Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today

"Would you mind holding this?" Rose asked as she handed Bucky one end of the plastic film that had previously been taped to the hot table in her studio.

The Aphrodite painting had just gone through a treatment to flatten the warped canvas. Rose peeled back the tape and mylar film from the face of the painting, moving around the table as she went. Bucky trailed a half-step after her, rolling up the crinkly plastic. 

It had been a week since the thrift store incident and, to Rose's relief, there had been no repeats. Sure, each morning she woke to find Bucky sitting with his back to her bedroom door, watching her. But he hadn't lashed out at anyone since then, not even at her. This also meant that Rose hadn't had a reason to break down in tears in a whole week, which was refreshing. "Just set those down on the middle shelf there." 

Rose handed the mylar to Bucky, who dutifully placed it on the shelf she pointed out and came right back to her side. She grabbed the painting by the tattered canvas edges and walked it over to a work table.

"She's already looking much better, but this canvas is gonna need a strip lining."

Rose pulled out her trusty step ladder from a corner and went over to one of the taller shelves. She climbed up to the second step and began digging around the box of Belgian linen scraps that she kept from other projects. Aphrodite wasn't a terribly big painting, so she was hoping to find a fitting scrap rather than cutting a new section of linen from the bolt.

She was elbow deep in the scraps box when something cold touched the small of her back. 

Rose jumped at the sudden sensation and nearly toppled off the step ladder. Bucky's other hand quickly gripped her hip. He kept a firm hold of her with both hands as she grabbed his shoulder and found her balance. Rose chuckled, her body quivering lightly from the scare. 

"Thanks." She squeezed his shoulder and returned her attention to the box.

But Bucky's hands didn't leave her skin. She tried not to think about it, about how close he was standing, how soft his hair looked today, how the gaunt angles of his face had begun to round out lately, or how maybe she shouldn't have work jeans and a baby tee today. 

It wasn't her usual attire, but Rose had felt like switching things up that morning. So she’d pulled on the vintage bell-bottoms and a graphic tee from the back of her closet. The outfit had felt right when she’d put it on that morning. But standing on that step ladder, with Bucky's right hand pressed to the bare skin at her waist and his left ring finger hooked in the loop of her jeans, the outfit felt even better. And that made her feel like crap.

Her stomach shouldn't swoop at a simple touch from a man who likely didn't understand what a touch like that could do to a girl. Every time he did something that made her heart stutter, Rose immediately filled with guilt.

She climbed down the ladder, a perfect length of Belgian linen in hand. Bucky kept hold of her until both her feet were planted firmly on the ground. Rose patted his arm in thanks while silently chastising herself. She moved to the ironing board in the corner of the studio and began working the creases out of the fabric. Bucky stood right behind her, watching the process over her shoulder.

He did that a lot lately. Rose had even noticed the intensity in his eyes dim over the last few days, it was replaced by startling moments of confusion, which he never verbalized, but she saw clearly. Rose did her best to tread lightly and treat him gently. Her movements around him were slowed, her speech softened, and her touch brief. Except for when she held his hand. He never seemed to want to let go after their train rides home.

Regardless, they appeared to have found equilibrium. Bucky had been more responsive to her words, even the ones not formed as ‘orders’ and he’d finally begun responding to his name again. Not Soldier or Asset. For Rose, that was the biggest relief.

"Bucky, will you go over to that cabinet," she nodded to the cabinet in question, "and in the second drawer get out the stuff that looks like tape?"

He did as asked and brought Rose the adhesive strips that she needed.

"Thanks," she beamed up at him.

Bucky sat down on the stool to her left and watched as she carefully picked threads off the edge of the linen.

"Why are you doing that?" he asked quietly. He’d been doing that more too.

Rose glanced at him. "You see how the edges of the canvas are really small and damaged?” 

She ran her hand over Aphrodite and Bucky nodded. 

"Well they don't leave me enough room to tack the painting to a stretcher, so I have to add canvas to the current edges so that there's something to put the nails into. Fraying the edges like this makes it so that when I glue on the strip lining onto the back of the canvas, it won't impress a sharp line on the front." 

Bucky's eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the painting. The fingers of his right hand brushed against the destroyed edges of the canvas.

"Basically, I want to make sure that any repairs I do aren't noticeable," Rose elaborated. "The goal is for people to see the painting the way the artist wanted them to. And the artist definitely didn't imagine a crease all around edges." 

"What if more than the edges are damaged?" Bucky asked in that husky near-whisper of his.

"Well, I guess it depends on the type of damage and the extent of it. If there's rips in the canvas I might use bridging techniques or try to weave the canvas back together, though that's a little more compli—”

"What if it's the whole thing? It’s all broken?"

Rose paused, watching Bucky as he stared at the painting. Something fluttered across his features and for a split second he looked so...small.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. 

"Well, in that case I’d start by pasting the face of the painting with mulberry paper, to make sure none of the paint chips off. Then it'll go to the hot table to flatten the canvas. After that I'll attach the painting to a new length of linen. The whole thing gets glued down. That makes it so the canvas can't move anymore, but it also makes the whole thing a lot stronger. From there I'll be able to work on the face without worrying that I'll damage it."

Bucky seemed to ponder her words for a long time as Rose worked on fraying the the linen edges.

"So it's not impossible to save?" He said suddenly as she was ironing adhesive onto the strip of linen.

Rose put down the iron and turned to face him. He sat looking up at her, eyes clouded. Her heart broke as she understood what he was really asking. 

"No, Bucky, it's not impossible. A little harder maybe, but so worth it." 

He blinked up at her and Rose held his eye until he nodded and looked away. Before she could think better of it, Rose reached out and brushed her fingers against his cheek. The stubble there scratched at her skin, but not unpleasantly. The last time she’d touched him like this was in the thrift store. Rose tucked a stray hair behind his ear and turned back to her work.

Her touch was unexpected and brief, but as soon as it was gone he wished it wasn't. Rosemary had a way about her that was shockingly, unfailingly gentle. Bucky hadn't experienced a whole lot of that in recent years.

"What does that do?" he asked just so he'd have an excuse to hear her voice. 

Rosemary glanced at him over her shoulder. The instant softening of her eyes wasn't lost on him.

"These are adhesive strips, I could use glue—some people do—but this is just less messy in my opinion."

Messy. Like inside his head.

He stared at her lips as she talked, only half hearing the words. The heavy throbbing in his head was a near-constant lately. He couldn't quite call it pain, but the pressure of it chocked the air out of him sometimes.

It had been disorienting at first—the remembering. It happened slowly, like the kindling of a fire. The memories came sporadically and he didn't known what to do with them. 

The most recent ones came first.

Him sitting stiff in the armchair, a cold cup of coffee on the table in front of him, a woman crying in the other room—the opening of the front door and Rosemary's smile falling on him like sunlight after days of darkness—her delicate fingers holding the metal plates of his hand, spinning under his arm—a blond-haired, bloodied man coughing up water on a river bank.

But sometimes, something older slipped through the cracks of that steel door in his mind.

Laughing in the back of a freezer truck—the taste of burnt pecan pie—little hands holding his and tugging him along. 

"I think I can get the isolation layer on before we head out today. That'll give her enough time to dry over the weekend and I can start the retouching on Monday," Rose talked as she worked. "Gotta let this cool first and tack it to the stretcher." 

Bucky blinked up at her. He couldn't remember if they'd met before he wound up hiding in this studio. He didn't think so, but there was something about the crinkles at the corners of her eyes that was uncomfortably familiar—he just couldn't put his finger on it. 

His mind was a jumble of information, much of it was still out of reach, locked behind heavy steel doors that kept him out. Each time he tried to recall something specific it came to him like the the pages of a redacted mission file, thick black lines hid the most important pieces from view. 

He turned the pages of his memory desperately, looking for context as to who he was and what he was doing here. But in his recent memory there was no mission but the one he'd assigned to himself: figuring out why Rosemary was taking care of him. It was trailed closely by the pressing urge to protect her.

Bucky sat and watched her move around the studio. While the painting cooled on the table in front of him, Rosemary gathered supplies. She retrieved a jar of short metal nails, a hammer, an odd looking pair of pliers, and the original canvas stretcher, which she had cleaned meticulously earlier that week.

His mind was still stretching back into those dark, frigid corners he feared shedding light on, trying to remember without destroying himself. Bucky didn't see what Rosemary was doing until it was too late. 

He'd hardly registered it when she began setting up the canvas and stretcher. Somewhere at the edge of his awareness, he saw her open the jar of tacks, watched her shake a jumble of them into her hand, and quickly stuff the handful into her mouth.

The stool he’d been sitting on clattered to the ground. Bucky rushed forward. The music on the studio speakers was a roaring buzz in his ears. Even Rosemary's startled squeak hardly registered. His mind was suddenly an endless expanse of white, the only thing with any color in it was the instinct to protect. 

Bucky reached her a split second after Rosemary had spat the tacks out into her left hand. With her other she reached for him. Her fingertips on his chest were the only thing that kept any sort of distance between them.

"Bucky, are you okay? What happened?" she rattled off questions in a breathless panic, all the while scanning him head to foot for any sign of injury.

Her words cut off promptly when Bucky took her face to between his hands. Rosemary's eyes grew wide, her breathing hitched. Her cheek was hot against his palm. She opened her mouth to say something but was quickly cut off. 

Bucky pressed his thumbs between her lips and opened her mouth wide, tipping her head back to get a better look inside. Rosemary made a startled noise and stumbled, grabbing onto his metal wrist to catch her balance.

He tilted her head every which way, scanning the inside of her mouth for cuts or signs that she’d managed to swallow any nails. Finding none, he pulled his fingers from her mouth and released her face.

Rosemary panted where she stood in shock. Meanwhile Bucky grabbed her hand, which still held onto those metal tacks, and squeezed her wrist gently, but with enough pressure that her hand unfurled. He quickly shook the tacks into his own hand and dumped them back in their glass jar, screwing the lid onto it as Rosemary watched in stunned silence.

"Why did you do that?" Bucky demanded in his low, gruff voice. 

"W-What?" Rose stuttered out, still reeling from the way he’d cradled her face so gently and then unceremoniously shoved his fingers into her mouth.

Bucky jabbed a finger at the closed jar of tacks. "Why?" he barked.

Rose blinked up at him, still clinging to his wrist, desperately trying to understand what he was asking. She ran through the last ninety seconds in her mind, trying to see things from his perspective. When it dawned on her, she doubled over in a fit of giggles.

"I'm sorry—I'm sorry, it's not funny." She wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye. 

Bucky continued glaring at her down, a spark of frustration broke through his usually stoic façade.

He grabbed her upper arm and stepped closer, abruptly cutting off the last of her laughter. Metal fingers constricted gently around her arm.

"Why," he demanded again.

"Bucky," Rose sighed with a small smile and laid a hand on his chest. "I wasn't going to hurt myself. That's how I hold the tacks when I'm putting a canvas on the stretcher," she explained.

The rapid heartbeat beneath her palm didn't slow.

"I guess it kinda looks insane, but I promise it’s safe. People have been doing this for hundreds of years.” 

He didn't look convinced.

"Look, I'll show you, okay?"

Rose moved to reach for the jar of tacks but a firm, warm hand clamped onto her wrist. Bucky kept her pinned there, pressing her hand firmly back against his chest. Rose drew a stuttering breath, and tried to focus on anything other than how warm he was and how firm his chest was under the blue henley.

"Bucky," she tried again. Her head tipped to the side to get a better look at his shadowed face. "Let me show you. Please?"

He didn't exactly look convinced but after a long moment, he let her go. Though, when Rose stepped up to the table to grab the tacks, she could feel the heat radiating off him as he followed a half-inch behind her. Rose grabbed the jar and fought off a smile. It was sort of sweet, the way he worried. To say that this new side of him gave her hope would be a gross understatement.

Rose struggled with the jar for several seconds before lifting it up to examine it. She sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Bucky, you bent the lid," she chastised gently.

She lifted it for him to inspect, which he did without any sign of remorse. Rose nearly rolled her eyes at that.

"Can you please open it for me?" 

Rose held the jar out to him, waiting patiently for him to take it. He did so slowly, almost reluctantly. Cold metal fingers brushed over hers as he pulled the jar from her hand. Bucky's eyes never left her face. Rose swallowed, hoping he couldn't hear the sudden pounding of her heart.

The scraping of metal on glass broke her trance. It was over quickly and Bucky held the open jar out to her.

"You owe me a new lid," she joked and poked him in the chest. The touch didn't pose the same threat it would have just a few days ago.

"This is called spitting tacks," she explained, shaking a few of the small nails into her palm. "You keep them against the inside of your cheek, so it's actually pretty hard to swallow any on accident."

Rose threw the tacks into her mouth like taking a pill and maneuvered them to sit between her cheek and teeth. Bucky's focus remained sharp on the movement.

"And when I need a tack, I just pull one with my tongue." She demonstrated, her voice slightly muffled, showing him the flat head of a metal tack between her teeth.

Rose grabbed the hammer from the table and brought it to her lips. The tack jumped from her mouth and stuck to the magnetized end of the hammer. She pinched the edge of the canvas with one hand and pulled it taut, with her other hand she used the hammer to drive the tack through the canvas edge and into the stretcher.

"Just like that," she smiled at him, a small lump in her cheek where the tacks sat.

Bucky blinked at her. Rose lifted the magnetic hammer head to her lips again, waiting to see if he would stop her. He didn't. Her explanation seemed to have assuaged his concerns, but he still watched her like a hawk as Rose worked to finish tacking the canvas onto its stretcher. He seemed to breathe easier when the final tack was driven into the wood and she set down the hammer. 

"See? Nothing too crazy." Rose chuckled and lifted the painting onto the worktable.

Bucky said nothing, simply continued to watch as she cleaned up the remaining tacks and pulled out a large brush and a bottle of clear liquid.

By the time Rose had applied the isolation layer and cleaned up around the studio it was nearing sunset. They'd stayed far later than she'd meant to and even from a few feet away she could hear the hungry gurgle of Bucky's stomach.

"Come on, let's go home," she said to him while flipping off the studio lights. 

Bucky followed her out the door and stood at her back while she locked up. Rose tested the doors to make sure they were properly shut, then threw her keys into her tote and started down the sidewalk. She didn't get far before she was tugged back by the belt loop of her jeans.

Rose whipped her head around but Bucky had already released her belt loop. Her lips parted to ask if everything was okay, but before she could get the words out Bucky's hand wrapped tightly around hers and he tugged her toward the subway station.