introductions
With a small huff, Bucky turned back to the kitchen, your name on his lips, ready to cooperate when he heard your bedroom door slam. Fuck, he had taken too long to speak and now you were probably fuming in your room. He checked the time and realized it was late, you were probably exhausted from your day. He’d try to talk to you tomorrow, hoping you’d still hear him out despite the way he hurt you. Wrapping his arms around himself, he pushed himself off the couch and made his way to the other bedroom across the house.
Hugging yourself felt good, it gave you a sense of comfort as you try to calm yourself down. As soon as you closed the bedroom door, the tequila pulled all your emotions out and you sank to the ledge by the window, back against the cool pane. Your shoulders tensed as you quickly whipped your body around to stare into the darkness outside. Beginning to feel the anxiety rise in your chest, you yanked the blackout curtains shut to hide from the looming woods. The panic kept rising, along with the tequila, so you ran to the bathroom, and forced yourself to puked into the toilet, making you feel only slightly better.
You threw open the cabinets above the toilet. Lavender Epsom salt stood out so you grabbed the package and turned on the water for the jacuzzi, hoping a bath would help diminish the anxiety creeping into your body. Once too hot water filled the tub, you stripped down and fully submerged yourself in. You scooped a handful of salt, sprinkled it around, and ran it through your fingers, feeling it dissolve. Deep breaths fill your chest. In and out. In and out. The lavender filled your nose and your traps disengaged slowly and painfully. The scar on your back didn't sting anymore. Everything calmed down in your head. Finally. Okay. This is okay. Your mind went blank for a few minutes as you soaked in the scent and the warm water, not realizing as sleep took over.
You were so nervous on your first day at the tower. What was everyone like? Would they accept you into the team? Tony kept telling you to relax but meeting literal superheroes was almost too much to handle. He had to remind you multiple times that you were just as talented and important as they were with your skillset and that calmed you down. Slightly.
After you met everyone, and his steely blue eyes cemented themselves into your brain, Tony took you to your new room. Well, it was basically your own apartment, it was huge! He left you to explore it after he told you that everyone would be down in the training center sparring if you wanted to join.
“No pressure, but I think everyone wants to see how good you are. Prove to them I made the right choice in recruiting you,” he said, shooting a wink at you as he shut your door.
Your mind immediately pictured Bucky. Damn, that man was even more attractive and broody in person. He was the main cause of your nervousness; you did plenty of research on his history before you arrived at the tower and your heart fell for him. If you were able to, you’d travel back in time and torture Dr. Zola in the most sinister ways possible, dragging it out and making him suffer.
Shaking off the violence, you decided to indulge Tony and figured the outfit you showed up in was good enough for sparing. Glancing in the mirror, you took in your form. All torso and shoulders, you felt taller than you actually were, and meeting Natasha, Bruce and Tony didn’t help. She stood shorter than you by a few inches and Tony and Bruce only a few inches taller. You marveled at how seeing them on TV created a misconstrued perception of how big they really were. They were all so much smaller than you had expected, and it humanized them immediately. Sam was the only one who seemed exactly how you had pictured him, the most human out of all of them. The opposite reaction occurred when you met the super soldiers' Steve and Bucky. Those men were really fucking huge.
You were a bundle of nerves as you made your way down to the training center. This day was not a day you had ever seen in your future, but here you were, about to spar with the world's greatest assassins and soldiers. Peeking your head in, Sam and Nat were sparring and the camaraderie they had shown in the common room was nowhere to be found.
The first thing you noticed was how much bigger Sam was than Nat. He was no Steve or Bucky, but he still seemed impossibly large compared to her tiny figure and you watched as his right elbow came down to strike her, surly going to painfully connect with her shoulder- but oh? You watched her dodge impossibly fast to the left as she dashed to his side, hooked her right arm under his right armpit, gripping his shoulder as she jumped off the ground, pulling her legs up, using his arm as leverage to swing her right leg up and around his neck to then yank her entire body back down, bringing them both to the floor with a grunt. Before he could even react, her thighs were wrapped around his throat and she had a death grip on his right arm; if her grip were to tighten to pull his arm straighter, she would snap it. It was incredible.
“I yield, I YIELD NAT, Jesus!” With a smirk, she released him and rolled away, popping up to spot you peering around the corner, mesmerized by the show.
“Hey pretty lady!! You wanna join?” She asked you as you began walking over to them.
You weren’t sure if you wanted to quite yet, apprehension filling your body as everyone turned to look at you, expectation filling the room. You spotted Bucky, and he seemed to be the only one not looking sweaty and tired.
“The Soldiat over there was about to spar with me after I kicked Sam's ass,”
“Hey!!” Sam was definitely salty about their fight.
“But, I’m sure you could hold your own against him,” she finished with a mischievous look in her eyes.
Hesitating, you glanced at Bucky, noticing he already had his eyes trained on you. Unsure on whether or not to accept the spar on his behalf, Steve spoke up before you could,
“Ah man, I dunno Nat. I don’t think she should go up against him so soon. Wouldn’t want to scare her off on her first day here.”
Your eyes snapped to him. Glowering, you snatched hand wraps from a nearby bench and walked into the ring.
“I’m ready for it if you are Bucky,” you said to him, hoping he would accept so you could show the team just how scary you could be, even if the thought of fighting the Winter Soldier made your knees weak.
Never back down from a mission right?
You heard him sigh under his breath as he joined you in the ring.
In your haste to prove yourself, you missed the side conversation shared between Nat and Steve, the corners of their lips slightly pulling up as they spoke.
“10 bucks on the new girl,” schemed Nat.
“Oh, you’re on sweetcheeks.”
Everyone was cheering for you. You and Bucky had been neck and neck with each other for the last 20 minutes, both just as skilled as one another, and both unable to find a weakness. Unfortunately, you were getting more and more winded as sweat dripped down your face, and he seemed to still be fresh as a daisy as you watched his every move and slowly circled him.
He was impossibly quick and agile for his size, blocking your every jab, punch, and kick, using his flesh arm more than his metal one. You realized he was probably trying to keep that one away from you as he didn’t want to hurt you, but that made you more determined to find a weak point and exploit it.
People don’t go easy on you when they’re trying to kill you.
Shutting out your cheering fans, you took a deep breath and moved back towards him, throwing a kick at his torso. He blocked it, throwing it to the side and you used that momentum to throw your fist at his groin. Interpreting that, he moved his leg to the side so you smashed your fist into his muscular thigh and he snatched that wrist with his metal hand.
With a short intake of breath, as he actually had you in his grasp instead of deflecting you, you looked up at his face with a scared expression and he met your gaze, your faces only inches apart. His concentration faltered at your sudden closeness and the apprehension painted in your eyes and he weakened his grip on your wrist just long enough for you to wrench your hand out of his grasp.
You showed off a shit-eating grin as you simultaneously use his bent knee to vault yourself up, hooking your elbow under his neck and you twist behind his back and force him into a headlock. You wrapped your strong legs around his upper back, locking your ankles together, and tighten your hold on his neck, choking him as hard as you could, knowing he’s very capable of throwing you off at any moment. He reached behind him to grab your waist and you tensed, ready for him to chuck you across the ring but he… didn’t? Holding your waist, he gave you a slight tap, signaling that he yields. Confused, you lessened your grip and slid off.
Without even giving you a chance to ask why he yielded, he walked out of the ring, grabbed his stuff, and walked out. What the fuck. Breathing heavily, you turned to the others looking for an answer but they had the same confused look as you did.
Steve angrily slid Nat a 10 when you looked away.
This did not sit well with you. At all. You were used to sparring against men and them either beating the shit out of you or you beating the shit out of them, not them yielding when you caught them in a weak moment. Usually, it’s black and white when you spar but Bucky mucked it all up. In the shower, you got angrier and angrier as you asked yourself questions as to why he would do that.
Why would he yield like that?
Did you choke him too hard?
Was he getting tired? No, he’s a fucking super soldier and you’re just a human.
Was he upset that you got the best of him?
Or embarrassed?
Was it because you faked being scared that he had you in his metal hand?
Or because you used that to your advantage?
Oh.
Maybe seeing the way you reacted to his arm made him recoil and he actually thought he scared you. That would make anyone feel bad. God damnit. That was probably it. Now you felt really fucking bad.
Maybe you should go apologize. Or at least explain to him that you were just trying to exploit a weakness, you were just trying to win.
As you got out of the shower you checked the time and figured it was still early enough for you to go try to apologize. You combed through your knotted hair and threw on shorts and a T-shirt. You finally found his room and stood outside his door for a second while you tried to figure out what you were going to say to him. When you were about to knock, he swung the door open, one hand on the handle and one hand upon the door frame.
God, he was fucking gorgeous.
“Er, hey Bucky, I was actually about to knock-”
“I know, I heard you. Super soldier, remember?”
You noted the slight amusement dance across his eyes before he seemed to check himself and they steeled over,
“Ha, yeah, I almost forgot,” you offered him a sly smile, “uh, I actually came here to apologize to you,” you registered a look of confusion coating his face that only got deeper when you said, “I realized in the shower that I probably shouldn’t have exploited your arm like that. I know what you went through to get it and I know how much pain it’s probably caused you, so for a new person to come in here and act like they were scared when you grabbed them with it-”
“Wait, acted? You weren’t actually scared?” he interrupted.
“Uh yea, no. I noticed you were barely using it to deflect or hit me and I realized that was because you probably just didn’t want to hurt me. Once I figured that, I used it to my advantage to make it seem like you actually did hurt me with it, or at least made it seem like maybe I thought you were going to hurt me with it when you grabbed me, and I guess it worked because you faltered and then I got you in that headlock… what?”
His look of confusion had been taken over by a look of… appreciation?
He stared at you for what seemed like an eternity until he finally let a small, shy smile form on his lips. Damn, you could get used to that.
“Well Jordan, I have to admit, you are not what I expected.”
After a moment of hesitation you said, “well Bucky, I tend to exceed expectations.”
You still weren’t sure how he felt about you and you hoped you hadn’t crossed a line when you tacked on a slightly flirty tone. You didn’t miss it when the amusement danced across his eyes again. God, you wanted to pull more of that out of him.
“That you certainly do. Wanna go for round two? This time I promise, I won’t go easy. You’re gettin' all of me sweetheart.”