pretty warm in here,” Bucky replied.

“Warm enough to unfreeze, what is it Tony says? He calls you soldier-cicles?” Natasha said and turned to him, smiling and Bucky only looked down and shrugged.

“I just don’t like it cold,” he admitted.

“Well, that’s okay,” Natasha said. “Neither does Steve. Together, the two of you could deem a sauna too chilly.” Bucky stared into the eggs as he stirred, thinking about this.

“I didn’t know that,” Bucky said and there was a long quiet.

“That’s not your fault,” Natasha said and Bucky clenched his jaw.

“Yeah,” he replied after a while. He began thinking about everything else he didn't know about Steve. He didn't know his favorite food, or what colors he liked. He remembered next to nothing about their childhood. Bucky thought back to the hospital, and how good it had felt to sit down and talk to him for once, be straight-forward and uninhibited. He wanted to do that again. And the board games played over his hospital bed, the sketches Steve showed him before he left for a few hours. It had felt comfortable in a homey sense, like things were set right in both of their worlds that they could sit down and be at ease with each other. Bucky wanted to do that again. He wanted to remember everything that had been cut out of him. He wanted to relearn the things that were gone.

"What are you thinking about?" Natasha asked and Bucky looked up, realizing that he had been silently stirring eggs for a very long time. He set down the fork and poured the whisked bowl into a saucepan.

"Nothing," he replied quietly. Natasha accepted this answer and crossed the room to join him in the kitchen. Just like everything else, he’d discovered, cooking omelets one-handed wasn't too much of a struggle, but it wasn't easy either. Natasha knew better than to take it from him, though, and she only leaned across the counter and watched. "We should call Steve over and start making plans," Bucky said after a while.