#softdarkbucky barnes
A/N: alright here we go! i love where this is headed, how bucky slowly transforms into the soft!dark!
Chapter Warnings: soft!dark!bucky, mentions of stalking, mentions of animal neglect, depictions of animal neglect, language
Gifs are not mine!
PART TWO
The equipment Bucky ordered comes in a shiny metal box that reminds him of the time the Wakandans offered him a new arm, a new war. But this time, Bucky isn’t fighting a war. He’s not even fighting. He’s observing. He’s setting up the binoculars near the window. He’s fine-tuning the microphones to an earpiece and a recording device. He’s making sure the motion sensors properly record movement and register in his computer.
It’s oddly reminiscent of some jobs he used to do for HYDRA. Although he wishes he could erase that part of his life, the time he spent observing and collecting data prove useful to him now.
The day outside is gloomy. The clouds seem to mock him, closing him into a space he’s been forced into anyway.
Bucky clucks his tongue.
“Has there been any dreams again?”
He turns to face his psychologist. She sits with a frown nettling her face, leg bent over the other, the tip of her shiny black boot white and apotropaic for Bucky.
“No,” he answers. Not since her. Not since Meatball.
“Are you having any sort of dream?” she asks, eyes briefly falling to her notepad duteously spread on her knee.
Bucky bites the inside of his cheek. Yes, he wants to say. So many. Of her and her big eyes and the way her smell seems to linger in the hall even after she’s left. Dreams of following her down a long, empty hallway, of pining her against a wall and watching the way her skin flushes, glows, under his stare.
“Not really,” he opts for, determining that confessing dreams of stalking a neighbor would not earn him points with both his psychologist and the government.
“Sam told me you ordered surveillance equipment?” she continues, chin in her palm.
Of course, Sam would not completely believe Bucky.
“There’s this neighbor,” Bucky starts, hands on his knees. “I don’t know who lives there. Honestly, all I’ve seen is their animals. And they’re being neglected. Left for days unattended. I sometimes see through the living room door that there’s no food.”
The doctor nods, writes, hums.
“Do you feel like that’s a good hobby to have, Mr. Barnes?” God, he hates when she calls him that.
“Animal rescue?” he tries, tone faking innocence.
She snorts. She sees right through his ruse. “Stalking.”
Bucky jerks ever the slightest. “It’s not that,” he groans. “It’s mostly… I feel useful, and I feel like I’m partaking in something good for once,” he sighs.
“Rescuing animals,” she says, writing something down in that little stupid fucking notepad.
“Yes,” he grits between his teeth. “I’m not waiting to kill someone,” he retorts, and immediately regrets it.
“Is that what you think I think of you?”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “Sometimes.”
She smiles slowly. “I am only here to help you.” She readjusts in her seat. “And if you are constantly thinking that I’m here to undermine you, then this relationship won’t work. We won’t be able to move forward.”
He nods, biting back some remarks he should really keep to himself.
She stares at him for a few moments, then down at her watch. “Our hour is over, Mr. Barnes.” She settles back in her seat, scribbling some notes down. “Until next week.”
Bucky all but storms out of her office, past the receptionist who wishes him well, and out into the gloomy New York air. The office is a few blocks away from his condo, and he uses the time walking to keep his mind from conjuring images of strangling that woman to death.
When he gets to the back door of the complex, he notices a familiar figure coming his way. He schools his features into something more homely, warm, and magnetic. He tries to conjure the womanizer he was in the forties, but something about this girl, Elora, doesn’t make him want to be that: a jerk. He wants to be good to her. He knows he can be good to her.
“Hey,” he says.
She squints as she approaches him, and when she recognizes him, her face lights up. “Oh, hey!” She smiles and Bucky swears she’s the most beautiful creature on Earth. “James! Or Bucky.” She has a backpack on, the color of rust.
“It’s just Bucky,” he says, smiling, leaning a shoulder against the wall. She watches his nonchalance, and Bucky thinks he spies a moment of attraction flitting across her face. “Where you headed? Lost Meatball again?”
She chuckles, pushing hair behind her ears. Adorable. “No,” she says with a shy smile, crossing her arms across her chest. “Sorry about that. Or, I guess, thank you.”
Bucky nods with a faint smile.
“I’m just headed to that… apartment I told you about?” She’s acting cold, restrained now, as if she’s either afraid of him or afraid of what he’s going to say about her little jaunts next door.
“Still on that animal rescue mission?” he asks humorously.
That seems to dispel the tension in her shoulders, and she laughs. “Yeah, I’m going to feed them actually.”
Bucky nods, pushing from the wall. He can see the sparkle in her eyes as she assesses him. He knows she finds him attractive. He’s seen himself in the mirror a few times.
“Mind if I join?”
Her mouth parts and it’s the most adorable view Bucky has ever had.
“Really?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he answers, lifting a shoulder. “Always wanted to be the good guy.”
She laughs, unaware of the way Bucky stares at her with both hunger and longing.
“Alright, cowboy, let’s go!”
They walk across the street, and Bucky notices how Elora walks with her head high, not cowering and nervous. She’s done this before. She walks up to the basement sliding door of the aforementioned apartment and waits for Bucky to step beside her. From under the canopy of the upstairs balcony, her face is shadowed, cool, and she lifts a daring eyebrow to Bucky.
“So, what, do you know where the key is?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at the busy boulevard. “Or a barrette?”
She scoffs. Then she puts a finger to the knob and pushes, the door sliding open. Bucky smiles, holding laughter, and gives her an impressed raise of his brows.
“A woman with many talents,” Elora mumbles as she climbs in.
Once inside, Bucky closes the sliding door, and puts a hand to his mouth. It smells like excretion and rotting food. Or corpses. He wishes beyond anything that there are no dead animals here.
Elora behaves as if she lives here, bending down and retrieving food from her backpack. When she opens the bag, a few little kittens come stumbling into the messy, dirty living room. Bucky stands there, watching Elora crouched on the stained yellow carpet as she takes out cans of wet cat food.
“The dogs are in cages in the back room,” she says, jerking her chin towards the back of the apartment, and Bucky understands that as his cue to move. She hands him a bag of dog food, and when he takes it out of her hand, his finger brushes hers and fire licks up his palm. He tries not to fidget, or flinch away, but he’s wearing gloves, as always, to keep others from ogling his metal arm, and now he wishes more than anything that his flesh could have touched hers.
She doesn’t say anything about the touch. The gloves. She just shoves the bag into his hands and motions him to action.
He takes the dog food bag across the apartment, noticing the dirt stains on the kitchen floor, the mountain of rotting, dirty dishes in the sink, and that the walls are decaying.
The dogs, three pitbulls, are indeed in cages in what should have been the guestroom. Bucky holds back a gag. Some of the dogs have been left in their filth, and it stinks up the room. His heart squeezes at the sight of the animals laying down in tiny cages, their big bodies constrained to such a small enclosure. The dogs are looking at him, but none move. It as if they’re used to this: someone, anyone, not a master or friend, coming in and just feeding them.
“Heartless, right?”
Bucky turns and Elora stands in the doorway with a grey cat nestled in her arms.
“We should call someone,” Bucky says, opening the dog food bag, the dogs’ heads snapping up to attention.
“I’ve called animal health, rescue centers, even the police,” she adds. Then she shrugs. “They’ve all claimed insubstantial evidence. If I send pictures, they’re going to arrest me for B&E.”
Bucky nods, carefully opening the cage of the first dog.
“They don’t bite,” Elora says. “So, yeah, I come here sometimes and rescue some and send them to centers for neglected animals. Every time I come back, though, there’s more.”
Bucky groans, his heart burning, his head imagining scenarios of beating whoever puts these animals into such dire situations. Heartless fucker.
Bucky fills the first bowl and leaves the cage open. “We should take this one,” he says. “At least today. And tomorrow, we can come get the other one.”
Elora walks out and comes back in as Bucky is feeding the second dog. She hands Bucky a leash. “Feel free. She’s a female, by the way. I named her Claudia.”
Bucky snorts, closing the second cage on the other dog, heart wrenching as he sees the way the animal gobbles down food. How long have they been without food?
They feed the third dog, noticing burn marks on its haunches, and then leash up Claudia. She has difficulty walking, limping, her front paw badly injured from God knows what. Bucky follows Elora through the apartment, where she shows him the entire, disgusting situation. Bunnies in a cage with barely anything to do but sleep in their defecation. Birds in a cage left covered by a black, heavy cloak. More and more and endless kittens and adult cats. Bucky lets a few of the adult ones out of the back door, maybe to freedom or better homes, who knows.
As they walk across the street, Bucky helping Claudia along, the man can’t help but feel proud of Elora. His Elora. This incredible girl that risks her neck every time she walks into that apartment.
“Don’t ever go in there alone, ever again,” Bucky says as they near the parking of their complex.
She turns and frowns up at this man that she barely knows but appreciates. “Why?”
Bucky shakes his head, shakes the feeling from his bones, this feeling that wants to protect her from the world. He needs to bide his time. “Who knows when the owner can come back,” he answers. “They could be dangerous.”
She smiles, rolls her eyes, a behavior he will have to correct. “I can handle myself.”
Bucky’s shoulders tense. “I mean it,” he says, forcing himself not to grit his teeth. “You have me now. Use that.”
She smiles again, all teeth and cheeks and giddy innocence. “Sure,” she pipes up. “Now let’s get to my car and get these babies to a rescue.”
METICULOUS - PART THREE
A/N: OKAY SO AFTER THIS CHAPTER, IT GETS VERY SERIOUSLY DUB!CON, so if that’s not your thing, this story is about to get very triggering!
Chapter Warnings: soft!dark!bucky, mentions of stalking, language, mentions of violence
Gifs are not mine!
PART THREE
Bucky hates lying. He hates sitting in her car and pretending that the surveillance equipment is not for her. He hates it when he laughs and pretends to be a good man, a man with humane intentions, and promises to check up on Claudia when they leave the refuge. He hates lying to her, but when Elora brings them back and her perfume invades the cabin of the car, Bucky can’t help but continue his lies.
At her door, he’s already holding a small motion sensor in his palm, pretending to be a gallant young man and walking her home, even if they live in the same building. He hates it. He can’t help it. When she wishes him a good day and tells him that she’s happy he came along today, Bucky smiles and nods and tells her it was his pleasure. Then when the door closes, he sticks the tiny motion sensor at the bottom of her door frame and leaves.
He checks his phone, makes sure the device is connected to the sensor, and pockets it. Next time someone comes in or out of that apartment, he’ll be notified.
Bucky doesn’t want to be the bad guy; he doesn’t want to do this, not really, but the need deep inside, to know everything about this girl, to take care of her, is invading his entire being.
When she leaves her apartment the next morning, probably for work – Bucky will find out – he sneaks upstairs and easily breaks into her condo. He’s impressed by what he finds. Colors spring at him, and it’s a stark contrast to the dull grey and white of his place. Pink refrigerator. Forest green walls. Yellow accessories. The foyer and the living room are cozy. He finds a sock under the dark blue couch. He scrolls through her Netflix and finds she’s been binging The Office.
In the kitchen, he finds last night’s meal in the fridge in a plastic Tupperware. Spaghetti. He rummages through her cabinets. She’s into fine, delicate cutlery. He sticks a microphone, the size of his fingernail, under a cabinet beside the oven.
He walks slowly down the hallway, careful not to leave a trace. His feet are silent on the carpet. When he enters her room, he’s assaulted by the smell of her. It invades him. It reaches into every nook and cranny of his mind and fogs him.
His left hand, the metal one, the one he hates and he loves, balls into a fist.
Her bed, a queen size with a dark grey thick duvet, is perfectly made up. Her slippers are neatly by the foot of the bed. There’s a pajama shirt loosely thrown on the side of her vanity chair. She’s got bottles of skin care lingering on her vanity. A few hair ties. And Meatball.
The tiny little kitten raises its head from where he is lying down, rolled into a little ball on Elora’s vanity, the sun from the window drenching him in warmth. Bucky smiles at the kitten and proceeds to her wardrobe. He puts his hand on the knob and stops.
He is not a man who goes through women’s things. He doesn’t want to want it, but he does. He wants to see the clothes he’s never seen her in. Her underwear. Her bras. The things she wears to bed. The things she keeps for naughty, nighttime endeavors.
Bucky’s metal hand forms a fist again. He doesn’t want her to have nighttime endeavors. He doesn’t want her to have someone lying down next to her in that bed and touching her. He wants that person to be him, only him.
Bucky forgets the wardrobe. Another time, he tells himself. Breaking into Elora’s apartment was a treat. The only thing he had planned for this visit was to plant the microphones and the motion sensors. So he sticks a microphone under her vanity and pats Meatball on the head, careful not to disrupt any of the million serums on the desk.
After making sure nothing is out of place, Bucky heads out and carefully locks back the door with his pins. He feels satisfied as he walks down the hall, checking his phone to see if the microphones and sensor are connected, and just as he’s about to pass by the elevator, it dings and opens.
“Bucky!”
He looks up, startled, and immediately registers the stutter in his chest when he spots Elora, standing in straight blue jeans and a big brown sweater. She lights up like a Christmas tree when she sees him, her mouth splitting in a toothy grin. She’s holding a purse and waves at him with her free hand. As she steps out, Bucky notices a man stepping out with her. A man who stands a little too close to her.
“Elora,” Bucky says, smiling tightly.
Then she frowns, cocking her head. “What are you doing on my floor?” she asks.
Bucky laughs, tucking his phone back in his pocket as the elevator dings shut. The man Elora is with just stands there, staring at Bucky.
“I came by to tell you I got a call from the refuge today,” Bucky answers eloquently. “Claudia is doing fine. They plan on putting her up for adopting next week.”
Elora’s mouth falls open in both shock and happiness, and she turns to look up at the man beside her, and Bucky feels the anger rise in him like a tidal wave. Oh, how he wishes he was the man Elora would look at like that.
“That’s the guy I was telling you about,” she tells the man. “Bucky, this is Casper, my… friend.”
The hesitation before the word friend let’s Bucky understand that this Casper guy is maybe, just maybe, a little bit more than a friend. Or a potential boyfriend.
Casper puts his hand out to shake, a tight, unruly smile on his lips. Bucky shakes his hand, but he’d rather be choking that idiot to death.
“That’s such good news,” Elora says as the two men finish shaking hands. “We should celebrate!”
Bucky nods. He can’t help but measure the distance between him and her, between her and Casper. He smells her perfume, and he wants to reach forward and touch her skin.
“Maybe another time,” Casper says, and Bucky can’t help but notice how he answered for her.
“Maybe we should let her decide,” he answers, and it’s harsh. It’s blunt. It’s a punch to Casper’s face.
The man jerks backward as if clocked. “Excuse me?” he asks, tone low, menacing.
Bucky wants to snort. Elora’s face drops into a concerned frown. “Okay,” she says, elongating the word. “Maybe we should… maybe we should reconnect, soon, Bucky, okay?”
Bucky wants to tell her to kick Casper out, not him. He wants to take her purse and push Casper out of the way and walk her to her door. He wants to stuff a knife between Casper’s ribs until he’s taken his last breath in her presence.
“Sure,” Bucky says instead, giving Casper a tight, grueling smile. Then he nods at Elora. “You know my floor. Have yourselves a good night.”
He steps aside and down the hall. He hears their receding steps. His phone beeps, and sure enough, a notification of movement in Elora’s door was registered. When Bucky turns around, he sees the door close shut, and he can’t help but think, I’m going to get rid of him.
