Call
Y/N is waiting for her father to come back into his office. She smiles and swings her feet, not yet able to touch the floor. A new boxer had come to the gym this morning and that always meant good things.
Especially if the boxer was good at boxing and decided to stay at the gym. That meant she got to go to her favorite diner when they went home in the evening. Y/N always got a treat when things went well.
The office is small and close, warm and damp with city summer heat. It smells like sweat and leather and old spice. It smells like home. Y/N is just thinking that she’ll go down the hall and ask Sam’s father Paul for some change and get a drink out of the vending machine when the door flies open. A boy is standing there, panting and a little wild eyed. He’s sweating, his dark hair is sticking to his forehead, as if he had ran all the way there. His eyes shift to meet hers. They’re blue and fierce and angry and that’s when she notices the bruise on his jaw. There are more bruises littered on his arms. They’re shaped like someone had grabbed him too hard, like fingerprints and large, harsh hands.
“Hi,” she says.
He straightens his spine and hikes the bag he carries up his shoulder. She thinks it’s a large bag for someone so thin. “I want to be a boxer,” he declares, voice shaking just a bit.
She blinks at him and wiggles in her seat. “Are you any good?”
He falters, the anger seeps out of him, “Well...uh, n-not yet. I-I want to learn.” She’s learned a lot about boxers in her short time on earth and she thinks this boy is too skinny, too angry, and too sickly looking. But then she remembers what her dad is always telling her: anyone has potential no matter what size or shape.
She tilts her head to the side and smiles, “Well you could be a good one then. Wanting to learn, that’s really good! You’ll have to ask daddy when he gets back.” Y/N pats the seat next to her. “What’s your name?”
The boy comes closer and hops up next to her, letting his gym bag fall to the floor, “Bucky.”
She giggles, never having heard a name like that before. “I like it. How old are you?”
“Seven.” He pushes his hair off his forehead. There’s oil under his fingernails and scratches on his knuckles.
She gasps, “Me too!”
Something about her smile sticks in the small boy. He finds himself smiling back, something he hardly ever does. “What’s your name?”
“Y/N.”
It’s then that her father comes back into the room and takes in the extra seven year old with bruises and a gym bag. They’re introduced and Bucky secures, quite nimbly and with the help of his new friend, a spot in training. Y/N vouches for him firmly and his heart jumps a little. No one’s ever spoken about him so kindly and this girl has only just met him. He’s taught some of the basics that very same day, by Paul and Frank and Y/N herself, and then he goes to dinner with them at the diner around the corner that evening. Another boy called Sam joins them and Bucky only feels a little jealous when Sam gets to sit next to Y/N and not him. They have hamburgers and fries and milkshakes. And Y/N’s father smiles and says to Paul, “Well I did secure two new excellent boxers today so it’s a call to celebrate.”
Bucky beams, the bruise on his jaw becoming a bit more prominent. Frank’s smile is pained as he glances at Paul.
~
Bucky jerks awake in bed violently and reaches over for Y/N without really thinking about it. Her side of the bed is cold and he panics for just a moment before reality settles back in his brain and around his soul. Flopping back in bed, Bucky groans and reaches out for his phone on the bedside table.
No messages. No missed calls.
It’s been three days since he’s been back to the gym, three days since he’s seen Y/N, and three days since he potentially pushed her away.
Why couldn’t Steve just let him see her? It’s been two months since the accident. They’ve never been separated for this long, never. He’s floundering, doesn’t know what to do anymore. There’s a hole in his heart where she used to rest, and it hurts. It hurts because he loves her but also because he doesn’t know how to be without her. He doesn’t want to know how to be without her.
But he’s being selfish. Bucky knows she’s in therapy, that she remembers very little, that she’s confused and anxious and afraid. But he dreams of the first day he met her nearly nightly now. And when he wakes up she’s never where she’s supposed to be, right by his side.
Bucky is so alone. He’s never been so lonely in his whole life. Steve doesn’t want to talk to him, Sam has tried helping, feels bad for him and let him in the gym when he wasn’t supposed to be. Natasha and Wanda want nothing to do with him. And the worst part is that he can’t say he doesn’t deserve it. Because he does. He deserves every bad thing that’s ever happened to him. If he never feels Y/N’s love again, her touch, then he would deserve it.
It was stupid and selfish of him to lie to Steve about where he was going. Stupid not to wrap his hands so that Y/N would see and worry, because even now she’s kind and concerned with others, even someone she doesn’t know at all. It had been stupid to try to get her alone, stupid and selfish to let her wrap his hands, just so her could feel her touch again. She used to touch him so softly, used to murmur in his ear how she would never let another person lie a finger on him.
It had been stupid. It had been selfish. And everything is still his fault.
His knuckles are raw and twinge with a sharp but familiar pain. His left arm is burning again, aching all the way from his hand to his shoulder. His soul and heart aches. And the apartment aches worst of all, because it is so silent, so absent of anything that’s her. His girl, the love of his life, the person who his last words to before she had forgotten everything had been I don’t love you. I never have. I wish you would stay away from me.
Those words echo in his head so loudly some days that his skull aches, that he feels that if he reaches up and touches his head blood will be pouring out of his ears, his nose, his mouth. Everything hurts so badly, so fiercely. And his relief doesn’t remember him, in fact seems to be petrified of him.
Bucky sits up and realizes his cheeks are wet. It’s four in the morning and he’s crying and he won’t be able to go back to sleep. His throat aches with the effort to keep more tears at bay.
It doesn’t work very well and he chokes out a bitter laugh, body rigid with tension.
And then the phone rings.
His brow furrows as he picks the device back up. No one calls him anymore. And then his heart nearly stops when he sees the display name. My girl. He sits in shock, just staring, before he answers quickly, worried that it might stop ringing.
“Hello?” Bucky’s voice sounds wrecked and desperate to his own ears.
No one replies but he can he can hear her breathing. He says her name and a soft gasp hitches out of her throat. “Are you okay?” Something might have happened to her. It wouldn’t be the first time. He starts to struggle out of bed, the blankets tangled around his hips and legs.
She seems to suddenly find her voice. “Yes, I’m fine. I-,” She pauses and Bucky hears her swallow hard. He stops struggling, her voice soothes him instantly. The tension drains out of his shoulders and he bows his head, releasing a hash breath as he covers his eyes with his unoccupied hand. “I-Sam is asleep. I got your number from his phone.”
They had deleted his contact then, to keep them apart, for Y/N’s mental security. Sam must being staying with her at her father’s old place. Jealousy threads through his veins. She should be here, in their apartment. She should be graduating in a few weeks, they should be happy and together but he ruined all of that. He ruined everything. “I-not that I’m not happy you called me but…why? You seemed-,” Terrified of him. She had seemed so afraid of him.
“I know how I seemed,” she whispers into the phone. “But I haven’t stopped dreaming about you since that day at the gym. And I think…I think they might be memories but I don’t know. All I know is that my heart seems to miss you.”
She quiets suddenly as though she’s afraid she’d said too much. Her breathing is light and quick, like a hummingbird's wings. He remembers Y/N in front of him at the gym, bouncing lightly on her toes. C’mon Buck! Just one jab! You won’t hurt me! They had been ten and he had been in love, a love he had never fallen out of.
He opens his mouth to say something, anything because she's talking to him and he can't lose this opportunity to interact with her, to speak with her, when she interrupts him. “Why do they keep us apart?” Y/N’s voice is barely above a whisper. “What did you do to me?”
“Sweetheart-,”
“I have to go.” There’s panic in her voice. Something must have surfaced in her mind. “I shouldn’t have called.”
“Wait!” He clutches the phone tighter to his face. Anxiety threads through his veins as he waits for her to hang up.
When the line doesn’t go dead he swallows hard and lies. Because there’s a reason he isn’t supposed to be around and her mental health is more important than his feelings. He knows that now. “They don’t want you to remember anything too suddenly. It could hurt you more. You’re in therapy. And it’s better if-,”
“You said you love me.”
He’s going to throw up. “I-,”
“And if you love me then why don’t they want you around me?” She sighs. “I’m tired of feeling like a child. I…the dreams, I know they must be memories. Sam doesn’t want me to know certain things and I want to know. I want to know. I need you to tell me. It’s been two months since I woke up and-and I’ve been nothing but confused and a-alone but I dream about you. I need you. I need you to tell me. Please.”
Silence stretches between them after that until Bucky asks carefully what it was she's remembered. His heart aches for her, her begging makes him sick. The guilt is killing him, he wants to tell her so badly. Acid swirls in his belly and he clenches his teeth to keep from screaming.
She doesn’t answer him immediately but he waits. “I dreamed of your mouth against mine. Once it was the first time, the others…I think they were during-,”
He sucks in a harsh breath. Everything about her seems to flood him suddenly. Her scent, the way she tasted, the feel of her around him when she came. How warm she was and deliciously wet. How she had always been soft and never pushed him and how he had been the same for her, soft and patient. How her lips felt to be kissed when they were swollen and red. Her fingernails scraping gently against his hair.
“Okay. It’s okay, Y/N.” Her breaths are catching horribly in her throat.
“Please,” she whispers, “I need your help. I think you’re the only one that can help me.”
Bucky has never been able to deny her. He knows he should say no, that he’s going to get shit from everyone for this. But she’s asked him to help her, to guide her. “Yeah. Okay.” And besides, he’s selfish. He needs her, he loves her more then she will ever know. Most of all he wants the chance to fix things. There’s still a chance, still hope.
“Tell me what happened. About the accident? How did I end up this person? Who…who is Y/N? I don’t even know who I am.”
He takes a shaky breath, “Baby, you have to understand I can’t…can’t tell you about the accident. Not yet. It’s too soon. Steve told me they want you to try to remember on your own.”
Something that sounds horribly like a suppressed sob echoes through the line. “Why not? What happened?”
“I can tell you who you are.” He offers hopefully. Bucky could talk forever and a day about her, would never run out of things to say about her, memories to share.
She sniffles. “That’s not good enough.” The line goes dead and his heart shatters. The hand still over his eyes clamps down harder and his head begins to throb worse.
I don’t love you. I never have. I wish you would stay away from me. And now he’s getting his wish.