Moving Out

The term ‘fixer-upper’ was too kind for the first floor of their new house. Bucky was cursing the previous owner as he patched up every last one of the holes that had been drilled, hammered, or punched through the drywall in the living room and hallway. He could only imagine the kind of anger issues the last schmuck who lived here had to have, this was some serious damage. Most of it had been strategically hidden behind the dusty, old furniture left behind, it wasn’t until him and his friend Sam had cleared the living room that he discovered the full extent of the damage.

It would be a frustrating enough job to spackle the walls with both arms, but with one arm down, it was going agonizingly slow. At least for Bucky’s standards it was. He’d started early this morning after getting his son out to the bus stop this morning, and hadn’t finished until the school day was nearly over. The trickiest bit was trying to patch a gaping hole with a bit of mesh and spackle like he’d seen in a tutorial, all by himself. It certainly wasn’t going to be the prettiest patch job in the world, but maybe he’d take a page out of the previous owner’s book and just push their couch over the worst of it.

Bucky took a step back after filling the last hole, getting a good look at the fruits of his labor. He wouldn’t be on any home improvement shows, that’s for sure, but it was better than staring into the open guts of the house.

The house had seemed too good of a steal at first, but now it was starting to make sense why it hadn’t sold in nearly a decade. At first glance it seemed a lovely little house, a bit far from town, but with all the yard space and the open living areas it could be overlooked. Their tour of the house had been rushed, almost like their realtor would have rather been anywhere but that house, and now he could see why. Now it seemed the longer he stayed in the house, the more problems he found. They’d been told the basement was prone to flooding during the open house, then they’d discovered the holes in the wall after he’d already bought the place and started moving the old furniture out, last night they found that RJ’s room was a good ten degrees colder than the rest of the house, and the stupid door to the basement never fucking latches right.

It nearly drove Bucky insane all day, he’d be in the middle of a patch with his music cranked high on a portable speaker, just for the loud, whiney creak of the basement door hinges to squeal over top of his favorite guitar riffs. Eventually he’d shoved a pair of shoes in front of the door to keep it from opening anymore and hadn’t been bothered by it since.

At least the walls could be taken off his mental to-do list, Barnes thought to himself, smug with the work he’d gotten done today.

He turns his music off and gathers the tools he used today and dumps them into the sink with a loud clatter that reverberates through the empty kitchen and out into the foyer. Bucky wonders how long it will take RJ to get home after school as he turns the water on. It’s quiet in the house without his son there.

Rolling up his sleeve by shimmying it up using his hip, he gets to work trying to scrape the drying plaster off his spatula.

The water turns a murky white as it slowly rinses away the spackle residue, the hole in the sink chugging lazily, struggling to empty the basin of the dirty water. It’s a couple inches deep by the time Bucky realizes that the drain’s probably clogged.

“Great,” He groans, shutting off the tap and tossing the half-cleaned spatula onto the counter. “Another fucking thing for me to fix in this hell house.”

After taking a brief second to dry his hand off on his jeans, he locates the switch for the garbage disposal and flicks it. A terrible sound like a car crash fills the room, the sound of blades tearing into something equally as harsh and metallic. He flinches, fumbling for the switch again.

The disposal had only been on for two seconds at most, but the jarring noise had left the rest of the house almost eerily silent in response. Bucky was acutely aware of how loud the sound of his own breathing was as he stared at the murky water in the sink, watching as it lazily bubbled down the clogged drain.

Ugh, God. He was going to have to reach down there and grab the clog himself, wasn’t he?

It would be different if it had just been the spackle gunk jamming it up or even if it had been some ancient food stuck down there, but the disposal would have torn through those. Assuming it’s a piece of silverware from the harsh metal sound, it should have shot up when he hit the disposal. Just his luck if there was an old spoon or someshit stuck in the grinding chamber of the disposal.

“New beginnings, ma said...this will be a good experience for you, ma says,” Bucky grumbles, waiting out the last dredges of plaster water to disappear and picking at the remaining spackle with his fingernail. “Bullshit, ma. You just wanted to spoil my son more often, now look where I am.”

Where he IS is less than ideal. Reluctant didn’t even begin to explain how little he wanted to shove his only remaining hand down an ancient garbage disposal and pull out some decade old hunk of junk. Maybe he was being a little dramatic, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of dread crawling up his spine and between his shoulder blades to sit like a weight in his chest.

Just how many horror movies started like this? Our unsuspecting victim doing the dishes home alone, the sink is clogged and this poor idiot just HAS to stick his arm in and root around just long enough for the disposal to mysteriously turn on and turn his hand into raw hamburger meat. That would be just his luck.

Reluctantly, Bucky leans over the edge of the now empty sink, trying to peer into the drain and hazard a guess as to what might really be stuck down there. A futile effort, seeing as it’s pitch black all the way down. There really is no way around this. With a deep breath, he takes the plunge, slipping his right hand down into the drain. It’s a tight squeeze, but he makes it just past halfway on his forearm before he hits the disposal.

The house is silent beyond the sound of his heart beat thundering in his ears. His breathing picks up without his knowing as he probes around the grinding chamber for what made that terrible noise earlier. Bucky nearly yelps when the tips of his fingers brush up against what feels like the ball chain to a necklace caught between the blades of the disposal.

He wants to sigh heavily because, really, of all things to be caught in the fucking sink, a necklace? But then he ends up making a choked off grunt sort of sound when he gives the chain a gentle tug and the blades start to move, a low grinding noise coming from the very drain he was elbow deep in right now. In shock, he drops the chain again, trying to catch his breath and get the image of shredded, bloody fingers out of his head.

As slowly and as carefully as he can manage, he reaches back down and wraps the chain around his fingers. Bucky’s sweating now, but he feels ice cold and clammy. Over the sound of his harsh breathing and the dizzying sound of his blood rushing through his ears, he’s almost convinced he can hear the basement door creaking open again.

He’s planning to tear the necklace from the drain as quickly as he can, hoping he can avoid the blades if he does so. With a deep breath he starts to count down from three, planning to tug on one.

“Three...two...on-”

RUFF!!!

Bucky drops the chain like it burnt him, head whipping around towards the front of the house where the noise had come from. Was that a fuckign dog? Before he can decide whether to give the necklace another try or not, there’s another deep bark from right outside the front door.

With a groan, he removes his arm from the drain and shakes off the water clinging to his skin. Bucky half jogs through the living room to the foyer and is met with a giant St. Bernard slobbering against the storm door to his house. The beast of a dog barks excitedly upon spotting him, hopping up to its hindlegs to rest both massive front paws on the glass. Through the glass he can see a red leather collar peeking out from underneath shaggy, white fur, but before he can read the inscription on the tags, the dog falls back to all fours.

“Where did you come from, huh, pal?” Bucky mutters, carefully opening his door open just enough to squeeze through. No way in hell is he adding ‘clean up dog hair’ to his mental to-do list. A brief look out at his front yard shows there’s no owner coming after their dog. It’s creepier than it should be, how he can look out in broad daylight and can’t find a single soul as far as the horizon stretches. You never got privacy like this in the city.

He kneels on the sidewalk in front of his house, trying to check the tags dangling from his collar. Which wasn’t an easy task with the world’s friendliest dog trying to climb into his lap and lick up the side of his face. Thank his lucky stars that he’d had the forethought to tie his shoulder-length hair up this morning. Washing dog drool out of his overgrown fringe was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

“Where’s your owner...Chester?” Bucky asks, flipping the tags around to try and find an address or a phone number or literally any information at all besides the dog’s name. “No address. Aww, looks like your owner’s a dumbass. Isn’t that right, big boy? Just a big ol’ dumbass?” He scratches under Chester’s chin as he baby talks the big brute trying to wriggle his way into his lap.

“Can’t say I disagree with you there,” A deep voice chuckles from around the corner of the house, making Bucky jolt upright. He would’ve landed flat on his face if it wasn’t for the near two hundred pounds of St. Bernard strewn across his lap, the dog’s huge head resting on his bad shoulder.

Approaching from the direction of the woods was an absolute mountain of a man, the guy had shoulders for days and Bucky nearly did a double take. He was dressed up in what looked like lounge clothes, sweatpants and a well-loved shirt that stretched across his pecs in a way that Bucky was having an admittedly hard time looking away from. When he’d finally tore his eyes away from the dude’s chest, he found that the man was looking down at him with an amused smile, one brow quirked higher than the other in a questioning gaze.

Figures he’d find the only hot blonde in the county and then insult him directly to his dog.

“Shit, I didn’t mean - I just. His tags, I- wow. I’m sorry,” Bucky was struggling not to bury his face into Chester’s face out of sheer embarrassment. “I swear I’m usually a lot more well spoken than this. You’ve caught me on an off day.”

“Nah, It’s alright. You make a good point, I’ve been meaning to update his tags for a while now. This was just the push I needed,” The blonde shrugs, still grinning down with that sunshine smile while Bucky sits with his ass to the concrete like a dumbass. Not by choice, at least, Chester was both heavy as hell and content where he was pressed to Bucky’s torso. “I’m Steve, you just move here?” Steve asks, politely extending his left hand out towards him.

Bucky sits and stares at the hand in his face. The LEFT hand in his face. It’s clear Steve wants to shake his hand, but, for very obvious reasons, Bucky can’t do that. At least not with his left hand, anyways.

“James Barnes, but you can call me Bucky. Just moved here last night,” Bucky responds, trying to ignore the hand still directly in front of him and the way it was starting to droop in hesitance. Not able to stand the almost kicked-puppy look on Steve’s face as his hand slowly settled back at his side, Barnes wriggled out from under Chester, and pointedly waves what’s left of his left arm at the blonde. He so desperately wishes he brought his phone out to get a picture of the look that crossed Steve’s face when he realizes what happened.

In fact, the guy looks so embarrassed that Bucky’s kind of glad he hadn’t given into the urge to try and shake Steve’s hand with the stump of his left arm. Probably wouldn’t have been as funny in real life as it was in his head.

“Oh my God, I didn’t - Chester was blocking you...I really am a dumbass. This is…” Steve struggles for a few more seconds before he gives up, using one surprisingly large hand to cover his face which is becoming more flushed by the second. “Foot meet mouth. Wow, we’re both God awful at first impressions, huh?”

“Help me out from underneath your monster dog and we can start over?” Bucky teases, holding out his right hand for Steve to grab onto, which he does almost immediately while whistling at Chester to make him get up.

“Bucky, was it?” Steve clarifies, still loosely holding Bucky’s hand after easily tugging him upright. Not that the Bucky’s gonna complain because he is by no means a small man and it's a little exhilarating to have been pulled around like that. “Not a name you hear too often. I’m Steve, and I’m totally not going to be an asshole and try to shake your hand.”

“It’s short for Buchanon, my middle name,” Bucky smirks, cocking his head to the side as he stares up into bright, blue eyes that he could get lost in, not cliche intended. “Nice to meet you, Steve. I’m totally not going to call you a dumbass to your dog.”

Steve laughs out loud, hand coming up to hold his chest, and Bucky definitely didn’t mourn the loss of his hand wrapped around his, no sir. Maybe he needed to get out more, this was sad.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” Bucky chuckles, unable to look away from where Steve’s grinning down at him. “You live ‘round here?”

“The house to your right. I usually let Chester run around in the front yard but today he bolted straight into the woods and ended up by your place. Sorry about that,” Steve jerks a thumb towards the house about a ten minute walk in the distance, the one with a tiny vintage car parked into the driveway. Bucky had figured there was just another little, old man living over there, anything but the fucking Adonis before him. “You know, I’m kinda surprised a guy like you moved into a place like this.”

“Oh, a guy like me, huh?” Bucky grinned salaciously, right hand sliding out of his pocket to rest on his hip. “An’ just what’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve cocked his head to the side, a crooked smirk on his face as he shrugged. “Just not a lot of handsome guys like you, I mean, moving into this neighborhood. Especially not in this house anyways, it’s been empty for almost ten years now.”

“Uh-huh, sure thing casanova. Is that why the price was way down low? I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how a house this big was so cheap,” Bucky jots down a mental note to investigate what he could swear was flirting down for later. As much as he’d like to find out where that kind of thing might lead, he’s still kind of curious about his new place. He figures the people who live around the neighborhood will probably give him more information than the lady who’d been trying to sell him the joint did.

“Well, yeah. I guess that’s one of the reasons…” Steve trails of sheepishly, shuffling nervously as he glances at the house looming ominously over them like it would swallow them whole.

“And the other reasons?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Steve shrugs and waves his hand, answering way too quickly. He’d known the guy for five minutes and Bucky could already tell Steve was a piss poor liar. “Just rumours. It’s a small town, the people like making up stories, all gossip.”

“Aw, Steve, don’t tell me you think the house is haunted!” Bucky smiled crookedly, shaking his head.

“I didn’t say it was haunted!” It was Bucky’s new mission in life to see how many times he could fluster Steve in a single conversation. “I’m just saying the townsfolk like to ramble on about weird things happening in the place is all. After living next to the place for a long time, I’m not sure it’s-”

“Dad! Dad! There’s a kitten caught in the fence by my bus stop!” RJ was sprinting down the gravel driveway towards the house, backpack stuffed to the brim and bouncing along behind him. “She’s crying something awful, we gotta go help her!”

“Hey, kiddo. Sorry, Steve, this is my son RJ. What were you going to say?”

“Son??”

“Daaaad! We have to go now what if she gets hurt and - ooh, is that a doggy??” RJ crashed into Bucky’s left side, nearly bowling him over in the process. Bucky ruffled the boy's short hair, pushing it off his forehead. He might as well have been invisible for how quickly RJ got down on his knees to greet the happily barking dog who looked even more massive in comparison to the twelve year old.

“RJ, this is one of our new neighbors, Steve, and his dog Chester,” Bucky rolls his eyes as he reaches over to flick the side of RJ’s head.

“Hi, Mr. Steve, can I pet your dog?” RJ asks, keeping his hands politely at his sides even while Chester prances happily in front of him and licks up the side of his face.

Steve nods stiffly, smiling politely at the kid before turning back to Bucky. “I didn’t know you had a kid.”

“Uh, well, I do,” Bucky raises an eyebrow at the suddenly tense blonde at his side. The guy had totally frozen up when RJ ran up and was doing a decent job at hiding it, but the stressed wrinkle between his brows was a clear giveaway. It was as thought a switch had been flipped, the easy, near flirtatious, air between them suddenly gone stagnant and dead. “Is that an issue?”

“I - what? Issue? No, I - I have to get going,” Steve chokes over his words before finally shaking his head and taking a couple of stiff steps backwards. He gestures uselessly over his shoulder towards his house. “It was really lovely getting to meet you two. See you around.”

RJ gave the big dog a quick hug before letting him trot over to his owner’s side, and Bucky watched the two hastily retreat until they were small in the distance and well out of earshot. That was weird, even for isolated country folks from Virginia. Steve probably had commitment issues or something, which didn't surprise him. Nobody that good-looking comes without their flaws. It was a shame too, they seemed to get along just fine before his son showed up. Which, whatever, he was a single father, he didn’t have time for people who couldn’t be there for his kid.

“Sorry I made your friend go away,” RJ apologizes as he climbs back to his feet and dusts off his jeans.

“It’s not your fault, goob,” Bucky immediately changes the subject, not wanting his son to think for a second that any of this was his fault. Luckily he could get away with blaming a lot of shit on weird grown-up rules that a twelve year old wouldn’t think to question. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if Bucky continued to sit and mope about lost opportunities with their apparently smoking hot neighbor. “Now what were you saying about a kitten stuck in the fence?”

“Oh my god, yeah!” RJ cried out, clutching his father’s hand and tugging him up the sidewalk towards their front door that was now sporting some trendy new slobber marks. Thanks, Chester. “I heard her crying when I got off the bus, so I checked it out an’ she doesn’t even have a collar! We gotta bring her home!”

“You know the rule about pets, RJ,” Bucky groans, planting his feet into the hardwood so RJ couldn’t drag him any further into the foyer. They went through the exact conversation every time they found a puppy for sale or a stray cat or, on one memorable occasion, an overly friendly, one-eyed pigeon they found while visiting Bucky’s old friends in New York.

“Dad, c’mon! You said it was because the old apartment didn’t allow pets, but now we got our own house!” RJ argues, digging through a cardboard box labelled ‘workshop’ that was too heavy for Bucky to carry into the basement by himself. “Do we have wire cutters?”

Bucky was having a hard time trying to find a counter argument to that. It was hard to put on a tough face, especially when this is the most excited he’s seen RJ in months. The boy paused his rummaging to look up at his dad, eyes big and shiny with the hopeful look he had on his face.

That was it. How could Bucky say anything other than, “We’ll see.” Which they both knew was as good as a yes in his book.

Rolling his eyes, Bucky dug the wire cutters from the inside of his toolbox and let RJ snatch them up, bolting back outside with a loud cheer. Man, was he a sucker for those puppy dog eyes.

Before following RJ out of the house, Bucky took a moment to close the basement door, yet again. He glanced uneasily at the heavy rubber-soled sneakers he had set in front of the door and how they had been easily pushed aside to let the door open.

He added fixing the latch on the basement door to his mental to-do list, then followed his son outside.