On the Second Day of Christmas...
As far as sisterly heart-to-hearts went, it was probably one of the least argumentative talks that the two women had had in many years.
Darcy cornered her older sister in her bedroom the following morning while the men made breakfast in the kitchen. She hopped into bed next to Angie, who was currently stuck nursing Violet. It was the perfect entrapment. Nothing like having a baby attached to your boob to keep you from running away from an ass-chewing from your baby sister.
Angie met her complaints with resistance, initially, but as Darcy explained her reasoning for taking things slow and not pushing Bucky, Angie’s features firmed into lines of contrition.
“Sorry, Darce. I see what you're saying, I'll butt out,” Angie said, reaching over to hold her baby sister’s hand. “He’s such a sweetheart of a man, it’s easy to forget that he carries so much damage. I didn't even think about the fact that autonomy is something that he was brutally deprived of for nearly a century. I guess I got carried away with the secondhand high of young love. ”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, Angie, we’re not in love. Stop being so dramatic.” Angie’s lips pinched into a thin line, the skepticism clear on her face, but refrained from arguing with her sister.
“Should I apologize to Bucky for being pushy?”
Darcy paused to consider. “No, I don't think that's necessary. I think it would be more hurtful for him to be reminded of his...vulnerabilities than if you just backed off with the matchmaking.”
“You care about him quite a bit.” It wasn't a question.
“Yes. I do.”
“You sure it isn't love?” Angie arched a brow in good humor.
Darcy resisted the urge to shake her sister, but only barely and mostly because she was holding an infant. Instead, she sunk into her sister's side, leaning her head onto Angie's shoulder.
“I'm sure,” she sighed. They were quiet for a moment before she continued. “For now anyway,” she said lowly, voice barely registering above a whisper. Angie just smiled and kissed Darcy on her forehead. They were quiet for a long time after that, enjoying the stillness of the early morning.
Rob came in some time later to announce that breakfast was ready, only to find the two women deeply asleep with his infant daughter snoring lightly between them. Rob ambled back down the hallway to get Bucky's attention, gesturing for him to follow and placing a finger over his lips to signal Bucky to keep quiet. The two men crept back down the hall to the master bedroom and Rob stepped back to show the other man what had happened to their women.
“You ever see anything so damned adorable?” Rob whispered.
Bucky smiled and made to answer but paused when he heard Violet whimper in her sleep. He watched as Darcy instinctively reached out in her sleep to her niece, pulling the little girl closer to her chest and nuzzling her face into the curls at the crown of Violet’s head.
Bucky couldn't help the visceral reaction to the sight and the sudden bright mental picture of Darcy snuggling with another baby that looked eerily like himself. Shit, he must really have it bad for this dame if he was daydreaming about her having his children. And getting kind of teary-eyed about it to boot.
Rob clapped him lightly on the shoulder, shooting him a look of sympathy. “Just try to remember how little sleep you got when you guys kept her. And the spit up. It helps the baby fever pass if you focus on the downsides of parenthood.”
“I didn't realize that men were susceptible to baby fever,” Bucky chuckled.
“Almost everybody is susceptible at some point or another,” Rob explained, motioning for Bucky to follow him back to the kitchen. “It's our human biology, it’s always out to get us. ‘Make a baby,’ it says. ‘Carry on the human population, it’ll be fun,’ it says. Which, ok yeah, being a parent is kind of mind-blowingly amazing, but god is it hard.”
“Just wait until your tough-as-nails daughter decides to up and marry a comic book illustrator. Now that’s hard.” Mr. Lewis had woken and made his way to the kitchen while the other men had been spying on the girls. He sat at the bar, squat body wrapped in a bathrobe and eyes twinkling with good humor over the rim of his coffee cup.
“Paul, it’s hard to take you seriously when I've seen you cry after I gave you that autographed copy of the first Commandos issue.” Rob came around to kiss the older man on the top of his balding head. “If this comic book illustrator didn't have such great connections, you would never have gotten your hands on Bucky’s autogra-” Rob stopped mid sentence to look up at Bucky. “Well, never mind then. I guess you've got better access to him now. I'm useless to you again.”
Paul gave a hearty chuckle at his son-in-law’s expense, as Bucky looked on in confusion.
“I don't remember signing any comics?”
“That's understandable,” Rob replied. “The issue that I gave to Paul was signed by you back in the 40s.”
Bucky hummed thoughtfully. It seemed strange that there was a piece of himself, the man he had been before Hydra’s influence, that was still floating around in present day. “I think I’d like to see that sometime,” he said softly.
Paul smiled at him gently. “Of course, anytime you like.” The seemingly older man placed his hand on Bucky's shoulder with a quick squeeze. “Anytime you need.”
***
The days leading up to Christmas were some of the most carefree and enjoyable ones that Darcy had experienced in some time. She hadn't realized how much pressure she'd been under since coming to work for Stark until she was home with her family without a care in the world.
The fact that it was her favorite time of year was just the cherry on top. She enjoyed getting to participate in their family holiday traditions again for the first time since her mother had died.
That first Christmas had been two days after she had died, and the family had been too preoccupied with her mother's failing health most of the month of December to even really remember the holiday. Christmas Day came and went, forgotten in favor of all-consuming grief and funeral arrangements.
The second Christmas had been as hard as the first, maybe more so because the reality of their loss had fully set in, and the absence of her mother's presence was conspicuous to the point of pain. They had tried, but overall it was a dismal affair.
But this year, they were all in a better emotional state. They still missed her mother dearly, but their grief was not enough to overshadow the joys still left to the living. Having Violet there, who was Darcy’s mother’s namesake, added tremendously to the joyful balance. Nothing like a baby’s laughter ringing through a home to lighten the burden of a weary heart.
With the joyous Christmas spirit returned to the Lewis-McKenzie family, it was unanimously decided that all the old traditions be vigorously reinstated. There was Christmas music playing at all hours of the day, gingerbread house making, sugar cookies baked and iced, last minute shopping done with abandon (because procrastination was another of their traditions), and one evening was spent driving through the suburbs and looking at all the Christmas lights. On the anniversary of the elder Violet’s passing, the whole family, including Bucky, piled into Angie's Suburban and drove to Richmond to see the Nutcracker Ballet, which had been a favorite of Violet’s. Some tears had been shed by the end of the evening, but the sting of loss was softened by the balm of family and friendship.
Bucky had been reluctant to join in on the festivities too much, feeling like he would be intruding in some way. The whole family was having none of that and made a point to include him in everything. Once he felt like he wasn't being an invader to their family traditions, he loosened up and thoroughly enjoyed himself. He particularly enjoyed that sugar cookie business. Although, all his cookies seemed to disappear before they could be decorated. One of the best things about the future was the abundance of sugary things.
He had also, much to his surprise, thoroughly enjoyed the ballet. The dancing was impressive and the music beautiful, but the best part was sitting next to Darcy and having her grab his hand and squeeze whenever the dancers performed a particularly spectacular move. Even under the sound of the orchestra he could hear her little gasps of delight and spent as much time watching her eyes light up with wonder as he did actually watching the performance.
When they'd gone to bed that night, she'd reached her hand out to him again, but this time in comfort instead of wonder. The day had been long and mostly joyful, filled to the brim with the love of her family, but now as she lay on the little mattress in the quiet of the night, she couldn't help the grief that welled up inside of her.
Tears slipped silently down her cheeks and she tried to keep her breathing steady so as not to alert her bedmate. But that was a labor in futility. Besides being a naturally observant man, his super hearing could pick up even the tiniest hitch of her breathing and she was pretty sure he could smell the salt in her tears.
“Darcy?” She heard the mattress shift as he moved his bulk closer to the edge. She couldn't really bear to speak at the moment so she reached out blindly, her hand connecting with a clink against his shoulder. She felt the plates shift under her fingertips, followed the movement down until he caught her hand in his.
He held her hand, resting on her pillow, much like he had that first night, while she sobbed softly into the cotton pillowcase. At some point he'd disentangled from her fingers and she expected him to pull away and roll over, but he simply shifted to reach out and stroke her hair and face the way her mother had always done.
It was a bittersweet thing; both a relief to experience it again, with Bucky knowing just how special it was to her, but also painful because the fingers sweeping across her wet cheekbones were cold and hard and didn't have the warmth and texture that she so desperately missed. But it was a kindness all the same and soothed her in new ways. His touch centered her soul and calmed the storm of her sorrow until she succumbed to the sleep pulling at the edges of her mind.
***
Darcy wasn't sure how long she had been asleep when she was awoken by a muffled shout from Barnes. It was nearly pitch black in the room, so it was probably still very late.
This wasn't the first time she'd woken to Bucky calling out in his sleep. Usually it was a fairly quiet shout, sometimes a groan or a whimper, and then he would resettle and sleep peacefully again. This nightmare, however, was apparently a doozy and it was not letting him go.
She lay there, waiting for him to settle down, but the longer she waited, the more disturbed he became. It was becoming increasingly obvious that somewhere inside of his head he was being tortured. Brutally.
The shouts muffled into his pillow grew in number, followed by whimpering that broke her heart. When he started desperately whispering ”nyet, nyet,” over and over again and writhing violently in his bed, Darcy decided that he was probably not going to drift back to easy sleep anytime soon and she should probably get her ass to another room before she got it handed to her on accident by a zonked out Winter Soldier.
Ok, Darcy, stealth time. Super stealthy escape, move very quietly, do not under any circumstances wake the sleeping Russian bear.
She was on her back and started to scooch slowly across the mattress so she could get to the floor and then army crawl her way to the door. Keep low, better weight distribution, less likely to make the floor creak. Good plan, right?
No, it was a terrible plan.
As soon as she made to wiggle one ass cheek in the direction of the edge of the mattress, of course the springs creaked and then Darcy was being covered by about 200 lbs of pissed off supersoldier.
He had her hips trapped between his knees, both her wrists caught in his right hand above her head and his left hand gripped in her hair, tilting her head back and leaving her neck exposed. Darcy had the inane thought that it would have been kind of sexy if it wasn't so fucking terrifying.
Bucky was in her face, eyes boring into hers from only a few inches away. She could hear him breathing heavily and his teeth creak under the strain of his clenched jaw. Almost immediately he started berating her in what she guessed was probably Russian. And, by the sound of it, probably using all the swear words with some murdery ones thrown in for good measure. Shit, shit, fucking shit!
This was not covered in the goddamn manual, Samuel Thomas Wilson!
Trying to regain control of her reactions, Darcy focused on breathing slowly and calming her heart rate. Whatever flashback he was going through, she'd just have to snap him out of it. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right?
Shit, if she lived through this she was going to make Tony give her a raise for being such a badass.
Bucky was in the middle of a litany of Russian death threats, she assumed, when she had calmed herself enough to speak. “Bucky,” she said slowly, trying to infuse the word with calm. “Hey honey, it's me, Darcy, and I'm gonna need you to let me go.”
Bucky jerked his head back in confusion, then shot her a glare and asked her a question, still in Russian. Not helpful.
“Hey buddy, I'm not sure what you're trying to ask me. Uneducated American here, they don't really teach us anything besides English.”
“American?” The word sounded strange in his mouth. Probably because he said it in a Russian accent instead of his usual Brooklyn twang.
“Yeah, I'm American. My name is Darcy Lewis, I'm American and I'm your friend. You're James Buchanan Barnes, you're my friend. You're safe with me.” Bucky watched her, confusion still rampant in his face and the still-tight grip of his body on hers. Moving slowly, she twisted her wrist in his grip enough that she could run her index finger gently along the small bones in his wrist and across the knuckles of his pinky. His eyes shot to the gentle touch, the confusion thickening in his features. She pinched the tip of his pinky finger slightly, shaking it a bit and cleared her throat to regain his attention. “Hey Bucky, it's just me, it's just Darcy, I'm not gonna hurt you.”
The gentle touch, so bizarrely counterintuitive to him, was what finally broke the hold of his nightmare.
“Darcy?” he asked with a shallow gasp. The pain and disbelief in his voice almost broke her, but the return of his Brooklyn Boys accent had her heart thumping hard in relief.
“Yeah, babe, it's me,” she said with a smile.
As soon as she said it, Bucky loosened his aggressive hold on her and collapsed down into her softness, releasing her hair and hands to wrap his arms around her in a horizontal bear hug.
This close, she could feel him shaking so hard it was making her teeth rattle. When she felt dampness start to pool at her collarbone, she knew that he was crying in earnest. She shushed him, bringing her arms up around his broad shoulders, and held him to her tighter, pushing her fingers into his hair with one hand and rubbing soothing circles over his back with the other.
“Oh God, Darcy, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.” His breath shuddered against her neck.
“Shh, it's ok Bucky. Everything's ok. I'm safe...we're both safe.”
He clutched her to himself tighter and it nearly broke her heart. She pressed her face into his hair, muttering soft and tender things, hoping to soothe some of the aching in him. The weight of him pressing her into the mattress was just beginning to strain her breathing when he shifted to the side so that only his head rested in the crook of her neck, an arm thrown across her middle, and his heavy thigh braced across the top of one of hers. She adjusted her hold on him, then settled back into soothing the stiff muscles of his back.
Eventually he calmed, his shaking easing off and the tears drying on his face and her neck. He tensed, preparing to extricate himself from her and her bed but she tightened her arms around him and crossed her leg over to pull his hips back down. He sank back into her with a relieved sigh.
She hummed in sleepy contentment, nuzzling her nose into his hair, and fell asleep nearly instantly. She almost missed the way his lips pressed gently, once, to the soft skin of her throat.
Almost.