INDY

Despite the moment of worry I’d had after telling Bucky about SG-4, he stayed affectionate and attentive. It was only every now and then that I looked at him and noticed something in his eyes — something he was holding back. And I couldn’t help but attribute it to that moment when I’d almost told him how horribly drowned in love I was with him. The moment when I’d explained it away. Lied.

I loved every bit of him, missing and intact. I loved his scars and his smiles. I loved his strength, but I loved his weaknesses more. I loved the soft parts of him that he kept buried until it was only the two of us. I loved the way his heart beat against mine and the way he fit next to me. I loved the confidence in his eyes when he’d flirt with me, and the bashful way he’d rub the back of his head or neck the morning after a particularly intense night together. I loved how protective he was and how gentle. I loved how forceful, how commanding, he could be when he wanted to. I just… loved him.

So why was I so scared to say it? I’d tried. A few times.

“Hey, Bucky?” I’d call, with my heart hammering somewhere near my throat.

He’d glance up and when his eyes locked on me, my nerve would dissipate like vapor.

I’d always misdirect him with some last-minute thing I needed his help with or an opinion on. The words would sit at the back of my mouth, feeling like a bomb ready to blow. And eventually, I’d have to find a quiet corner to slam my forehead against the wall.

How do you tell your boyfriend — a century-old super soldier with a past darker than night — that you’re in love with him?

Come to think of it… I wasn’t sure when the last time someone told me they loved me was. Probably my dad, but I couldn’t remember too clearly. I only had a handful of memories of him that were only blurred by time rather than forgotten completely. Emotions from years ago started flaring up.

When I was still adjusting to the loss of my dad, when my mom had turned her back to me, I remembered wanting more than anything to be loved. Or at least to feel loved. I wanted safety and someone who would keep my best interests at heart. Someone like Bucky. He made me feel it.

Still, when I started to tell him and the doubt set in, it was my mother’s back, walking out of our apartment door while I screamed and cried for her to stay, that I remembered most vividly. If he didn’t feel the same… would I feel the way I did then? Lost and alone? Just a little girl in a big empty apartment with no one to fill the silence? Would I always be chasing after someone, hoping to be enough that they’d stay?

I hoped not. But the longer I went without being able to force those damn words out of my mouth, the more sure I started to feel that something was wrong with me. How long would it be before he figured it out and decided to leave, too?

I knew, objectively, that he would never do that. Our personal relationship and feelings aside, I was his job. Protecting me was his assignment. Even without the tangled strings of our professional and personal lives, he would never abandon me and leave me vulnerable.

But if he were to change his mind about this… How the hell would I recover from that? How would I look him in the eye every day at work when we finally returned to our lives in New York? How would I live just down the hall from him, knowing the way his snores could rumble through an entire bed frame? Knowing the exact order he undressed in. Knowing the way he felt inside me, his eyes locked on mine in a way that made me certain that this was the way things were supposed to be. Him. And me.

The dog tags that clinked softly against my chest with almost every movement provided a bit of reassurance. He wouldn’t have given these to someone he was willing to just toss aside. This was no fling for him. He felt something real for me. But the idea of admitting my love for him and being met with silence was jarring enough to keep me restrained.

“You alright?” he asked from the driver’s seat of the SUV as we drove back home from dinner at a local grill and bar one night. He lifted his hand, my fingers twisted together with his, and poked the side of my thigh. “You’ve been kinda quiet tonight.”

I tried not to look over at him, but I could see his small smile out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t help it. He met my eyes, glancing back at the road here and there. I drew his hand into my lap, rubbing the back of it with my thumb.

“I’m fine. Just got a lot on my mind.”

My smile didn’t even feel convincing to me, so I didn’t blame him for the unimpressed frown he gave me. He waited until we were parked in front of the cabin to speak again.

“You wanna tell me about it?”

If only I could…

“It’s nothing. Really.”

He gave me that same scrunched face, trying to read my eyes in the dark for the truth. “Indy, you know you can tell me anything.”

“I know.”I sounded defensive and I knew it.

“So… why aren’t you telling me?”

“Because, like I said, it’s nothing!” Maybe I was a little sharper with that one than I meant to be.

His eyes narrowed, and he pulled his hand out of mine, unknowingly causing panic to stir in my chest. “You’ve never kept things from me. Not purposefully.”

“There’s a first time for everything, Sarge,” I muttered bitterly, unable to look at him as I opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle. I don’t know why I said it, why I was being so belligerent. But I was snowballing. Was this how Bucky felt? Out of control?

I heard his door shut as I started walking toward the cabin, but I didn’t hear his footsteps. So I jumped when his hands grabbed my upper arms and he stepped into my path.

“Hey,” he said firmly, looking down at me with his best no-nonsense scowl. “What’s going on with you?”

What is going on with me?

The urge to simply lean into his chest and let him wrap his arms around me was overwhelming, but I forced myself to stay where I was.

“Nothing, Bucky,” I sighed in exasperation. “Please! Just back off.”

He flinched. Big. And I immediately felt like the world’s saddest sack of shit. His hands dropped from my arms, eyes wide and hurt, looking at me like he’d never seen me before.

“Wait, no-” I tried to reach out, but he was already turning away. “I’m sorry. Bucky, please-”

“It’s fine,” he called without looking back. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or sad — hell, he could have been doing calculus in his head for all the emotion he showed. “I’ll take the guest room tonight. You take ours.”

My heart throbbed as the door swung shut behind him. Ours. We’d been sleeping in the same bed, rooming together for five months now. It shouldn’t have felt so new to hear him say it. But it did. And it hurt.

This was my fault. I was doing exactly what I’d been upset with him for doing in the beginning. I was pushing him away. All because I was afraid of him doing it first. I wasn’t trying to, but… well, here I was standing in the dark driveway feeling tears spilling over my lips. And there he was, in the cabin, getting ready to spend his first night in months alone again.

I couldn’t let it happen. I refused to. So I rubbed the tears angrily from my cheeks, stormed inside and caught him walking across from one bedroom to the other with his pillow under his arm. I slid it out from beneath his arm and waited until he sighed and looked down at me.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked, holding the pillow against my chest. “I know none of this makes any sense-”

“So make it make sense,” he said, taking a step forward. The sympathetic look in his eye was killing me. “What’s got you all angry?”

“I’m not angry,” I tried to explain, shaking my head. My frustration was growing. With him for not just letting it drop. With myself for being so unnecessarily complicated and not being able to think up the words to explain it.

“Well, you’re something. So why? You’ve been getting more and more distant lately-”

“I don’t mean to. The last thing I want is distance from you. But-”

“But?” He sounded upset, and maybe a little scared, and he watched my eyes frantically.

“Th-There’s no but-” I tried to clarify.

“Indy, please,” he said in a loud, desperate voice. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks now,” I groaned, holding a hand to my face.

“What-” he shook his head. “What are you talking about? Can you just tell me why you’re so upset?”

“Because I-” love you. And I don’t know how to say it anymore. Telling you I loved the team was different. Loving an individual… requires more dependence than I’m comfortable with.

He waited. And waited. And I slowly closed my mouth as I became aware that tonight… wasn’t going to be the night I overcame this hurdle. Tears formed in my eyes. He was going to leave.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” his voice was soft, his hands gentle as he turned my face up toward him. He stepped closer, his warmth radiating against my body in a way that had me relaxing even through tears. “Everything’s okay. We’re okay. But you’re worrying me, Doll. Just… tell me if there’s something I need to fix and I’ll-”

“No,” I said immediately. “No, there’s nothing wrong. You’re… amazing. Honestly. I just have some really weird baggage, apparently.”

He gave me a semi-confused look, but smiled a little. “I can relate.”

"You may need to be a little patient with me.” I leaned against his chest and his hand slid from my cheek to the back of my neck.

“You waited for me,” he murmured, kissing my forehead. “I will always wait for you.”

BUCKY

I didn’t know what “baggage” Indy was talking about the night we nearly slept in separate rooms again; she was always so… normal. Much more so than I felt most days.

She was sweet and casually affectionate. She’d scratch idly at the back of my head as she walked by my seat at the kitchen table without realizing she was even doing it. Her eyes lit up every day I came home from work and she continued to give me half-adoring, half-exasperated sighs when she kissed me and glanced over my shoulder at the mess I’d tracked in. She did the doting house wife thing with the same ease she’d done her job.

So what was it that she was so worried about? What was I being patient with? She’d already given me so much. Her attention, her most intimate moments, her soft touch and healing smile. What was it that she felt like she was withholding from me? Because I was more than satisfied with the way things were. Maybe I would have liked to be able to say the words that pushed at the barrier of my lips every day and every night… but that would come with time.

We’d been living in Texas for eight months now. Eight months with no sign of Hydra, no word from our friends up north. Nothing but me and my girl. There were parts of me that were overly paranoid. Usually, radio silence that lasted this long tended to precede the types of blasts that deafened. But there was another, louder part that was screaming, “No news is good news!” That part was the one who insisted I roll over to kiss Indy an extra time or three before getting up for work, or nibble at the side of her neck while she cooked to distract her.

“Jeff, you comin’ out with the rest of us tonight?”

The voice yanked me out of my thoughts as I secured my tool belt to my motorcycle at the end of another long, sweaty day. A group of the other men I worked the roadside with were heading in the opposite direction, arms around shoulders, energy morphing from exhaustion to rowdiness. They typically hit a bar after work, usually coming back the next day with plenty of stories of appropriately rascally behavior. I had been invited out a few times, but between my close-to-the-vest approach to socializing, the woman waiting at home for me, and the fact that "Jeff,” — the man these guys knew me as — didn’t exist, I had ample reason to opt out.

I shook my head with a grin. “The wife’s making my favorite tonight. She’d kill me if I missed it.”

Hartman, the one who’d spoken out, gave me a fatherly smile and a nod. The 60-year-old was grizzled and large-framed, but tenderhearted.

Beside him, a stocky Hispanic kid named Eli shot me a discrete look of envy. The guy hit on every woman who looked at him, but never had much luck, despite being a decently handsome guy beneath the dirt and sweat of his day job.

He’d caught sight of my phone once during work and practically howled over my lock screen — a photo of me and Indy, her arms over my shoulders from behind as she kissed my cheek. Since then, I’d been the begrudging subject of a lot of jokes about being “whipped”. From grown men. Most of which were married. For no reason I could really explain, seeing the indifference of some of them to their own wives made me love Indy harder. But, those jokes did get worse the day she brought me lunch to the work site.

I’d intercepted her a few yards from the others, hoping to keep the razzing to a minimum that day. She passed me a boxed lunch and leaned up, her intent clear in her eyes. I’d glanced behind me at the staring men.

“James,” she said softly, her tone admonishing and teasing at the same time. “Are you not kissing me because you’re worried your friends will see you?”

“No, Doll, I just-”

“Good,” she said, smiling crookedly. “Then come here.”

I huffed out a sigh and rolled my eyes, but smiled against her lips when they met mine. Hoots and wolf-whistles sounded off from behind us and Indy chuckled, pulling back to grin up at me.

“I’ll see you at home,” she’d said, waving over her shoulder as she made her way back to the SUV. No words had ever sounded so sweet to me.

The other guys had given me a lot of hell for it, but I didn’t really care too much. I had my favorite girl in the world looking out for me, waiting at home for me, showering me with affection. Any amount of good-natured ribbing was worth that.

Hartman, a somewhat recent widower, had warmed up to me after that. I saw a wistful, nearly proud look on his face when I mentioned Indy, or grinned at the messages she left on my phone.

“Some guys have all the luck,” Eli grumbled, kicking gravel as he turned to walk toward the others.

Hartman and I chuckled for a moment before he turned and gave me another firm nod. “Tell the little missus we said hi.”

“Will do,” I called, hopping onto the bike and kicking it to life.

The ride home was longer than any commute I would have made in New York, but it seemed to grow shorter each time I made the trip. Besides, I had plenty to occupy my mind while I rode.

Indy and I… we were finally together. She slept in my arms every night, kissed my pain away, loved me through the night and harder, if possible, through the day. She’d accepted every part of me, and I’d done the same for her. Granted, that had taken considerably less effort for me than it probably did for her. I was so sickeningly in love with her that some days it hurt to keep it to myself.

But I was still mindful of the fact that what we had now was more than I’d ever expected to have. During my years as the Winter Soldier, the years on the run, the years after… I’d never thought romance, love, passion were things that were still on the table for me. I’d been so sure that ship had sailed when I’d fallen to my presumed death in the 40’s.

And then there was Indy, with her charming smile and sarcastic sense of humor. Making me rethink everything. She had no combat experience, no formidable physical strength. But she had skills that still baffled me. The thing that impressed me most out of her many admirable qualities was her kindness. Kindness she’d shown to me time and again before I’d even given her reason to.

She wasn’t normally the type to hold things in. Her pain and her sadness, she would shove down around most people. But she was always honest. Which is why I felt so uneasy about her demeanor lately.

She seemed to be hovering on her tiptoes over some invisible line, torn between being scared to fall over it and wanting nothing more than to tumble headfirst toward… whatever she was so scared of. It started small at first. She’d call my name and seem about to say something before the look in her eye changed and she came up with something else to say. I wasn’t going to push it. But it was getting worse.

For the last two weeks, she’d been more quiet and reserved. She still curled up in my lap in the evenings and kissed me like she wanted to drown in me. She still blushed when I gave her the look and laughed at what she called my “elderly habits”. But in the moments when we were quiet, when there was no conversation or meal to be had or work to be done, she got this look in her eyes. Like she was a million miles away. I wondered what she was thinking in those moments, but there seemed to be a pinched, stressed look to her mouth when it happened. I didn’t know how to bring it up without upsetting her further, but I was determined that tonight I would broach the subject and we could try to resolve it together.

"Indy?” I called as I walked in the door of the cabin, shedding my jacket. My keys made extra noise against my metal palm as I fished them from my pocket and deposited them in the bowl by the door. “I’m home.”

I was so used to our routine that I didn’t even look up as I walked through the doorway, didn’t register the silence. But the kitchen was empty, a pot of boiling water on the stove almost completely evaporated. Something was wrong. My spine stiffened, senses sharpening like a switch had been flipped.

Where is she?

I moved through the kitchen toward the living room, moving quietly as a shadow and cutting off the back burner as I passed. The door leading to the workshop was open.

Maybe she got caught up working on something.

The thought wasn’t comforting; too many holes. Indy would never have walked away and forgotten to turn off the stove. Or left the shop door wide open. I heard a sharp inhale from inside the workshop and found myself sprinting toward it.

“Ah-ah-ah,” a man’s voice stopped me just as my boots met the concrete floor. “Hold it right there. Wouldn’t want any accidents. Would we?”

I froze, my heart coming to a standstill in my chest at the sight of Indy tied to a chair, a strip of white cloth tied around her mouth, and a smattering of bruises across her face. Her eyes, filled with tears, met mine in panic, her chest heaving beneath the ropes holding her. Her arms had been pulled behind her, where a familiar asshole stood smugly holding a knife beneath her chin. Dennis McKay.

Two men in tactical gear flanked me, guns drawn and trained on my back.

“Well, Gemma,” McKay hissed into Indy’s ear as she flinched, “Your guard dog is finally here. Let’s tell him the good news, shall we?”

I tore my fire-filled glare from the blond man and looked back at Indy. My stomach plummeted at what I saw in her eyes: an apology. What was going on here?