Bucky
As they entered the house, Pietro asked, "Can I take a shower?"
Violet, while locking the door, answered the man heading towards the bedroom, "Make yourself comfortable. Your pajamas are in my wardrobe. You can get the towel from the cupboard in the bathroom. I'll make us some tea."
"I don't want tea!" the boy shouted. While searching for the pajamas he had left at Violet's for sleepovers, he added, "We're having a girls' night! We're going to eat a ton of junk food and drink wine."
"You know there’s no junk food in my house."
As a gust of wind swept through the middle of the living room, the girl rolled her eyes. When the same wind came back, Pietro had left a bunch of junk food packages on the kitchen table. "Take another look."
"This is quite the show-off, though!"
As the boy moved back to the bedroom, he scolded her, "Stop whining!" He was actually worried about her. If he discovered that she was calorie-counting again, he would lose his mind. Also that crush Violet mentioned today earlier... Another possibility he was considering was Violet’s secret platonic crush being someone from the Avengers. Vision was clear. Tony was old. Clint was married. Steve had once mentioned wanting to take Violet on a date, but Pietro had begged him not to, confessing his own love for Violet, and Steve had backed off. Still, he could sometimes sense Steve’s lingering interest in the girl. If Violet liked him, there was no barrier between them, which took Steve off the list of suspects. Strange was the demon—Violet had him using his mind to maintain extra calmness and concentration during challenging surgeries, so they spent a lot of time together, which really bothered Pietro. Strange was always flirting with Violet. Violet flirted back, but often it was just to irritate Pietro. Pietro had told her he didn’t like Strange. His aim was to keep her away from him, but it had backfired. The first person she was closest to among the Avengers was Wanda, but since she had moved to a country house with her boyfriend and chosen a quiet life, Strange had taken her place.
Pietro? Are you crazy? They had known each other from their days in Hydra's torture chambers, when they were just little kids. Violet had slapped the nine-year-old Pietro who tried to kiss her during their first encounter. Pietro had fallen in love with the six-year-old girl who delivered the slap. Over the years, this experience had become a story Violet would laugh about. For Pietro, it had grown into an unrelenting love. As love eventually blended with affection, respect, trust, and peace, Pietro realized he was cursed to never be able to love anyone but Violet for eternity.
Not finding his pajamas on the top shelf of the wardrobe, he bent down and opened the drawers. In the first drawer he opened, there were socks. Without looking in the second drawer, he reached in but immediately recognized what he had touched and closed it back without looking. He had touched the girl's underwear. He felt guilty and excited. The excitement only made him feel more guilty. He tried to calm down for a few seconds and then shouted from the room towards the living room, "Honey, I can’t find my pajamas."
"They’re exactly in where you put them!" the girl yelled back.
As footsteps approached, Pietro pressed his lips together to avoid laughing. Violet entered the room and shook her index finger at him, "If you call me 'honey' one more time today, I'll castrate you. That way, we'll literally have a girls' night!"
"How about my sweet little girl?"
"Pietro!"
"How's my little world? Because you’re so tiny?"
Violet giggled, "Pietro, Django!"
"Or maybe something sweeter? Let’s think about it. Actually, you have the potential to be a pie. Tough and crispy on the outside, soft enough to lure someone to hypnosis on the inside..."
"Shut up!" She stopped him with a flushed face, trying not to laugh. She bent over to the wardrobe and handed Pietro’s gray pajama set to him, "Can you find the towels?"
"I don’t think so," he said, following Violet to the bathroom. The girl grabbed a towel from the mirrored, tall bathroom cabinet and, as she closed the mirrored door, saw Pietro taking off his shirt right behind her. She swallowed, "How many times have I told you not to undress in front of me? God!"
"I only took off my shirt. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. You’re so sensitive today. Wait, am I your secret platonic crush?" He bumped into her as she turned back to hand him the towel. He tilted his head to look carefully at the girl, who was two heads size shorter than him.
As Violet stared at him, she poked his chest with the towel, "Do you think I’m such a horrible person that I’d fall in love with my best friend and betray his trust?"
"If you loved me, it wouldn’t be horrible at all! Betraying my trust? You don't know what you are talking about."
Instead of following the breadcrumbs Pietro had left as clues, the girl didn’t even understand or see them. As always, she didn’t get it. While Pietro took the towel from her, Violet placed her hands on his body, which was cold in summer and warm in winter due to his super-fast metabolism, "God! You’re like a furnace!"
Pietro, trying to hide the movement in parts of his body he didn’t want to move at the moment, practically squealed, "You’re like a refrigerator! I could swear there’s no blood circulating in your body."
"Shut up." The girl moaned with pleasure and rested her cheek on his bare chest, "So warm," she said in a drowsy voice.
Pietro was making a huge effort to stay calm, "You’ve absorbed enough warmth, cold vampire!" he gently pushed her away, "If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower. I don’t want to delay our girls' night any longer."
"Okay, but please sleep with me tonight! I’ll give you the world! God! I love having a living furnace."
When the girl left the bathroom on tiptoe, Pietro leaned against the locked door. He took deep breaths, thinking about how much longer he could endure such pain. He wished he were Violet’s platonic crush. Sometimes he imagined scenarios where the girl came to him and confessed it before falling asleep at night. He allowed himself a few silent tears when he took his shower. For the rest of the night, he was determined to find out who that platonic crush was from Violet’s own mouth.
At the same moments, while poor Pietro had no idea what she was doing, Violet was texting Bucky finally. It was not a sudden courage, she was just sick of waiting.
Violet: I need to tell you something.
Bucky: I am listening.
Violet: Okay. I’m saying it as it is. I have feelings for you.
Bucky is typing... Stopped. Typing... Typing... Stopped... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Typing... Stopped...
After fifteen minutes of seeing the typing message, the reply she received was not even close to what she had imagined. If without the adrenaline coursing through her veins from excitement, she might have collapsed and fainted.
Bucky: Look, I’m flattered. Seriously.
Bucky: The wisest thing to do in a situation like this
Bucky:would be to say, "I have feelings for you too," I know, but unfortunately, I don’t feel the same way.
Bucky: But I’ll be here whenever you need me.
Violet didn’t remember what happened next. Everything had turned into a complete mess. After giving a simple response like, “Oh, really? Okay,” she had written a paragraph explaining why she liked him. She had also added a reminder of the time he had offered her money, saying, “For your golden heart.” In response, Bucky had written, “I used to be like you. I once fell in love with a girl and flew across the world on just plane tickets, only to watch her fall for another guy because he had money. You’ll lose this naivety over time, and it will be the best thing that ever happened to you, believe me. You’re not in love with me, Violet. You don’t even know me. We’ve communicated through writing far more than we have in the real world.”
Now, lying on the cold floor in a fetal position, sobbing and hiccupping, she didn’t even care that Pietro was reading through all of her message history. Everything was over. Her world had stopped. The only good thing in her life was gone forever. She wanted to confront Bucky and scream, “Why don’t you love me? Is it because I’m not tall, slender, and athletic? Is it because I’m not experienced enough to make a sex tape with you? Is it because I didn’t leave you for a more luxurious life and fly to the other side of the world like Yelena did?"
She had already forgotten about the boy standing over her with a towel around his waist, reading through all of her message history while ignoring the water dripping from his body onto the floor, but for Pietro, everything was just beginning. Bucky’s disgusting messages, his attempts to manipulate her… He reached the oldest messages. Bucky had written, “I just got back from the gym. I put in a lot of effort, but my mind is on you. I can’t seem to get you out of my head. Don’t worry, I’m not going to send you any nudes or anything, but I think we shouldn’t talk right now. I don’t want to do anything wrong. I might send that nude if we keep talking."
As Pietro’s stomach churned, he imagined hundreds of different ways to kill Bucky, who was playing with the girl like a cat with a mouse. For God’s sake! He had literally given her hope. Whenever Violet asked for more, he had confused her, using her lack of self-confidence to manipulate her.
He let go of the phone to avoid smashing it. He picked up the crying girl, who was howling on the floor like a wounded animal, and carried her to the bedroom. He could think of nothing but anger. He wanted revenge. He definitely wanted revenge, but more than that, the only thing he wanted was to shake Violet by the shoulders and scream, “I love you!” “I love you, do you understand? You don’t need anyone else! You don’t deserve to be played with by scraps of someone’s love. The only thing you deserve is to be overwhelmed with love!”
But he couldn’t do it. Instead, he lay down in bed with the girl who sought refuge in his arms and allowed her to continue crying, her tight grip leaving marks on his arm.
“Violet…” He rested his cheek against the girl’s hair.
Violet hiccupped, “Pie…” She couldn’t control her breath. “It hurts… so much,” she said, placing her fist over her heart. “I didn’t even know… my heart could hurt this much.”
Me neither, he thought. He wasn’t unfamiliar with this pain. He couldn’t decide which was worse: the sight of his true love crying for another man in his arms, or experiencing the same pain for someone else.