INDY

Week 9 was upon us. Christine’s next visit was only a few days away, and Bucky and I were both getting antsy. He started jogging laps around the island daily, taking up a good chunk of the morning. It gave me the space I needed to carve out my own little morning routine.

He’d kiss my forehead and whisper that he loved me before he left every morning, and after I laid in bed warm with his affection for a while, I’d eventually be forced to get up and vomit before I could start in on relaxing myself. Bruce warned me that my blood pressure was steadily rising each time he checked, so I figured I’d take Christine’s recommendation of prioritizing self-care seriously.

I spent a good hour of my morning sipping coffee Bruce had ordered for me (decaf, eugh) and reading over the test results and research on the pregnancy. Bruce’s claims of Bucky and I being genetically ideal for each other was substantiated through the levels of progesterone I was exhibiting. I’d had to look it up, but it was higher than normal.

Bucky’s genetics had been altered in a very… strange way. He was incompatible with nearly any other human. He could only ever have children with me — and maybe one other person out there, but chances of meeting them were nearly nonexistent and chances of Bucky even liking them were even more scant. For pretty obvious reasons, Hydra wanted to retain the possibility of natural-bred super soldiers. So his fertility with anyone else would be in the basement. But with me, with the right "environment”, he was almost overly fertile.

Basically, his swimmers were close in attitude to him. He didn’t like people, but when he did, he loved them. His sperm was useless to most people. But to the one in 8 million it was willing to work with (me), it was heavily effective. Which is why it obliterated any amount of protection my birth control had provided us. If I had to guess, he’d gotten me pregnant probably the first time we’d had sex without a condom. And even then, it was kind of miraculous it hadn’t happened before, even with the latex barrier.

I settled the papers back inside the file folder I’d had opened on the table and closed it just as Bucky was coming in from his run. His hair was knotted in a bun at the back of his head. I’d never been a fan of man-buns. But Bucky pulled it off like no one I’d ever seen.

He smirked and leaned down to kiss me as he made his way to the fridge. “Morning, Doll,” he said through heavy breaths, pulling a bottle of water from the fridge. “Doin’ okay?”

He leaned back against the kitchen counter and I pulled my legs up into my chair, resting my cheek on my knee as I hummed in affirmation, my eyes still glued to him. I’d read online that some women experienced increased libido during pregnancy. I’d always found Bucky to be attractive. Even in the beginning, when I would pretend not to notice how jaw-dropping he was (when he wasn’t scowling). But now… For the last couple of weeks, I hadn’t been able to keep my hands off him.

“You keep looking at me like that and we’re going to miss Bruce’s appointment,” Bucky said, his lips still pulled into a cocky little smile, blue eyes shining with mirth.

“What, like he’s got a waiting room full of people?” I asked, letting my eyes rake up and down his body. He wore a pair of dark sweat pants and a sleeveless shirt, a light shimmer of sweat highlighting every curve of his muscles.

His expression didn’t change, but his eyes darkened as he took slow, deliberate steps toward me. “You got somethin’ to say, Indy?”

I felt myself starting to smile. The cheesy, shit-eating smile of a young dumb girl completely in love.

He crouched down in front of me, leaning just close enough to brush the tip of my nose with his. “Come on, Doll. Don’t leave me in suspense.”

But what was I supposed to say? There were no thoughts in my head. No coherent ones, anyway. All I could focus on was the color of his eyes, the tilt of his head, the softness of his smile. Things I loved so deeply, it felt like my heart might actually burst from my chest. But I couldn’t vocalize that.

So I shrugged and just looked at him, bringing a hand up to trace the top of his cheekbone. He could see it in my eyes. I knew he could. He leaned his face over into my palm and just… watched me, still smiling.

“You’re the most… incredible girl,” he murmured, sounding a little far-off. “I’m glad I found you in this ocean of Time.”

I leaned forward to kiss him, my heart thrumming with happiness. His tongue met mine, the taste of him like a well-loved memory by now. My fingers were just lacing themselves behind his head when he nibbled just a little sternly on my lip and pulled away, grinning.

“Let’s get going,” he breathed. “Then we can come back here and do all the things you’re thinking about right now. Okay?”

Today was yet another round of urine and blood pressure tests. I peed in a cup and let Bruce strangle my arm with a water wing. Then I sat on the edge of Bruce’s medical table, Bucky standing next to me with his big hand pulled into my lap, just waiting.

“Still the same,” Bruce muttered to himself, staring down at his tablet through his glasses. He frowned, green creases bending into existence near his eyes and mouth.

“Something wrong?” I asked worriedly, fidgeting my fingers around Bucky’s.

Bruce looked up at me, hesitated for a minute, then shook his head with a sigh. “No, it should be fine. It’s not very uncommon. But your blood pressure is rising and there’s too much protein in your urine.”

“Gross.”

“Chances are, you’re developing preeclampsia. You won’t have any symptoms for a while, but before long you may start having headaches, vision problems, pain in your ribs, increased vomiting…”

I scowled. “Wonderful. You know, I was told this was a magical time and that I’d glow. Instead, it sounds like I’m going to be curled up in the fetal position, hating the world.”

“Not far off,” Bruce conceded, shrugging. “Just be glad you don’t have HG. One of my cousins had it. Lost her first pregnancy to it.”

“HG?”

“Hyperemesis gravidarum. It’s like morning sickness, except all day every day for the whole nine months. People with HG usually can’t keep anything on their stomachs because of decreased esophegal strength. It’s hard for them to gain weight, hard to stay hydrated, hard to get the baby the nutrients it needs.”

I swallowed thickly and was forced to admit that Bruce was right. It could be a lot worse.

“Luckily, your little one seems to be pretty sturdy, given the fact that they survived your attack,” Bruce grinned to himself, pleased and still reading the tablet’s readouts.

I stiffened, squeezing Bucky’s hand reflexively.

Your little one.

We’d have one of those before long… wouldn’t we? It just kept surprising me.

“Must take after dad,” Bruce continued distractedly.

It was Bucky’s turn to go rigid. I could imagine why.

Dad.

I felt Bucky’s eyes on the side of my face, but I was absorbed in my own thoughts. Thoughts that equated to a lot of TV static and 10-foot walls of flame engulfing everything. Then his other hand was touching my cheek, chill fingers gently turning my face. And he was there, his blue eyes and dark lashes the only thing I could see, taking up my field of vision entirely.

“It’s all going to be okay,” he whispered, but I could tell the words were as much for himself as for me.

I nodded, only aware in my peripheral attention that Bruce was awkwardly turning away from us to find something else to occupy him while we had our moment. “I know it is. I’ve got you. And you’ve got me, right?”

My voice was quiet, almost ragged with nerves. His mouth quirked up, eyes melancholic in that way only he could pull off. He lifted my hand and settled it over his heart, holding it tightly in place.

“Always, Indy.”

BUCKY

I sent Indy back home ahead of me. “Go home and get some lunch. I’ll be there soon. I just wanna talk to Banner about something.” And I did, spitting out every convoluted thought in my head that I could manage to articulate.

“So you’re having anxiety about the baby,” Bruce rumbled, settling onto an oversized chair. “That’s normal. Even for people who don’t have super soldier genetics to deal with.”

I sighed and leaned against a lab table, feeling every bump in the 100-year-long road I’d traveled in my tense back. The worries that continually plagued me had been an unwelcome companion during my morning run around the island.

“I don’t think-” I hesitated, then shook my head. Bruce wasn’t my therapist. He didn’t need to hear all the doubts that still swirled around in my head.

Bruce cut his eyes at me. “Spit it out, Barnes,” he teased awkwardly, using my usual words to him during our lab time.

I sighed heavily, staring down at the sterile metal tabletop beneath my hands. “I don’t think Indy made the right decision.”

I could feel his confusion, like it was a tense fog rolling through the room with us. “What decision?”

I took my time answering, just to ensure my voice would remain steady. Even so, it cracked over my single-word answer. “Me.”

I saw Bruce’s enormous arms cross in my periphery. “She doesn’t seem to think that. As a matter of fact, she seems happier than I’ve ever seen her. Stressed, sure, but she’s always dealt with a lot. I don’t think she made the wrong decision. And I don’t think she thinks she did, either.”

I let out another sigh and nodded my head, even though his words settled on the surface of me like oil atop water. I don’t think I fooled him.

“Look,” he said slowly, glancing covertly toward the door of the lab. “I may have something to… take the edge off.”

I straightened up, staring warily at him. Was he offering me drugs or something?

“How long has it been since you were able to get drunk? Or even buzzed?”

I shook my head. “Too long to remember.”

He grinned a little mischievously and suddenly looked like a huge, green troublemaker. “I’ve got something you might like. I assume Indy’s told you my, erm… condition was caused as a side effect of research and testing with super serum.”

I nodded, crossing my arms.

“Well, because of it, I have a similar issue with my metabolism. I can’t get drunk, either,” he strode over to a small refrigerator that held a bunch of test tubes and one big ceramic jug, which he removed, grinning toothily. “Not without this.”

O o 0 o O

The sand shifted unevenly beneath the toe of my boot as I leaned sideways on my bar stool. Bruce’s bar was a relaxing kind of place. Somewhere I could have seen myself riding out the types of storms that tormented those affected by super serum. A warm breeze ruffled my hair, dark strands interrupting my vision as they came out of the loose bun I wore.

“Better, right?” Bruce asked slowly, smiling as he spread his arms out to either side, still nursing a full ceramic jug.

I nodded, smiling easily. “Much.”

The last hour had seen us slowly loosen up around each other with the help of what Bruce jokingly referred to as “social lubricant”. He’d asked what kind of drunk I was, probably to make sure he wasn’t going to be sending a raging super soldier home to pregnant Indy. I hadn’t even been sure anymore. Back in the war, I was a happy drunk, charming, maybe a little overly confident. Well, it seemed that was one thing that didn’t change. I wore a wobbly grin, the numbing effect of the alcohol finally permeating my senses. It had been too long since I had felt so wonderfully uninhibited.

“So,” Bruce started, dragging the word out. “You and Indy… I never got to ask, but how’d that happen?”

I looked down at my metal hand, smiling at vague memories, warmth spreading through my chest and across my face. “We just… happened. I wasn’t looking for it. I don’t think she was, either. But she…” I shook my head, lost for words to describe the girl who’d ripped a cord in my heart and restarted it like a rusty old lawnmower.

“She’s a good kid,” Bruce said in agreement with my unfinished sentence, nodding as he tipped his jug back again.

“She’s my best friend,” I murmured, distractedly working a grain of sand out from between the metal panels of my palm. “She’s never treated me like everyone else does. Never looked at me like she was scared I might hurt her. Never doubted me without reason. And I gave her plenty of reasons in the beginning. I fell in love with her a long time ago, and she… was completely oblivious.”

The two of us laughed together for a moment, the drunken chuckles of a couple super people.

“You didn’t do anything about it?”

“What was I going to do? Ask her to put her own safety on hold so I could take her on a date? I thought I was poison. I didn’t want to take the chance that she’d actually say yes and…”

“And?”

“And then she’d be taken from me like everything else.”

Bruce frowned to himself across the bar from me.

“But then she was attacked. Targeted by Hydra. And I realized I was eventually going to lose her whether I let myself love her or not.”

“It was that easy?”

I huffed out a chuckle, shaking my head. “Hell no. I was stubborn. She had to smack me with that reality when we went on the run. She’s good at that.”

“You know, it’s kinda heart-warming,” Bruce said in a deep voice, sliding another full jug across the bar top to me. “Seeing little Indy wrap you around her finger.”

I still had enough presence of mind to grimace, lifting the jug to tap it against Bruce’s.

INDY

I woke up with a start, the sound of a gunshot ringing in my ears. Sweat made my hair stick to the back of my neck and nausea flipped my stomach so that I had to launch myself from the bed and through the hall into the bathroom.

The gunshot had been imagined, of course. A horrible memory dreamed back into the forefront. The deaths of the two Hydra goons in the initial attack on the compound. Two faces I could hardly recall and also barely stand to search for details in. Two deaths I’d forced into reality.

The memory didn’t resurface often. But when it did, it always hit me heavier than I expected. Usually I’m a faster learner. Bucky said it never really got easier, dealing death. It just became something you learned to live around. Not unlike the rift in my family that I’d adapted to but never fully recovered from.

When the vomiting subsided, I splashed my face with water and checked the time. I’d been so worn out after the meeting with Bruce that I’d come back to our bed and fallen asleep, forgoing lunch entirely. I frowned at my phone screen. It was already 4 in the afternoon. Bucky had said he was right behind me earlier. Had he managed to get himself lost during such a short walk?

I unlocked my phone and tried to fight an irrational spike of panic. It made absolutely no sense, but…

What if something had happened to him?

My thumb hesitated over his contact info, ready to dial him in a heartbeat as I stepped out of the house and onto the beach. It only took a few minutes of walking to hear them. Two deep sets of laughter, one of them so deep it seemed to come from beneath the beach, echoed up the sandy stretch toward me. Bruce had shown me the bar he and Tony had erected so long ago. A thin awning of what looked like bamboo over a simple wooden bar stocked so similarly to Tony’s old penthouse bar that I felt like I was watching time bleed through itself.

What I saw there was both unfamiliar and so amusing that I had to stop a few feet away and cross my arms, biting my lip to curb a giant smile. Bruce, green mouth stretched wide with drunken guffawing, stood behind the bar with a few ceramic jugs nearby, some turned onto their sides.

Does Bruce make moonshine?

Bucky, my favorite grump in the world, had seven little drink umbrellas stuck into his hair, cheeks red as he leaned sideways on his barstool, his elbows keeping him supported against the bar when his laughter threatened to knock him to the sand. I’d seen him drink countless times. I’d never once seen him drink enough to actually feel the effects, much less display them. But Bucky Barnes was currently hammered. If I couldn’t tell from his uncharacteristically loose stance and the uninhibited freedom in his voice, the look on his face when he turned to see what had caught Bruce’s attention would have been obvious enough.

His blue eyes were bleary, but they locked on me, and his jaw slackened as he stood from his seat, wavering a little.

“Indy,” he said softly, laughter forgotten as we closed the distance between us. He took my face in his hands, brushing his thumbs along my cheekbones. “There you are.”

I hadn’t realized there was still stuff he was holding back on me, but he was undeniably more open now. He didn’t even attempt to hide the affection on his face, the dopey smile he aimed down at me.

“Having a party without me, Sarge?” I teased, poking him in his unfairly firm stomach.

“You can’t drink,” he rationalized in a sweet, drunk voice, eyebrows raising sympathetically as he traced the different angles of my face with his fingers. Then his lips tilted up into a smile that nearly made my legs go entirely numb with desire. He dropped to his knees in the sand and wrapped his arms around my midsection, pressing his face into my stomach. “You’ve got my baby in there.”

I chuckled, giving Bruce a shrug that he seemed too alcohol-saturated to really register (to which he gave a corny thumbs-up), and started plucking tiny umbrellas from Bucky’s hair.

“You’re so pretty,” he murmured, looking up at me with his cheek smushed flat against my abdomen.

I snorted and put a hand to his other cheek. “You’re sweet when you’re drunk.”

He looked like he might roll his eyes, but the effect that would have on his equilibrium probably made him rethink the move. “I’m always sweet to you.”

“I’m gonna take him home, Bruce,” I announced. “You gonna be alright on your own?”

Bruce gave me a funny look and slurred, “I’m the Hulk,” like that obvious statement should answer my question.

I shrugged - he had a point - and hooked my arm beneath Bucky’s, helping him to his feet. “Let’s go home, Buck.”

He sighed happily, straightening enough to throw his arm around my shoulders. “Home,” he said the word slowly, like he was tasting it. His steps as we walked back up the beach were heavy, unlike the quiet, cohesive tread I was used to. His smile remained lopsided and stunning, and his eyes darted from his feet to my face frequently.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked as I kicked the front door closed behind us.

“What kind of something?” I helped him shift himself into a seated position at the table in the kitchen, butting my thigh against his as I stood beside him, his hand stroking my waist affectionately.

“You and that Grant guy… nothing ever happened between you two?”

I raised my eyebrows. Ben Grant. I hadn’t thought about him in months.

“You and Sam, I swear,” I chuckled, shaking my head. “No. Nothing ever happened between me and Grant. I was a little hung up on someone at the time.”

Bucky gave me a confused, wobbly frown. “Is he bigger than me?”

“He is you, dummy.” I leaned forward to kiss his puckered forehead.

“Oh,” he breathed, his arms slowly encircling my waist, his nose skimming my collarbone. I felt one of his thumbs rubbing along my ribs in a back-and-forth motion. “Good.”

My arms wound around his shoulders, holding his cheek to my chest as I lowered my face to his hair, breathing in deeply and letting my eyes slip closed. Could he hear the security he brought me in the steadiness of my heartbeat? We’d only been holding each other for a few moments when I felt something wet dripping down my chest.

“Bucky?” I whispered, trying to pull back to look down at him.

His arms tightened on me, a sob breaking through his tightly clenched jaw as he buried his face in my chest. Tears filled my eyes immediately. I’d never heard him like this… never seen him quite so broken-down. He wouldn’t let me look at him.

“Bucky,” I said, running my hands down the back of his neck, over his arms. “Hey, look at me.”

He sniffled and shook his head, burrowing deeper against me. “Don’t leave.”

I barely heard his gut-wrenching words. But I managed to get him to loosen his grip just enough that I could take a seat on his thigh, still holding him tightly.

“Why would I leave?” I murmured softly, my heart pattering painfully against my ribs.

“I don’t think you will,” he mumbled into the side of my neck. “But I’m scared… I’ve lost everything. I can’t lose you, too. Not now, after everything. I know you know about my nightmares, but lately they’re worse…”

A chill ran through me. “What do you mean?”

“I have horrible dreams… about Hydra finding us. Taking you and the baby away from me.” He finally lifted his head, looking into my eyes, tears still rolling down his cheeks. “Losing you is my worst fear, Indy.”

“You won’t lose me. Not ever. I’m always going to be here, nagging you to do the right thing,” I chuckled weakly, smiling at him even though my own worries were so achingly similar.

He held up his pinky finger, one metal digit shining like it anticipated my own. My smile softened into something that felt more natural, and I wrapped my pinky around it before pressing my mouth to his. He tasted like alcohol from outer space, but the soft brush of his lips was just the same as that first night on Pepper’s couch.

“We’re together,” I said between kisses, each one a promise. “That’s how we’ll stay.”