Avenger's One-shots and Preferences

Come Back to Me- Bucky Barnes

This was requested by Harmonykirkey04 who wanted a Bucky one-shot where Bucky hurts the reader and has angst and stuff like that.

Angst, fluff...well you know the rest. Enjoy.

"Bucky?" you knock on the door to your boyfriend's bedroom...at least you hoped he was still your boyfriend. There was no answer from the other side. "Bucky please," you plead, knocking again; still no answer, "Buck. James? Please, can we just talk? It was only an accident, it happens. I know you didn't mean to hurt me. I know you would never do anything to intentionally hurt me. Please- don't shut me out."

"He still not coming out?" Steve asks you, noticing you at the door. He can also see the look in your eye that you were ready to break down in tears. You shake your head in response, feeling like the man you loved was slipping away from you; trying to reach out to him was like catching air with your bare hands. "He'll come around, I know," Steve assures, placing a hand on your shoulder, "he just needs time." "I gave him time," you sniff, "it's been almost three weeks, how much more time can he possibly need?" "...I don't know," Steve honestly admits; he may be Bucky's best friend, but with his friend being broken after decades of torture and abuse, it was hard to tell what went through the former assassin's mind now that he was finally free; did he still blame himself for the bad things he did even though the actions he caused were beyond his control?

Giving back you went back to your bedroom and flop on the bed in despair. You lay on the side of the bed Bucky always favored and breathed in whatever scent of his was still lingering on the pillow he slept on. It may have been only a week that's passed by, but you were already starting to miss him.

When you first met Bucky, you had a...vague idea of what he went through the last seven decades. When the two of you started dating, it still wasn't all clear as he kept closed off about the torture he had to endure. It wasn't until you spent the first night with him did you truly begin to understand. All those hard-worn years hadn't just damaged Bucky physically but mentally as well as he had a tendency to experience full blown night terrors in his sleep. It would start with him groaning and thrashing, which was what woke you up the first night with him. You tried shaking him awake but it had done no good as the thrashing escalated and now he was full on screaming. You were scared at the time and didn't know what to do, so you got Steve to help you out. He managed to wake Bucky up, but at the price of getting a metal fist to the face. Poor Bucky was covered in cold sweat and panted heavily. When he looked at you, he was relieved it wasn't you who took the punch, but felt bad that Steve had to endure the pain from it. When you asked if he was alright, he broke down and cried; you've never seen anyone so broken like that. You had thought all that stuff was wiped away when he came back from Wakanda; it turns out, the scientists there may have been able to take out the programming in his head, but they couldn't take out the bad memories, not without completely erasing his mind which would have reduced him to little more than a vegetative state.

It became a routine from then on: whenever Bucky was experiencing a night terror, you would get Steve and, always, Bucky would jolt awake and end up punching Steve, who learned to block the blows after the first night. You would then proceed to let Bucky hold you and cry on your shoulder, just letting it all come out and letting him either talk out the nightmares or just holding you and calming down. As your relationship with Bucky progressed, these incidents were becoming less frequent, but nonetheless terrifying for you. It wasn't so much the screaming or the thrashing that scared you, but the fact that you couldn't do anything to stop them completely and make them go away. It also terrified you that these night terrors were so bad that Bucky would violently react in such a way if anyone tried to wake him; sometimes they were so bad Bucky would rush to the bathroom and get violently sick. He still didn't tell you much about his time as the Winter Solider, save for the stuff he told you about in his nightmares; he didn't want to taint your mind with such horrid details and you didn't want to push him out of respect for his privacy about the past.