Words On My Skin

Chapter 10

Bucky: I'm sorry. Please talk to me.

Bucky: I know that you talk to me about work stuff, but I miss talking about other things... I'm sorry for pushing you.

Bucky: I just get worried about what happened when we met happening, again. I want you to be able to defend yourself, because I don't know what I would do if you got hurt... I'm sorry. Please, come see me.

Bucky: What's wrong? It's 2am, and I can feel you through the bond... Are you okay?

Bucky: Can I please come see you? Steve said you looked tired, and now I'm worried...

Bucky: I don't like communicating through FRIDAY. Can we please talk? I miss you.

Bucky: You know, we live a room apart... you can't avoid me forever... Plus, we kind of work together...

Bucky: DID YOU SERIOUSLY JUST DIVE INTO AN EMPTY OFFICE TO AVOID STEVE AND I??

Bucky: Okay. I'll leave you alone... I'm sorry.

Bucky: I'm going on a mission, today. Be safe while I'm gone, please.

God, you were such an asshole...

It wasn't that you didn't want to talk to him. Not at all. You wanted to talk to him so badly, that it felt as if you had someone squeezing your heart like a goddamn stress ball.

Hell, you were a fucking stress ball.

You missed him...

You missed talking to him, from the stupid shit to the deep, dark secrets.

You'd felt like you'd taken two steps forward and about one thousand steps back. The agreement to start opening up to each other was supposed to include shit like whatever happened in the gun range... but, if you were being honest with yourself, you were completely embarrassed. You'd totally had a friggin' meltdown in front of him, after the stupid gun safety bullshit, but you weren't even sure why.

You didn't understand what you'd seen.

Remembered?

You weren't even sure if it was a memory.

You'd been avoiding Bucky for an entire week, and yes – embarrassingly enough – you'd panicked and jumped into an empty office to have a mental breakdown about how you had no idea what to say to the man.

Handshake your fear.

That was something you'd always told yourself when times were rough, but it seemed that the words were starting to lose meaning... You said them more, as of late, than you ever have since you first heard the stupid phrase. Ever since the shit with HYDRA began.

You didn't blame Bucky. Hell no. You couldn't. He was just as much of a victim of HYDRA as you were.

No.

More than you were.

He'd been a victim for decades.

You didn't blame him for your meltdown, either. He had nothing to apologize for.

You did.

You were the chicken shit that decided that the best way to deal with what happened was to avoid him, making him feel like shit. Which was not your intent. At all. You merely meant to deal with your shit in privacy... not to have him blaming himself for 'pushing you'.

How was he supposed to know that you were going to go all melt-down on his ass?

You stared at your cellphone, the gut-wrenching feeling of guilt making tears well up in your eyes – blurring the words. You bit your lip, keeping it from doing that embarrassing wobble it did when you were about to cry. You'd wanted to talk to him, reply to his texts, and go back to having lunch together every day. You were sick of stress-cleaning, and stress-working. You just wanted your soulmate back.