Bucky Barnes Imagines

To Love

Love has to be the most complicated word in the universe. A plethora of meanings and feelings fall behind the entirety of this four letter word.

One might argue it is highly overused. That it should be used explicitly towards things and people we truly desire or care for, wholeheartedly.

Others might counteract, stating the term is accompanied with a wide variety of definitions — therefore it can, and should be, used to express anyone's feelings as they please.

Bucky was most definitely not the latter.

Bucky Barnes was a complicated man. He had suffered through, quite literally, the coldest of times. His heart had been broken, his soul lost hope.
Broken was an understatement. The torture that resided in his brain after decades was way too broad a subject to be captured in such a shallow word.

Love was a subject Bucky would rather not touch on. It was something he only knew the meaning of, or the meaning of his own perception of it.

Love, to Bucky, was seeing Steve alive after a mission of chaos and violence. It was being welcomed to the team with open arms. It was even the banter he threw at and received from Sam — even if Sam claimed he held hatred for the man.

Bucky associated love with happiness. Anything that brought him joy. Things that, even for a moment, made him forget the immense amount of heartbreak he went through all those years.

That was all Bucky cared to associate with the word. He never cared to explore the romantic side — until he met you.

You were perfect. A spitting image of heaven on earth, an everlasting light to the darkness that he drowned in. A sweet syrup he was happy to be stuck wrapped around your finger in.

You fit together, rather comfortably. You almost never argued, always calmly listening to the other side of the story and talking it out afterwards. You knew each others favorite things, often gifting the other with a favorite just to put a smile on their face. Your relationship was easy and painless, you cared for each other.

The relationship remained that way for months. You spent weeks after weeks gaining his trust, Bucky spent weeks gaining the courage to give it to you.
By the sixth month, you were perfectly stable — maintaining a healthy relationship. By the seventh month, you realized you were in love with him.
It was a slow transition. Every other day noticing another one of his qualities you admired more than ever. You had already fallen in love with the basic things; his smile, his laugh, his sense of humor and big heart. However, you knew you were truly in love when you fell for his insecurities. You fell in love with the way he found comfort in your side after a nightmare. How he feared using his metal arm while intimate with you. How he opened up to you about his past and trusted you wouldn't judge him.

From the beginning, you knew falling for Bucky came with a lot of baggage, but now instead of watching him carry it, you carried it as well.

It had been a quiet morning sitting with Nat and Clint when you finally admitted your feelings to yourself. The two had been chatting, unaware if you were included in their random conversation or not — you weren't. You were thinking to yourself, mind still a bit hazy from a night of sleep while you sipped a cup of coffee, tracing your pointer finger along the blue, ceramic rim of your coffee cup.

The thought had crossed your mind several times — wether or not you were in love. Something about that morning made you shift your thoughts to yes. Maybe it was the previous, intimate night, or the fun events you spent out with Bucky the day before.

Excusing yourself from the room, you dawdled along the compound for a little, collecting thoughts, especially in the elevator on the trip to Bucky's floor. He had just returned from a run with Steve, and was most likely in the shower, so you took your time.